Clinical Lead Speech and Language Therapist

at  North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust

Band 7 Clinical Lead Speech and Language Therapist - Eating, Drinking and Swallowing Difficulties
Children’s Service - Darlington, Hartlepool and Stockton
We have an exciting opportunity available, having created a new leadership post within the service. We are keen to recruit a speech and language therapist who is enthusiastic and motivated about working with children with a diverse range of neurodevelopmental disabilities including eating, drinking and swallowing difficulties.
There is some flexibility in the location of the base for this post and there may be scope for the role to be offered on a part time basis.
The post holder will provide leadership across Darlington, Hartlepool and Stockton, leading, coordinating and developing the clinical service for the client group.

To lead on the development and coordination of service provision and policy for the clinical area, including pathway development with reference to evidence based practice.
To work collaboratively with other leads to coordinate services across the whole of the children’s service to ensure equitable provision.
To ensure that staff at all levels within the children’s SLT team have access to CPD opportunities and supervision in the clinical area at an appropriate level to develop and/or maintain the required skills and competencies to carry out their role.
To ensure provision of a highly specialist integrated service to the client group.
To advise the Service Leads on service delivery issues relating to the client group, including pressures and shortfalls.
To generate appropriate strategies to manage an individual highly specialist caseload including the assessment, diagnosis, treatment and discharge of a diverse range of clients in the clinical area with a range of eating, drinking and swallowing difficulties.
To develop and implement highly specialist care protocols and programmes of care and treatment, to meet the needs of clients in conjunction with their parents, carers, education staff and other members of the appropriate multi-disciplinary team (MDT).
To independently manage and/or negotiate the management of complex cases with others e.g. onward referral to highly specialist clinicians or other specialist support agencies e.g. consultants, psychologists.
To ensure clients/families are involved in the planning and prioritisation of their care plans wherever possible.
To adapt practice to meet individual client circumstances including regard for cultural and linguistic differences.
To provide highly specialist education, training and supervision to speech and language therapy assistant practitioners, volunteers, and to speech and language therapists with less experience in the management of the client group.
To provide highly specialist advice and second opinions to less experienced clinicians.
To continually evaluate the effectiveness of care protocols and packages of care, audit and implement changes as appropriate in conjunction with other Clinical Leads / line manager.
To continually evaluate clinical effectiveness of intervention with individual clients, negotiate and implement changes