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NHS Ayrshire & Arran
NHS Ayrshire & Arran

Advanced Occupational Therapist - Specialist Children’s Services

Templeton On-site 2-5 yrs exp Hospitals and Health Care 1,704 employees
Occupational therapyInfant mental healthClinical assessmentAttachment theoryTrauma-informed practice

Requirements

Candidates must be HCPC-registered Occupational Therapists with post-registration experience working with infants and families. A sound understanding of infant mental health, attachment theory, and trauma-informed practice is essential.

Job Description

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) is one of the largest healthcare systems in the United Kingdom, employing approximately 40,000 staff across a wide range of clinical and non-clinical professions and roles. We deliver acute hospital, primary, community and mental health services to a population of over 1.15 million people, and to a wider population of 2.2 million when regional and national services are included.

The Role

An exciting opportunity has arisen for an experienced Occupational Therapist to join the Infant Mental Health Team within Specialist Children’s Services. The post supports infants from conception to 3 years old and their caregivers and offers a unique opportunity for an autonomous clinician to contribute a specialist occupational therapy perspective within a developing and innovative service.

All other roles will be assessed for sponsorship eligibility in line with current Home Office requirements. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) can only issue a Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) where these are met.

Duration, Location, and Working Pattern:

Fixed-term, Part-time

21.6 hours per week

End date of 19/06/28

Shift pattern - Tuesdays - Thursdays

Base location - Templeton Business Centre

Key Responsibilities

  • Deliver expert occupational therapy assessment, intervention and ongoing management for infants and their families.
  • Work independently across community and early years settings.
  • Provide a specialist occupational therapy perspective within a multidisciplinary team.
  • Support infants with complex needs, including disabilities, social care involvement and additional support needs.
  • Develop and implement early interventions that:
    • Strengthen the infant-caregiver relationship.
    • Promote secure attachment.
    • Reduce the risk of future mental health difficulties.
  • Use specialist knowledge of infant mental health, attachment and occupational development in clinical practice.
  • Provide specialist advice, consultation and support to colleagues within the Infant Mental Health Service and partner agencies, including health, social work and education.
  • Contribute to multidisciplinary assessment, formulation and care planning.
  • Communicate clinical opinions, recommendations and intervention plans effectively to families and professionals.
  • Act in an advisory capacity across NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to promote the role of occupational therapy within infant mental health.
  • Maintain accurate and comprehensive clinical records in line with professional standards.
Knowledge, training, qualifications and/or experience required to do the job:

Essential Knowledge And Experience

  • HCPC-registered Occupational Therapist.
  • Post-registration experience.
  • Experience working with:
    • Infants and families.
    • Complex multi-agency systems.
  • Advanced clinical reasoning skills.
  • Strong communication skills.
  • Ability to work autonomously within a specialist team.
  • Sound understanding of:
    • Infant mental health.
    • Attachment theory.
    • Trauma-informed practice.
    • Early occupational development.
Learning and Development Opportunities

  • Access to a supportive Specialist Children’s Services Occupational Therapy network.
  • Excellent opportunities for learning, development and continuing professional development (CPD).
  • Regular individual and peer supervision.

What We Offer

We offer a wide range of supportive policies designed to enhance your employee journey, including a comprehensive Employee Assistance Programme, Cycle to Work Scheme, bursary scheme and extensive learning and development opportunities.

As an NHS Scotland employee, you will be entitled to:

  • A minimum of 27 days annual leave, increasing with length of service, plus public holidays
  • Membership of the NHS Pension Scheme, including life insurance benefits
  • Salary Sacrifice Car Benefit Scheme
  • Development opportunities including study bursaries, e-learning and classroom-based courses
  • Enhanced pay for working public holidays
  • NHS discounts on a wide range of goods and services
  • Confidential employee support and assistance, including counselling and psychological therapies

Interested?

If you would like to find out more, we would love to hear from you.

For An Informal Discussion, Please Contact

Naomi Naismith, OT Care Group Lead - Naomi.naismith@nhs.scot - 0141 201 0808

Details on how to contact the Recruitment Service and the Recruitment Process: Information for candidates

This post may close early due to the volume of response. Please submit your application form as soon as possible.

AI tools like ChatGPT or Copilot can be great for planning and preparing your application, but your answers must be your own.

  • Show us the real you: Your application should reflect your skills, experience, and motivations authentically.
  • Use AI wisely: It’s fine to use AI for ideas or to check spelling and grammar, but don’t let it write your answers.
  • Why this matters: Applications that rely on AI-generated content may be withdrawn. By applying, you confirm your responses are based on your own knowledge and achievements.

Tip: Think of AI as a helper, not a substitute. We want to understand you, not an AI tool.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) recognises the importance of work-life balance and is committed to offering a range of flexible working options where service needs allow. For roles where less than full-time hours can be accommodated, and where the tenure is listed as “various”, we encourage applications from individuals seeking flexible working arrangements. Flexible working will be included as a topic for discussion during the recruitment process.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde encourages applications from all sections of the community. We are committed to promoting equality, diversity and inclusion and are proud of the diverse workforce we employ.

By signing the Armed Forces Covenant, NHSGGC has pledged its commitment to being a Forces Friendly Employer. We welcome applications from across the Armed Forces Community and recognise military skills, experience and qualifications throughout the recruitment and selection process.

For application portal or log-in issues, please contact the Jobtrain Support Hub in the first instance.

Education

Professional Certificate

Skills

Occupational therapyInfant mental healthClinical assessmentAttachment theoryTrauma-informed practiceClinical reasoningMultidisciplinary team workingEarly interventionCare planningCommunication skillsAutonomous workingRecord keepingSpecialist consultation

About NHS Ayrshire & Arran

We pride ourselves on improving health and providing a comprehensive range of high quality, safe, effective and person-centred health services. Our values - Caring, Safe, Respectful Welcome to the official NHS Ayrshire & Arran LinkedIn page. This account will keep you updated on health matters and bring you trusted information and advice. Please note this is a moderated information site and is not a public forum. This site is moderated Monday to Friday between the hours of 9am and 5pm (excluding public holidays). It is monitored periodically out of office hours. We do not remove comments for being critical of NHS Ayrshire & Arran, as your opinions are important and we can learn from them. However, we may remove comments or posts if they contain vulgar or offensive language, personal attacks of any kind; offensive comments that target or disparage any ethnic, racial or religious group; breach privacy; or spread inaccurate or dangerous information. Further to this, we also reserve the right to delete any comments that: · are spam or include links to other sites; · are clearly off topic; · advocate illegal activity; · promote particular services, products or political organisations; · infringe on copyrights or trademarks; · use personally identifiable medical information (We recommend you do not share any of your medical information on our Social Media pages); or · contain case-specific and other confidential information. Where a person has continued to post inappropriate comments, we reserve the right to block that user from posting on our accounts. Disclaimer NHS Ayrshire & Arran does not take any responsibility for people making contact with members who are followers of this page. It is up to the individual to control their own privacy settings and who can view their profile. Please note that other than our official posts, any comments expressed on the site do not reflect the opinions and position of NHS Ayrshire & Arran or its

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