Cafe Occupational Therapy Assistant

We are looking to recruit a highly motivated individual who enjoys working in a cafe‑based environment.

We are offering a rewarding career experience as an Occupational Therapy Assistant. This role is primarily a Cafe‑Occupational Therapy assistant position within a forensic mental health setting at Langdon Hospital in our existing cafe services working with technical instructors and café / occupational therapy assistant in the day to day running of this highly valuable resource.

The post holder supports both catering operations and patient rehabilitation, combining practical café duties with therapeutic engagement. Your compassionate and collaborative approach will play a key part in people's recovery, assisting qualified to with the assessment and implementation of occupational therapy interventions through through access to the vocational opportunities that the café offers people at Langdon.

• Supporting the running of the café with food and hot drink preparation and purchasing, sales, cleaning, stock rotation, and ordering, as appropriate.
• Collaborating with the occupational therapy team to deliver vocation‑based occupational therapy interventions that support a range of skills development, feedback, electronic note recording, use of appropriate assessment tools and collaboration with people in the service.
• Compassionate delivery of care to people in the service and support to manage complex mental health conditions.
• Engagement with the occupational therapy and physical therapies team for supervision, reflective practice, training, and service delivery.

The post holder will be required to carry out assigned tasks from the Cafe Technical Instructor mainly including; receiving and preparing small lunch time orders and delivering them across site to staff members. The post holder may also be required to support with making buffets for onsite training events.

To undertake individual or group work with patients e.g. preparing food, while working without direct supervision.

The post holder is required to work closely with patients to support their development as well as encouraging them to be as independent as possible, while being mindful of risks associated with catering tasks.

To undertake some of the organisational tasks that facilitates the smooth running of a busy lunch time café.

To contribute to the development of the Occupational Therapy service at Langdon Hospital, as directed by the Occupational Therapy Leadership.

• Establish and maintain effective communication between clinical areas, the clinical teams, Clinical Team Leaders, Senior Nurse Managers, Hotel Services, and all other staff.
• Communicate with a range of people from patients to Directors of the Trust.
• Deal with direct enquiries from patients using tact and negotiating skills; barriers to understanding are regular due to nature of the Forensic mental health patients- demonstrate patience sensitivity and tolerance.
• To establish supportive and respectful relationships with people using mental health services.
• To sign‑post to various resources, opportunities and activities within the Trust and in communities to promote choice and informed decision making.
• To support service users to identify and overcome fears within a relationship of empathy and trust.
• To support the team in promoting a recovery orientated environment by identifying recovery‑focused activities and imparting information and education as required.

• Assisting in the teaching of catering skills and delivery of food.
• Feedback to supervisor on the wellbeing of patients whilst undertaking catering duties.

• Plan own day to day work activities including lunch orders, ensuring they are delivered on time.
• Liaise with colleagues in relation to the delivery of food and the preparation of food orders.
• To provide organisational and prioritising skills to support the management and delivery of up to 40 lunch time orders per day.
• To attend meetings and any other formal/informal communication events linked to the work of…