Job summary
Band 8a Clinical Dysphagia Specialist Speech & Language Therapist
The swallowing and communication specialist leadership role that rarely becomes available is here.
Join our innovative SLT team at Heartlands and Good Hope Hospital as Clinical Dysphagia Specialist, where your expertise will transform patient outcomes across our community.
This Band 8a position offers the chance to lead specialist services across our sites, working at expert practitioner level while supporting both inpatient and outpatient settings. You'll provide advanced clinical input, lead instrumental assessments including videofluoroscopy and FEES, and drive excellence in education and competencies.
As we embrace 2025 as UHB's Year of Leadership, this role represents an opportunity to shape the future of specialist care through clinical expertise and professional leadership. You'll coordinate our team of speech and language therapists, ensuring clinically prioritised and safe service delivery while actively engaging in service planning, clinical governance and innovation.
Our SLT department is committed to supporting career progression through comprehensive supervision, appraisal and training opportunities. We prioritise staff wellbeing within an inclusive, diverse environment where our team is respected for delivering excellent patient-centred care.
You'll live and breathe our values of being kind, connected and bold while participating in our 7-day service across Heartlands, Good Hope and Solihull hospitals.
Main duties of the job
You'll provide expert-level dysphagia assessment and intervention for complex cases across acute and community settings, demonstrating advanced clinical reasoning and autonomous practice. This includes leading our instrumental assessment services, ensuring high-quality videofluoroscopy and FEES provision while maintaining rigorous safety standards.
Your leadership responsibilities encompass coordinating the dysphagia team, providing clinical supervision and mentoring colleagues in advanced practice. You'll contribute to service development through clinical governance activities, audit leadership and evidence-based practice implementation.
Education forms a core component of your role - delivering specialist training to multidisciplinary teams, supervising students and developing competency frameworks. You'll represent the service at Trust level and engage with regional and national dysphagia networks.
Research and development activities will see you leading audit projects, contributing to service evaluation and supporting the implementation of innovative practices. You'll work collaboratively with medical colleagues, nursing teams and allied health professionals to ensure seamless patient pathways and optimal outcomes.
Your expertise will extend to complex decision-making around capacity, risk management and discharge planning, while maintaining detailed clinical records and contributing to quality improvement initiatives across our sites.
About us
University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust strives to have an inclusive culture where everyone feels like they belong, can thrive, knows that they add value and feels valued. We do this by developing compassionate and culturally competent leaders, being values driven in all that we do and by creating a welcoming and inclusive workplace that thrives on the diversity of our people. As such we want to attract and recruit talented individuals from all backgrounds, and for each of you to feel supported for the diversity you bring, to achieve your full potential. For those staff with a disability, including physical disability, long term health condition, mental health or neurodiverse condition, this also means being committed to making reasonable adjustments needed for you to carry out your role.
Job description
Job responsibilities
*Please Note : For a detailed job description for this vacancy, please see attached Job Description*
Job description
Job responsibilities
*Please Note : For a detailed job description for this vacancy, please see attached Job Description*
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential
- *Speech and Language Therapy Degree Qualification or equivalent
- *Health Professions Council -- Licence to Practice
- *Registered Member of Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists
- *Evidence of commitment to advanced clinical and non-clinical continued professional development within own speciality, e.g. post registration training, management competencies and evidence of a detailed personal development portfolio
- *Postgraduate advanced accredited dysphagia training and / or relevant level of experience within the field
Desirable
Experience
Essential
- *Relevant postgraduate experience in key specialist area's relevant to the post
- * Competencies in VF and FEES assessment.
- *Extensive experience of management of adults with complex swallowing / communication needs
- *Significant experience as a clinical leader including direct clinical supervision of staff
- *Teaching experience to multi-professional groups with evidence of ability to deliver high quality presentations
- *Experience of leading audit
- *Evidence of working effectively in partnership with others within multi-disciplinary teams and across agencies
- *Ability to constructively challenge current practice and identify opportunity to develop, implement and facilitate change in practice by others
- *Able to interpret and analyse a range of policy, clinical guidelines and data and their relevance for practice. The service
- *Good knowledge and application of all areas of Clinical Governance including Quality, Audit and Risk management
- *Good understanding of IT systems and its application to clinical practice
Desirable
- *Good understanding of principles of data and experience of their use in evaluation of service delivery
- *Knowledge and understanding of the research process
- *Ability to comprehend and work within the Trust's policies of data protection, equal opportunities and Health and Safety to meet the differing needs of patients
- *Understands the legal responsibilities of the profession
Additional Criteria
Essential
- *Advanced knowledge of assessment tools and a range of therapeutic interventions relevant to the client group
- *Advanced knowledge of trends and best practice in the clinical specialism
- *Good working knowledge of national policies and procedures (relevant to the client group) and their implications for SLT
- *Competence in the facilitation of mental capacity decision making
- *Well-developed leadership and influential skills, able to lead and command confidence in senior therapists, consultants, senior nurses and managers within and related to stroke & neurology work effectively across boundaries
- *Excellent verbal & written skills; able to communicate complex clinical information in a clear and logical manner to patients, colleagues and other healthcare professional concerning a wide range of clinical situations
- *Good teaching, supervisory and appraisal skills
- *Proven organisational skills including prioritisation and delegation
- *Understanding of the impact of local cultural, linguistic and demographic factors influencing service
- *Excellent problem-solving skills
- *Excellent analytical and reflection skills
- *Excellent organisational skills and prioritisation skills
- *Able to judge limits of skills/competence and recognise professional boundaries
- *Excellent interpersonal skills
- *Strong sense of professional integrity, and compliance with Trust vision and values
- *Ability to be self-motivated and to motivate team
- *Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
- *Able and willing to work flexibly in order to meet service priorities
- *Excellent time management and organisational skills and able to meet deadlines and targets
- *Flexible to work between sites
- *Participation in 7 day working
Desirable
- *Car driver. Able to meet the travel requirements of the position
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential
- *Speech and Language Therapy Degree Qualification or equivalent
- *Health Professions Council -- Licence to Practice
- *Registered Member of Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists
- *Evidence of commitment to advanced clinical and non-clinical continued professional development within own speciality, e.g. post registration training, management competencies and evidence of a detailed personal development portfolio
- *Postgraduate advanced accredited dysphagia training and / or relevant level of experience within the field
Desirable
Experience
Essential
- *Relevant postgraduate experience in key specialist area's relevant to the post
- * Competencies in VF and FEES assessment.
- *Extensive experience of management of adults with complex swallowing / communication needs
- *Significant experience as a clinical leader including direct clinical supervision of staff
- *Teaching experience to multi-professional groups with evidence of ability to deliver high quality presentations
- *Experience of leading audit
- *Evidence of working effectively in partnership with others within multi-disciplinary teams and across agencies
- *Ability to constructively challenge current practice and identify opportunity to develop, implement and facilitate change in practice by others
- *Able to interpret and analyse a range of policy, clinical guidelines and data and their relevance for practice. The service
- *Good knowledge and application of all areas of Clinical Governance including Quality, Audit and Risk management
- *Good understanding of IT systems and its application to clinical practice
Desirable
- *Good understanding of principles of data and experience of their use in evaluation of service delivery
- *Knowledge and understanding of the research process
- *Ability to comprehend and work within the Trust's policies of data protection, equal opportunities and Health and Safety to meet the differing needs of patients
- *Understands the legal responsibilities of the profession
Additional Criteria
Essential
- *Advanced knowledge of assessment tools and a range of therapeutic interventions relevant to the client group
- *Advanced knowledge of trends and best practice in the clinical specialism
- *Good working knowledge of national policies and procedures (relevant to the client group) and their implications for SLT
- *Competence in the facilitation of mental capacity decision making
- *Well-developed leadership and influential skills, able to lead and command confidence in senior therapists, consultants, senior nurses and managers within and related to stroke & neurology work effectively across boundaries
- *Excellent verbal & written skills; able to communicate complex clinical information in a clear and logical manner to patients, colleagues and other healthcare professional concerning a wide range of clinical situations
- *Good teaching, supervisory and appraisal skills
- *Proven organisational skills including prioritisation and delegation
- *Understanding of the impact of local cultural, linguistic and demographic factors influencing service
- *Excellent problem-solving skills
- *Excellent analytical and reflection skills
- *Excellent organisational skills and prioritisation skills
- *Able to judge limits of skills/competence and recognise professional boundaries
- *Excellent interpersonal skills
- *Strong sense of professional integrity, and compliance with Trust vision and values
- *Ability to be self-motivated and to motivate team
- *Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
- *Able and willing to work flexibly in order to meet service priorities
- *Excellent time management and organisational skills and able to meet deadlines and targets
- *Flexible to work between sites
- *Participation in 7 day working
Desirable
- *Car driver. Able to meet the travel requirements of the position
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.
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see
NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).
Additional information
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.
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see
NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).
