Senior Occupational Therapist

Job summary

Are you a dedicated, compassionate mental health professional committed to providing great care? Do you want the chance to help shape a new and genuinely innovative service for the women of Kent and Medway?

We're creating Kent and Medway's first, and only, NHS Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) for women, and are seeking an experienced Occupational Therapist to help us deliver this vital service.

Please note that the start date for this post will be March 2026, to allow for sufficient time for onboarding, induction, and training before the anticipated arrival of the first patient in April 2026.

As a Senior Occupational Therapist, you'll work within the MDT to ensure best practice for patient care. Your responsibilities will include both patient-focused tasks and staff-focused duties. You'll strategically influence the service by evaluating AHP effectiveness, identifying areas for improvement, manage the roster and oversee the budget.

The role offers significant opportunities for growth and innovation, allowing you to engage in improvement projects and pursue continuous professional development.

If this sounds like the opportunity you have been waiting for, come and join our diverse and compassionate team committed to delivering excellent care and support for service users and their loved ones

All positions also benefit from a High Cost Area allowance.

Main duties of the job

• To work collaboratively with MDT members to contribute to a flexible and effective interdisciplinary team approach to clinical care.
• To effectively establish a therapeutic relationship with service users and their relatives/carers.
• To assess capacity and obtain informed consent from service users and work within a legal framework with those clients who lack capacity to consent to treatment.
• In conjunction with colleagues to undertake, record, review and work within individual risk assessment and management plans in line with service and Trust policy.
• To provide specialist assessment of clients experiencing an acute episode of mental illness and analyse and interpret information gained to form an accurate diagnosis of impairments, strengths and capabilities and formulate clinical needs.
• To ensure service users are involved in the planning and prioritisation of their care plans wherever possible.
• To adapt practice to meet individual service users' circumstances, including regard for cultural and linguistic differences.
• To monitor, evaluate and modify therapy programmes in order to measure progress and increase efficacy for service user outcomes.
• In conjunction with others to identify client's needs for additional care provision / housing/specialist placement/further assessment /referral on to other agencies.
• To act as a source of clinical reference for other colleagues regarding the service users, providing advice to enable and improve service/care provision.

About us

Working in a PICU is very rewarding but we want to be honest and share that it is demanding too. It is likely to be needed by people with severe and complex mental health conditions (e.g. Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder and may be associated with Personality Disorder, Substance Misuse and PTSD).

While emotionally challenging, the opportunity to support critically unwell women back to their communities, ensuring 'right care, in the right place, at the right time', is immense, and your skilled, multidisciplinary, team will be there to support you.

You would be working as part of a team of mental health experts, dedicated to making sure the most unwell women in our communities have the same access to specialist care as men.

We are recruiting now to make sure our new female PICU team is in place with enough time to train, form team bonds and prepare. So you can all make a profound difference to patient outcomes from day one.

We also offer ongoing professional development to help you adapt and progress your career, including bespoke training and a comprehensive induction program.

All jobs based at our Dartford unit come with a High Cost Area Supplement: 5% of basic salary, subject to a minimum payment of £1303 per year and a maximum payment of £2198 per year (the agreed annual amount will be divided into 12 equal amounts and paid monthly). The salary listed is inclusive of the High-Cost Area Allowance.

Employer details

Employer name

Kent & Medway NHS & Social Care Partnership Trust

Address

Littlebrook Hospital

Bow Arrow Lane

Dartford, Kent

DA2 6PB

Employer's website

https://www.kmpt.nhs.uk (Opens in a new tab)

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Employer details

Employer name

Kent & Medway NHS & Social Care Partnership Trust

Address

Littlebrook Hospital

Bow Arrow Lane

Dartford, Kent

DA2 6PB

Employer's website

https://www.kmpt.nhs.uk (Opens in a new tab)

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