About the Borough
This special place in South West London between the capital and the country has been a Royal borough longer than anywhere else - it is where the first kings of England were crowned.
Today it is a vibrant and diverse borough, with a long history and strong cultural and community heritage. Kingston's riverside location, fantastic retail offer, historic market place and church, parks and gardens all make Kingston town centre the vibrant space it is, and each of our district town centres (Surbiton, New Malden, Tolworth and Chessington) have something unique to offer.
Situated in Zone 6, Kingston is among the best-connected town centres in London – with direct train links from Kingston and Surbiton stations to Clapham Junction and London Waterloo, as well as Wimbledon for an interchange with the London Underground and Tramlink.
Kingston’s people are innovative and entrepreneurial, and have a strong sense of community pride. The borough has been home to great industry and creativity for many years, reflected in assets such as the Rose Theatre, the International Youth Arts Festival and Kingston University, which boasts more new graduate business start-ups than any other.
We have seen tremendous generosity and compassion within our communities, particularly in response to COVID-19, which is a demonstration of Kingston’s key strength. The council offers a strong level of support to vulnerable groups and those who need additional support, which has also increased significantly as a result of the pandemic. Like most places, the average age of our population is rising as more people are living longer, so we are working closely with residents to help them maintain their independence and further improve the cost effectiveness of our service to meet the ongoing rise in demand.
Kingston is home to people from diverse and interesting cultures and backgrounds, which helps to create the rich sense of community shared across the borough. In particular, Kingston has a large Sri Lankan Tamil community and is home to more people from Korea than any other part of the UK.
About the Role
An exciting opportunity has arisen for an individual to join the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames’ Adult Social Care Division (ASC) as Equipment Lead.
This is a unique role that supports a system wide approach across Health and Social Care to ensure the appropriate and cost effective prescription of assistive equipment and minor adaptations and ensuring excellence in this practice area.
You will be responsible for enabling evidence-based decision making for equipment provision and integral to this role is joint working with acute hospital colleagues, as well as a range of community health and social care professionals prescribing community equipment.
The Equipment Lead will work in partnership with Adult Social Care commissioning leads, contract leads, nursing leads, OT leads, and providers to support the governance, training and familiarisation of equipment and ensure robust standards of practice within the prescription process.
Main duties of the role:
This role will support the overall budget and resource management objectives also involving some duties towards management of the budget.
This role will form part of a strong collaboration, to ensure high quality, evidence based provision of equipment for residents of Kingston.
The role will assist in monthly reconciliations on the invoicing so as to help towards keeping on top of the spend.
The post holder will also deliver equipment training and demos.
The post holder will be responsible for organising and chairing the equipment operational meeting.
The role will deal with escalations and give advice on general equipment prescriptions and keeping the equipment catalogue up to date.
The post holder will be required to issue/allocate PINs correctly, clearing duplication, checking recycled equipment and monitor collections.
The post holder will liaise regularly with the commissioning lead to work on discrepancies with equipment billing backing data and assist with queries.
The Equipment Lead role will report to the OT manager, the equipment contract/ commissioning lead and work as part of the ASC Commissioning & Operational team structure.
About You:
We are looking to appoint a dynamic, driven, innovative and forward thinking Equipment Lead to join our service; to work under the direct supervision of the Principal Occupational Therapist and the Commissioning Lead.
Outstanding communication, problem solving, and clinical reasoning skills are vital for the success of this role.
As an autonomous role, you will be expected to hold a small caseload of complex cases, have extensive knowledge of community equipment and its application in supporting people to remain in the community, maintain engagement in purposeful activities and occupational pursuits
The contract is full time (36 hours) and is a 12 month fixed-term role.
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About Disability Confident
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