As a Specialist Speech and Language Therapist, you’ll be working as part of an externally funded project team to improve levels of communication and language skills in vulnerable pre-school children. This will support the closing of the word gap between disadvantaged children and their peers on school entry, in key geographical locations in B&NES

You will work collaboratively with our external partners (including The St John's Foundation and the Early Years Advisory Service), targeted settings, and families to continue to plan, deliver and evaluate the next phase of the project.

This is a full time position, but please contact us if part-time working is preferred.

You will feel valued as a Specialist Speech and Language Therapist​ with HCRG Care Group, receiving access to exclusive rewards and benefits including:

• £35,392 -  £42,618 and Agenda for Change terms and conditions – including an NHS pension
• Free tea, coffee and milk at your base location
• Membership of My Reward Hub, giving you access to discounts on every day purchases like grocery shopping as well as cashback and voucher offers for treats for you and those special to you
• Access to your wages as you earn them to help cover life’s emergencies and avoid overdraft fees or high interest rates
• Online and face to face help with your mental and physical wellbeing – from healthy recipes and activity challenges through to post trauma support, legal, debt and life management help, as well career coaching and counselling
• Access to eLearning, bespoke career pathways and opportunities for continuing professional development through our ‘Outstanding’ learning and development team, The Learning Enterprise
• An open, just culture where you’re encouraged to have and implement ideas which can help us deliver our purpose: changing lives through transforming health and care – backed up by at least £100,000 of ring fenced innovation funding each year 
• The pride of working for an organisation committed to the highest clinical and quality standards: with a majority of our rated services holding “good” or “outstanding” ratings from the Care Quality Commission

Working collaboratively with colleagues across health and education services, you will be responsible for:

• Collaborative planning, implementation and evaluation of the project
• Engaging Early Years Practitioners working in settings identified for support
• Training Early Years Practitioners in the use of WellComm Communications and Language toolkit
• Supporting implementation of the toolkit across all year groups in setting and during transition to school
• Strengthening the early identification of needs and support within the targeted settings
• Offering ongoing training and support to upskill the early years workforce during the period of the project
• Supporting settings to create a language rich environment
• Helping to identify a communication champion within each targeted setting and offering enhanced training and support
• Engaging families of children identified as needing additional support and offering parent/carer workshops to improve confidence and awareness of strategies and activities to support their child’s needs
• Working with the independent evaluation partner to monitor and evaluate impact of project
• Providing regular updates throughout the project to stakeholders

You will be a qualified Speech and Language Therapist with appropriate and relevant experience who has strong communication and organisation skills, and a flexible approach to ensure you deliver positive experiences to children and young people and their families.

You will also need to be confident using IT systems and be able to demonstrate working knowledge of Microsoft Office packages i.e. Outlook, Word, Excel.

To find out more information about our current vacancies and career opportunities, please contact Stuart Cook or Sally Oakley on 0300 2470055 (Phone lines open 9am - 4.30pm, Mon-Fri) or Stuart.Cook@hcrgcaregroup.com / Sally.Oakley@hcrgcaregroup.com

We change lives by transforming health and care. 

Established in 2006 we are one of the UK's leading independent providers of community health and care services, working with health and care commissioners and communities to transform services with a focus on experience, efficiency and improved outcomes. We deliver and transform adult and children community health services, primary care services including urgent care, sexual health, dermatology and MSK services as well as adult social care and wellbeing services. Across England, we support communities of many millions and directly help more than half a million people each year - guided by our simple values: we care, we think, we do.

We're committed to equal opportunities and welcome applications from a broad, diverse range of people who want to join our team. We’re a Disability Confident Committed company, so we work to provide facilities, work environment adjustments and technical solutions to be as inclusive of everyone.

While it doesn’t happen often, sometimes a role is very popular, and we’ll need to close it earlier than the date we’ve shown here. If you’re keen to join our team, we’d love to hear from you so please apply as soon as you can.

As you’d expect, safeguarding and protecting the children, young people and vulnerable adults that we work with is of the utmost importance so we have policies and procedures in place to promote safeguarding and safer working practices and everyone who joins the team is subject to a safer recruitment process, including the disclosure of criminal records and vetting checks.

Finally, we need to let you know that the company you’ll work for is part of HCRG Care Group Holdings Limited and by applying for this job we’ll need to process and hold information about you. If you would like to know a little more about how we use your information, please see our website's privacy policy.