Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist

This post is an excellent opportunity for a therapist who is experienced in supporting children of all ages with Eating, Drinking and Swallowing (EDS) difficulties and for working with the 3 counties team to develop EDS and Complex Needs competencies across the service in Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire.

You will be part of a 3 counties team of SLTs who provide leadership across all areas of Complex Needs including EDS. Your main area of leadership will be within the area of EDS and complex needs in Pembrokeshire, you will also lead and mentor a small team of therapists in Portfield Special School within a well established Multidisciplinary setting. There are also leadership opportunities available in Pembrokeshire to lead staff who support children with complex needs in mainstream settings.

Within the Hywel Dda area, we implement Malcomess Care Aims and are keen to use outcome measures to demonstrate that our service is effective and has a positive impact upon our client group.

Your base will be in Pembrokeshire, we are a very supportive team who values staff wellbeing and also encourages the team to develop their clinical and leadership skills by offering robust clinical and managerial support for projects and developments that nurture robust and effective service provision., You need excellent inter personal skills in order to be able to influence and lead teams with the implementation of new packages of care which are based upon robust, evidence based practice as well as ensure that pilot programmes are well received and implemented with robust evaluation tools.

You will employ highly developed reflective practice skills and continuously seek to evaluate and update your clinical practice.

The role will be split between 1.5 days in Portfield Special School and 3.5 days in community settings/ providing leadership for EDS in the Pembrokeshire SLT service, advancing clinical practice in this area of work and taking a lead in evolving and embedding best practice into clinical practice.

You will provide highly specialist clinical support for children and young people with a range of highly complex health needs, EDS and learning difficulties in a variety of settings within your allocated locality.

You will independently provide highly specialist assessment, diagnosis and treatment for children and young people with complex needs, ensuring appropriate pathways of care are followed and referring/signposting to other agencies as required.

From time to time you may be required to work in Carmarthenshire and/or Ceredigion to support the complex needs teams in those counties according service demands.

You will have an excellent knowledge of the ALN act and processes and the decision making relating to ALP for children on your caseload.

Hywel Dda University Health Board is the planner and provider of NHS healthcare services for people in Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire and its bordering counties. Our 12,000 members of staff provide primary, community, in-hospital, mental health and learning disabilities services for around 384,000 people across a quarter of the landmass of Wales. We do this in partnership with our three local authorities and public, private and third sector colleagues, including our volunteers, through:

Four main hospitals: Bronglais General in Aberystwyth, Glangwili General in Carmarthen, Prince Philip in Llanelli and Withybush General in Haverfordwest;

Seven community hospitals: Amman Valley and Llandovery in Carmarthenshire; Tregaron, Aberaeron and Cardigan in Ceredigion; and Tenby and South Pembrokeshire Hospital Health and Social Care Resource Centre in Pembrokeshire;

48 general practices (six of which are managed practices), 47 dental practices (including three orthodontic), 99 community pharmacies, 44 general ophthalmic practices (43 providing Eye Health Examination Wales and 34 low vision services) and 17 domiciliary only providers and 11 health centres