Profile

Lead Occupational Therapist with over 20 years of experience working within a Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Foundation NHS trust in the North-East of England. Experience sitting on Royal College Occupational Therapy (RCOT) regional committees. Volunteer roles within the wider Occupational Therapy online community as a member of the OTalk and AbleOTUK teams.

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Experience

Current role as Lead Occupational Therapist for Adult Mental Health Acute and Rehabilitation Services in Teesside, for Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust (TEWV). 

I provide direct clinical leadership and line management for occupational therapy staff across three mental health services in the region. This includes overseeing acute services at Roseberry Park Hospital Middlesbrough, which covers four adult acute inpatient wards and one Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), totalling 90 beds. Additionally, I clinically lead the occupational therapy staff working in a rehabilitation ward with 20 beds in Stockton and the community rehabilitation team working across Teesside.

I am also responsible for governance oversight of all occupational therapy staff within the four community mental health teams and other staff in generic roles who are registered occupational therapists in the region, totalling 45 staff. 

My responsibilities include providing clinical supervision, mentoring training and maintaining governance oversight for these teams. A key part of my role is the planning and delivery of monthly learning and governance networks, supporting the continuing professional development (CPD) of occupational therapy staff, and ensuring they remain current with best practices and emerging trends in the profession.

I work closely with colleagues managing and leading occupational therapy services in other care groups and geographical areas within TEWV to ensure consistency and quality of service delivery. I actively contribute to the Trust-wide Occupational Therapy governance and leadership meetings, where we develop strategies, policies, and guidance to the trust about how trust-wide strategic projects impact the delivery of occupational therapy services. I act as this group’s link to the Royal College of Occupational Therapy (RCOT) as the current elected chair of RCOT’s Northern and Yorkshire Regional Committee. 

In addition, I represent Occupational Therapy at service-level governance and strategic meetings across two care groups within TEWV, ensuring that our services uphold high standards of care and are aligned with the Trust’s broader objectives.

I sit on the Co-creation Board, which unites service users, carers, and staff to embed co-creation practices throughout the Trust as part of the “Journey for Change” strategy. This role reflects my commitment to involving service users and carers in shaping the future of our services. I am a member of the trust health and wellbeing council, acting as a wellbeing champion for the teams I work with.

I also Co-chair the trust-wide staff support network for staff who are neurodivergent, and I am a member of another support group for staff who are living with disabilities and/or long-term health conditions, which provides support to staff every month and works with colleagues in the equity diversity and inclusion team to develop strategies to challenge the trust to ensure a better experience for staff members from these minority groups.

Lead Occupational Therapist for Forensic Mental Health Services.  Band 7 TEWV NHS Trust (Secondment 2019 – 2020) 

Leadership and line management of Occupational Therapy Staff in TEWV NHS Foundation Trust secure (forensic) services. the main task to lead on embedding a new model of OT amalgamating two services together. This included working alongside HR, and service leads to manage strategic organisational change. For six months before this I was acting clinical lead of the learning disabilities forensic occupational therapy services with an active approach to leading strategic change together with my substantial post (see below.) Being proactive throughout this process to ensure quality during the development was mainly achieved by coaching and mentoring of staff.

Clinical Lead Occupational Therapist Adult Mental Health in-patient, Community and inpatient rehabilitation services across Teesside. Band 7 TEWV NHS Trust(2016 – 2019) 

Leadership and line management of OT staff working in mental health in-patients and rehabilitation services, across Teesside. Quality assurance in this setting was achieved by providing supervision, planning and running monthly learning and governance networks, promoting staff CPD and representing OT and collaboration within service level and strategic meetings. I carried a small caseload delivering OT assessments and treatment to service users in the psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU).

Clinical Lead Occupational Therapist Adult Mental Health in-patients TEWV NHS TrustBand 7 (2011 – 2016) 

As above but only within Adult Mental Health in-patients in one hospital.

Band 6 and Band 5 Occupational Therapist (2006- 2011) 

In a range of mental health settings, TNEY NHS Trust Delivers occupational therapy interventions to clients with mental health problems. Group work, assessment, goal setting and treatment. Supervision of assistants and band 5 staff.

Student Occupational Therapist 2003 -2006 Secondment by my employer to study occupational therapy at Teesside University. 

Assistant Occupational Therapist 2000-2003 Working under the supervision of occupational therapists delivering interventions within an acute mental health hospital.

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Skills

Working with people managing and delivering Occupational therapy services.

Years of experience in carrying out assessment and delivery of occupational interventions, in both open and closed group work situations, along with individual 1:1 sessions based on engagement in activities/tasks, goal-oriented both therapist lead and co-produced. See training & experiences (right) for models, assessment tools and outcomes that measure knowledge. Most of my clinical work has been working with service users in restrictive mental health services. I have a calm active listening approach, when working with those in distress or highly volatile situations, and can read people able to de-escalate situations well. Within my leadership roles, this skill has turned to managing concerns within staff groups and is utilised in wider management, coaching, development and strategic situations. This approach and skill should give me a good grounding in working with RCOT members to meet their development needs and what they may want as membership benefits. 

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 Supervision, Quality Assurance and Governance. 

 Throughout my career, I have supervised students, assistants, graduates and experienced occupational therapists. Supervision is a required and important part of developing occupational therapy staff that is part of quality assurance and good governance.

RCOT has a role to play in ensuring members have both a good understanding and access to resources to promote assurance and governance of the profession. I have experience running a monthly occupational therapy learning and governance network within my current role, that both uses and develops resources to audit and improve professional quality and governance. As mentioned I have experience of governance at a higher level serving as a staff governor on the trust council of governors.

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 Leadership and Coaching

Undertaken several leadership, development and coaching training courses/opportunities provided by my employer. This has helped me develop confidence by understanding my styles and how they may have impacted those I am leading. Within leadership, it is important to understand what motivates individuals, what strengths and limitations team members have, to get the best out of a team, skills of diplomacy, negotiation, and openness ensure any issues within team dynamics are addressed when it comes to implementing change its important that team members feel included in the process, but also that there are clear expectations and goals so that tasks are achieved and input is valued.

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 Continue Professional Development (CPD)

Throughout my career engaging in and creating CDP opportunities for others has been an important and enjoyable part of my role. I love learning, and asking questions to understand what motivates people. CPD is a standard we must meet as a requirement of the HCPC. My voluntary roles are focused on providing CPD opportunities, including running OTalk, and a weekly Twitter chat about Occupational therapy. On RCOT regional committees, I have helped plan, develop and facilitate CDP events. Within my workplace I actively encourage others to think about and record their CPD, this includes presenting on HCPC standards and ways to document continuing professional development easily, within the standards of HCPC and RCOT. 

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Development of Services Achieving Positive Change

Change is enviable, working within the NHS there is always change, I am used to working proactively to embrace better ways of working, appropriately challenging resistance to progress and making positive improvements.  I have experience in developing, negotiating, and achieving positive change within my paid roles and in the wider occupational therapy community and local communities with voluntary roles.  

It can be difficult to achieve change. As an example blanket restrictions have been and still are commonplace in mental health inpatient services. They can be a barrier to occupational therapy interventions. The Care Quality Commission who regulate services require the removal of blanket restrictions, Good practice understands that each environment, intervention and person engaging will present different levels of unique strengths and risks. I have extensive experience in carrying out risk assessments on the environments, interventions and individuals, to evidence evidence-based and understand the reasons behind restricted practice and challenging blanket restrictions that impact positive engagement in occupation and human rights to ensure a quality service.

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Recruitment and ensuring Equality, Diversity and Belonging 

I have extensive experience in shortlisting, interviewing and recruiting occupational therapy staff, have sat on panels to recruit consultant psychiatrists and helped interview students for occupational therapy courses. 

I have worked with HR on ensuring interview panels included those with lived experiences. I have experience working with staff who have needs for reasonable adjustments to be made in the workplace to ensure they can fulfil their job role well. This is a particular area of interest for me and would like to work towards RCOT developing better guidance and wellbeing resources.

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IT and Social media skills

I’m skilled in using both Mac and PC, able to interchange between both without issue. Able to confidently use most software and programs. Including Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. Microsoft Office I am confident in quickly learning new software, electronic staff management software and patient record systems.

In my voluntary roles with OTalk and AbleOTUK which are based online, mainly on social media platforms. I have gained skills in building websites, and making creative videos, and posts, to promote & market events and topics, this includes skills in scheduling posts to hit target audiences at key times. Use Google and Outlook sharing document systems. I have presented about and have good knowledge of how to remain professional whilst online. I’m confident in all aspects of using Skype, Zoom and MS Teams and finding resources and apps to help with thoughts and ideas.

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Project management, event planning and organisation

Having a disability lends itself to being well organised, and having to plan every aspect of my day before leaving the house. Project management and event planning are really enjoyable for me. 

I have experience in strategic oversight of service needs and have played a key role in the development and delivery of occupational therapy services, have skills in auditing, project management, designing resources and running learning opportunities for staff, service users and RCOT members. 

In the NHS trust I work for, I have led planning ‘in-house’ conferences for OT & the wider AHP staff groups. I have planned and facilitated three co-produced Trust-wide art exhibitions of service users’ and staff’s artwork. One was held at Ripon Cathedral. In 2018 along with my manager I planned a national conference focused on Personality Disorder & Occupational Therapy, that generated income for my trust. 

Within voluntary roles for the RCOT regional committee, I have been involved in planning, running and presenting at several learning events and conferences.

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