Children Speech & Language Therapist

Job responsibilities

Job Purpose

To provide a Specialist Speech & Language Therapy Service within Bedelsford School, for children and young people with profound, complex and multiple medical and learning needs, many of whom have significant eating and drinking needs (EDS) as a result of their neurodevelopmental disabilities, aged 2-19years . This may include the supervision and support of and Language Therapy Assistants as required.

To support the current Speech and Language Therapy Team working at Bedelsford School to achieve better outcomes for children, young people and families by contribution to the joint identification, joint decision making, and joint planning for support within school and the continued acquisition of functional life skills.

Dimensions

To be an autonomous practitioner providing highly specialist Speech and Language Therapy services within the paediatric multidisciplinary team based at Bedelsford school.

To have a specialist knowledge and understanding of the strengths and needs of children and young people, who have complex multiple disabilities and a variety of associated communication disorders, AAC and EDS (Dysphagia and/or Avoidant and Restrictive Food Intake Disorder ARFID) needs in order to support their developing skills within the educational settings.

To provide Speech and Language Therapy assessment, treatment, advice and continuity of care to families of children and young people with complex multiple disabilities and needs.

To have knowledge and understanding of other areas of difficulty that may impact on the children and young people with complex multiple disabilities and needs, such as challenging behaviour and/or sensory needs.

To provide clinical supervision and support for the Speech and Language Therapist team based at Bedelsford, which includes Speech and Language Therapists and Speech and Language Therapy Assistants.

To work in partnership with the current SaLT service lead at Bedelsford to shape and deliver an effective service, including contributing to the evidence base of clinical effectiveness for interventions and strategies, to ensure effective outcomes for children and families.

Key Result Areas/Principle responsibilities

Patient/client care:

Have a specialist knowledge and understanding of the strengths and needs of children and young people with profound, complex and multiple medical, health and learning needs, and a variety of communication disorders in order to support their developing skills within educational settings, and across the community.

To autonomously manage a highly complex caseload of children with speech, language and communication (SLC) disorders, and feeding and swallowing difficulties who are placed within a specialist educational setting for 2-19year olds with complex needs.

Assess, independently differentially diagnose, interpret results, treat and manage children with SLC and dysphagia needs whilst frequently weighing up complex clinical decisions in the context of conflicting clinical indicators.

To have knowledge and understanding of other areas of difficulty that may impact on the children and young people with complex multiple disabilities and needs, such as challenging behaviour and/or sensory needs.

To make specialist clinical decisions following assessment of complex cases and provide expert intervention, demonstrating clinical effectiveness by use of evidence based practice and outcome measures whilst adapting practice to meet individual child and family circumstances, as well as clinical population.

To develop and implement specialist SLT treatment and management for communication disorders, including a variety of low-tech and high-tech AAC systems for both pre-intentional and intentional communicators.

To develop and implement specialist SLT treatment and management for swallowing disorders.

To demonstrate skills in motivating children, young people and/or their carers to engage in the therapeutic process in order to form productive relationships with others who may be under stress and/or have challenging communication difficulties.

To have a high level of clinical experience and training in, and be able to support others to develop skills in using clinical interventions such as MAKATON, PECS, VERVE, Attention Autism, Intensive Interaction and Alternative and Augmentative Communication systems (AAC) and safe eating and drinking strategies underpinned by current evidence based practice. In order that opportunities for communication and EDS skills development, and reinforcement of newly acquired skills, are carried over into everyday life. This will include devising and delivery training presentations/workshops.

To produce meaningful and useful reports when required that summarise the childs needs and indicate a proposed plan and monitoring arrangements, including reports submitted to Education as formal advice as part of the Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) process or Annual Review process. To be competent in understanding the process and deliver Education, Health and Care Plans according to the Special Educational Needs (SEND) Code of Practice (Childrens Act 2014).

To work closely with our Multi-Disciplinary Colleagues (MDT) and carers/parents involved in the child/young persons care and outcome setting, ensuring that holistic approaches are used, therapy programmes are focused according to main areas of need and managed effectively and in a timely way to improve outcomes.

Setting and reviewing of individual outcomes collaboratively with members of the multi-disciplinary team, child/young person and carers/parents to ensure outcomes have incorporated the preferences of the child/young person and carers/parents and that they are meaningful and functional.

To demonstrate a high level of clinical effectiveness by use of evidence based practice, Speech and Language Therapy plans and outcome measures, which involve monitoring and reviewing the childs progress against the Speech And Language Therapy plans and outcomes set.

To ensure that the service provided to the children, young people at Bedelsford School and their families is of high quality, ensuring best evidence based practice and clinical governance are in operation, supported by clinical audit and up-to-date policies, procedures and clinical guidelines.

To demonstrate skills in dealing with complex issues to generate appropriate strategies for caseload management.

To demonstrate empathy and adapt practice to meet individual clients circumstances. Ensuring that effective communication is achieved particularly where barriers to understanding exist, including due regard for cultural and linguistic differences.

To reflect on clinical practice both individually and with peers identifying strengths and needs and providing evidence of sound clinical judgements.

To ensure that children and young people are referred to other services as appropriate, if necessary, as part of their care.

To provide second opinions and advice to clients, parents/carers and colleagues as well as other SLTs based on expertise and clinical specialism regarding the diagnosis, treatment, management and care of clients with communication and/or feeding and swallowing difficulties where appropriate.

Policy/service development and implementation:

To use specialist knowledge to contribute to reflective clinical practice both individually and with peers, identifying strengths and needs to support the teams development of the current evidence base and to support effective clinical decision making.

Contribute to the development and maintenance of the communication policies within Bedelsford School in order that the School is supported by the SaLT Service in promoting the development and maintenance of communication development and EDS needs of its pupils.

To develop and maintain clinical expertise, consulting with other Speech and Language Therapists as necessary, keeping up to date with new techniques and developments, for the promotion and maintenance of good practice and your own personal and professional development as evidenced by Continuing Professional Development (CPD).

To adhere to policies, guidelines and professional standards.

To have knowledge of considerations in service delivery in education, e.g., National Curriculum and SEND code of practice.

Financial and physical resources:

To oversee the maintenance of Speech and Language Therapy equipment and resources used in clinical service areas and advise Team Leads of equipment needs.

To develop specialist resources in collaboration with teaching staff.

Human resources:

To provide support and ad hoc clinical supervision to members of the Bedelsford Speech and Language Therapy team, teaching staff within Bedelsford, and volunteers as required.

To oversee the work of the Speech & Language Therapy Assistants by helping them organise their working pattern and ensuring quality through regular observation, supervision.

To effectively work with a range of professionals and ensure work undertaken is suitable to their level of skills, knowledge and expertise and measuring effectiveness and quality through regular observation, supervision and appraisal.

To identify/coordinate and provide regular specialist training both for education staff groups, parents and the Speech and Language Therapy team on a range of topics that will support the development of the children on the case load and Speech and Language Therapy team members professional development.

To keep up to date with current clinical developments through reading, attendance at courses, meetings and Hubs and share this information with other colleagues.

To attend statutory and mandatory training as required.

To support SaLT student clinical placements as required.

Qualifications

Essential

• Recognised Speech and Language Therapy qualification
• HPC registration
• Member of RCSLT
• Makaton, , Intensive Interaction, AAC (such as PECS, PODD)
• Post Graduate Qualification in Dysphagia

Desirable

• TOMS
• ACI/Hanen PCI
• Project Management/Leadership/Change management

Experience

Essential

• The Balanced System framework
• Implementation of a range of communication programmes/approaches listed above and of using a whole school approach to communication
• A wide range of approaches/strategies to support children and young people with eating, drinking and swallowing needs.
• Setting clear therapy plans and monitoring and evaluating outcomes
• Using outcome measurements
• A minimum of 4 years post qualification experience in children with SLCN and Dysphagia
• Experience of working collaboratively within a multi-disciplinary team and with parents/carers to make clinical decisions and priorities.
• Of working with parents/carers in emotionally challenging situations relating to complex clinical issues and their impact.
• Experience of working within a specialist school or resource provision setting
• Devising and delivering training workshops to a range of professionals/parents/carers in order to ensure enskilling others in a range of therapy approaches/strategies/service delivery and capturing effectiveness of the training
• Clinical supervision and training of Speech and Language Therapists, Speech and Language Therapy Assistants and Speech and Language Therapy students
• Planning and delivering training to education staff/professionals and families.
• Of clinical governance, research and audit and contributing own specialst knowledge to the development of these
• Of leading on developing SLT service developments and relevant protocols.

Desirable

• Knowledge of risk management, quality standards and clinical effectiveness.
• Working collaboratively with our key partners, e.g., SEN team at Achieving for Children, Senior Leadership Teams in schools, GP Federation, voluntary sector.
• Experience of managing a caseload of children/young people with eating, drinking and swallowing needs (EDS).

Knowledge, skills and abilities

Essential

• Maintaining clinical expertise, keeping up to date with and sharing new techniques and developments, for the promotion and maintenance of good practice within the team and to provide a second opinion on cases of clinical complexity.
• Of applying visual systems to support communication in an educational context, e.g. TEACCH, PECS, AAC, Makaton signs and symbols, cue artic
• Of relevant developments in Education, the National Curriculum and SEND Code of Practice
• Working with children and young people/parents/carers, educational colleagues and other professionals to ensure collaborative outcome setting and focused therapy
• Of a wide range of assessments and approaches relevant to children and young people with a range of learning disabilities and/or physical disabilities and associated conditions such as autism who present with communication and interaction needs
• Of a wide range of approaches/strategies to support children and young peoples eating, drinking and swallowing skills.
• Of analysing assessment information in order to support diagnoses and devise Speech and Language Therapy plans and outcome measures to ensure children/young peoples communication skills and EDS needs are supported in a relevant, functional and measured way.
• Of relevant developments in Education, the National Curriculum and Code of Practice and competently understand the process and delivery of Education, Health and Care Plans within our service and with our partners at Achieving for Children.
• Working with a range of professionals and ensuring work undertaken is suitable to their level of skills, knowledge and expertise and using effective measurement.
• Of outcome planning and monitoring for Education, Health and Care Plans
• Information Technology skills
• Good organisational skills
• Excellent communication & interpersonal skills
• Good presentation skills
• Reflective practitioner
• Problem solving skills
• Established negotiation skills and resolution of conflict

Desirable

• Sensory impairment
• IT software (e.g. widgit/boardmaker/MS Teams/webinars)
• Contributing own knowledge to the development and implementation of clinical governance, research and audit procedures within the Speech and Language Therapy team
• Experience of being exposed to a diverse range of people/cultures/ways of doing things

Personal qualities

Essential

• Professional Manner
• Reliable time keeper
• Committed and motivated
• Can do attitude
• Problem Solving Approach

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).