Occupational Therapist - Aquarius Ward | South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust

This is a really exciting opportunity for an experienced band 6 to join the Occupational Therapy team on Aquarius ward, a general adolescent mental health inpatient unit.

The Occupational therapy team consists of this role band 6, a part time band 5 and an activity worker.

The band 6 post has recently been increased to full time giving an exciting opportunity for the new post holder to develop and expand the current Occupational Therapy provision.

The band 6 will lead the Occupational therapy team in providing a comprehensive Occupational therapy assessment and group and individual interventions to the young people on the unit. The post holder will also provide Occupational therapy consultation and support to the wider multi-disciplinary team, families, schools, and networks.

Although sensory training is not essential to this post, an understanding of sensory processing including assessment techniques and interventions such as the Alert programme, sensory spiders and ladders and the creation of sensory diets would be beneficial.

Experience working in child and adolescent mental health or with children and young people in other settings is also desirable but not essential.

Aquarius Ward is a specialist inpatient mental health provision for young people aged 12 – 18 who are experiencing an acute mental health crisis. It is a 12 bedded National Unit open 365 days a year, 24h a
day. It is part of the South London Partnership providing the adolescent in-patient services for young people under St George’s Southwest London Mental Health Trust, South London and Maudsley and Oxleas NHS Trust. The team provides inpatient treatment for adolescents aged 12 to their 18th birthday in an acute mental health crisis that is unable to be managed in the community with conditions such as severe depression, anxiety OCD, self-harm, psychosis and mania. You will be joining a multi-disciplinary team that is committed to the provision of highly quality service user centred care.

We are Proud to Belong at South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust.

We have expert services, a rich history and a clear commitment to providing the best quality care for those with mental ill-health. The Care Quality Commission already rates our services as ‘good’ - we aspire to be ‘outstanding’.

This is a great time to join us. We are transforming the way we care for our communities to support our mission of Making Life Better Together. We have built two brand new mental health facilities at Springfield University Hospital, which are amongst the best in the world. More developments are planned across our sites and services as we invest a further £120m to upgrade and modernise our estate by 2027.

We are inclusive and diverse and strive to be actively anti racist. We want to attract people from all backgrounds and experiences to enrich the work we do together.We are proud to co-produce and involve our local communities in all that we do.

We offer flexible working, career development and a variety of benefits to enable a positive, welcoming environment in which our people and their careers can thrive.

Come and join our inclusive teams and help our patients on their recovery journey.

About our location:

This post will be based at Springfield Hospital

Unless expressly stated in the job advert this role is not subject to sponsorship, please be advised that all offers of employment are subject to evidence of right to work in the UK.
• To provide a specialist Occupational Therapy service to service users within Aquarius ward providing interventions underpinned by the Model of Human Occupation and the principles of Recovery.
• To manage a defined caseload of patients with multiple and complex needs, using evidence based /person centred principles to assess, plan, implement and evaluate interventions in an in-patient adolescent setting.
• To participate in the planning, development and evaluation of OT services within a designated area/team, holding responsibility for defined projects.
• To maintain accurate and contemporaneous clinical records and produce specialist reports for case conferences.
• To provide leadership for junior staff, through supervision and appraisal.
• To represent occupational therapy within the multi-disciplinary team.
• To provide group and 1:1 interventions.
• To promote recovery and social inclusion.
• To maintain standards of OT practice as directed by the Director of Therapies.
• To undertake regular audit and R&D activities.
• To undertake the supervision of OT students on fieldwork placements.
• To provide ‘Disability Champion’ duties leading the multi-disciplinary team in Disability Equality matters within Specialist Services as required.

This advert closes on Monday 25 May 2026