Whittington Hospital NHS Trust
Community Children's Physiotherapist
The closing date is 17 November 2026

Job summary
This is a permanent, full time Band 7 post within the Haringey Community Children's Physiotherapy Team. The main base is at Tynemouth Road Health Centre in Tottenham. This is a great opportunity to join a friendly and dynamic MDT with a passion for improving outcomes for children and young people in the borough of Haringey. The caseload offers opportunities to develop skills across a wide range of paediatric presentations including neurodisabilities, post operative rehab, cancer, complex injuries and supporting young people through their transition to adult services.

Main duties of the job

• To provide advanced assessment and intervention to children and young people aged 5-19 with complex disabilities attending mainstream schools or requiring orthotics and serial casting.
• To manage the mainstream physiotherapy service, overseeing the governance and development of the service in partnership with the clinical lead.
• To provide services in schools, colleges, children's homes and from the main base at Tynemouth Road Health Centre.
• To safeguard children on the caseload and be proactive and engaged in safeguarding processes and procedures.
• To provide teaching, supervision and leadership to Band 6s, PTAs and students.
• To provide training, advice and guidance to the MDT and partnership agencies such as schools, colleges, SEND forums and patient advocacy groups.
• To identify and undertake service development in line with trust objectives.
• To evaluate service provision and service user satisfaction and implement changes as needed.
• To work across the physiotherapy service as required in order to provide cover when there are service gaps due to absence or vacancies.
• To contribute to EHCPs by identifying young peoples needs and providing advice to the local authority and reviewing these annually.
• To communicate effectively with service users, colleagues and partner agencies to ensure children and young people receive effective and well coordinated care.
• To ensure documentation is completed in line with trust and professional guidelines.

About us
Whittington Health serves a richly diverse population and works hard to ensure that all our services are fair and equally accessible to everyone. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the way we look after our staff. We aim to employ a workforce which is as representative as possible of this population, so we are open to the value of differences in age, disability, gender, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, race, sexual orientation, and religion or belief. The Trust believes that as a public sector organisation we have an obligation to have recruitment, training, promotion and other formal employment policies and procedures that are sensitive to these differences. We think that by doing so, we are better able to treat our patients as well as being a better place to work.

Details
Date posted: 11 November 2026
Pay scheme: Agenda for change
Band: Band 7
Salary: £55,524 to £62,652 a year pro rata
Contract: Permanent
Working pattern: Full-time
Reference number: 220-WHT-8411224
Job locations: Tynemouth Road Health Centre, 24 Tynemouth Road, London, N15 4RH, United Kingdom

Job description
Job responsibilities
Patient Care and Clinical Responsibilities:

• To have knowledge and skills in assessing and treating children and young people with wide ranging needs including those with neurological, neuromuscular, orthopaedic, rheumatological, traumatic, palliative and life limiting conditions who require input from the mainstream team.
• To undertake specialist Physiotherapy assessments of clients with highly complex needs e.g. multiple co-morbidities, acute and chronic conditions, combined physical and cognitive impairment or delay through subjective questioning, objective examination, standardised assessments and clinical observations.
• To apply clinical reasoning, critical thinking and reflection to effectively interpret and analyse complex examination results to accurately prioritise factors involved in the child's presenting condition.
• To develop therapy goals in collaboration with the child and family as well as other health professionals and agencies that will facilitate successful participation of the child in their day-to-day activities.
• To implement specialist treatment and management programmes using evidence-based practice and knowledge of treatments including manual physiotherapy techniques, patient education, equipment, orthotics, serial casting and exercise therapy.
• To undertake school and college visits as required.
• To undertake home visits as required.
• To provide serial casting for patients who meet criteria for this intervention along with other suitably trained staff.
• To run the orthotics clinic alongside the orthotist from different bases as required.
• To assess for, order and manage the use of specialist equipment including (but not limited to) standing frames, walking aids and sleep systems.
• To identify when to refer children and young people to other services and ensure onward referrals are made in a timely way with the appropriate information.
• To identify safeguarding issues and ensure appropriate action is taken to always ensure the welfare of the child in line with trust, departmental and local and national safeguarding guidelines.
• To work as a lone practitioner when required in the community in accordance with lone working policies.
• To undertake risk assessments and to advise others in determining appropriate management in relation to the child, their equipment and their environment.
• To contribute to the identification of children with special educational needs and to give advice for Education, Health and Social Care Plans (EHCPs) and provide an annual review of the physiotherapy advice in these plans as required.
• To be responsible for maintaining accurate and timely patient records in a variety of formats and modalities in line with departmental and professional standards of practice.

Communication:

• To have excellent spoken and written English so information is clear, simple to understand and delivered in line with the needs of the recipient of the information.
• To use advanced communication, implementing a range of verbal and non-verbal skills, with children/young people and their parents/carers to motivate, maximise rehabilitation potential and to ensure an understanding of their condition.

Planning and Organisational:

• To work with team lead to manage provision for referrals into the service, ensuring appropriate allocation according to clinical experience and abilities of staff.
• To flexibly manage responsibilities and priorities, both for your own caseload and for the team. To effectively manage changes in services and staffing, both planned and unpredictable, and to support other staff with caseload management.

Service Development:

• To support in the development of the specialist clinical area/team and develop objectives and projects for the team.
• To contribute to overall organisational thinking, planning, evaluation and continuous improvement through leadership and membership of various groups. To make recommendations for service development and oversee these with management oversight.
• To lead or play an active part in working groups which formulate and implement clinical and non-clinical policies, protocols, pathways and guidelines within the physiotherapy service, Trust and external agencies. This will include reviewing National Service Frameworks and Guidelines and ensuring that Trust and Physiotherapy protocols and pathways comply with National Guidelines.
• To contribute to business planning, service development and demand and capacity management by providing timely advice and information to the paediatric physiotherapy clinical lead on all matters relating to the speciality and the team.
• To ensure that users of the service have a voice in the planning, delivery and evaluation of services.

Human Resources Management:

• To ensure that all staff within the team have appropriate support for their clinical practice and continuing professional development through team meetings, supervision, appraisal, training and development.
• To be responsible for the development of specialist clinical, managerial and leadership skills of Band 6 physiotherapists and Band 4 assistants.
• To be responsible for the coordination and teaching of student physiotherapists to graduate level on topics such as physiotherapeutic skills and other core clinical subjects and to be responsible for their placement appraisal.
• To supervise and performance manage more junior qualified staff, assistants and students. This will include the use of formal appraisal documentation, workplace assessment and participation in the staff appraisal and personal development schemes, as both an appraisee and appraiser.

Person Specification
Registration (Essential): HCPC Registered
Qualifications (Essential): BSc or pre reg MSc in Physiotherapy
(Desirable): Post Graduate Qualifications in paediatrics e.g. Paediatric MSc Modules; Paediatric Gait Analysis and Orthotic Management Course; Training in paediatric Interventions such as NDT, DMI, Task specific Training; Training in Serial Casting
Experience (Essential): Experience working in community paediatrics at Band 6 or 7; Experience of working in collaboration with nurseries, schools and colleges; Experience of assessing children and young people with complex movement disorders using standardised assessments and recognised approaches; Experience of providing a range of paediatric interventions to manage function with consideration of coexisting pathologies, social and emotional well being and environmental influences; Experience of MDT and multiagency working; Experience of managing safeguarding; Knowledge of and experience of EHCPs
(Desirable): Experience of managing clinically complex young people who require advanced problem solving skills and reasoning; Experience of advocating for young people when their needs change in a setting e.g. returning to school following a significant change in mobility; Experience of escalating safeguarding concerns and managing conflicting perceptions of risk
Managing people (Essential): Experience of supervising other staff through the use of supervision, appraisal or student assessments; Experience of training and developing skills in others
(Desirable): Experience of managing sickness absence; Experience of managing underperformance in a student or staff member
Organisational skills (Essential): Demonstrates strategies for ensuring appointment capacity is fully utilised; Demonstrates strategies for managing non face to face clinical work; Demonstrates strategies for managing unexpected changes to resourcing e.g. managing a staff sickness absence; Demonstrates how they measure demand and capacity in relation to own workload; Demonstrates how they allocate time for CPD, service evaluation and improvement and developing other staff
(Desirable): Can describe using a range of resources to manage tasks e.g. job plans, packages of care, clinic plans, spreadsheets with tracking, IWS on RIO or similar; Demonstrates ability to delegate work appropriately; Knows when to escalate problems with resourcing
Communication (Essential): Excellent spoken and written language skills
(Desirable): Can communicate complex information in a simple and succinct manner both verbally and in written formats; Can identify barriers to communication and modify their approach to ensure good communication; Can manage conflict so problems are deescalated where possible and differences of opinion are approached with compassion and understanding of other's viewpoints; Can produce written information and reports which are adapted according to the needs of the reader; Can use alternative means of communicating such as Makaton
Knowledge of safeguarding (Essential): Has knowledge and experience of implementing safeguarding measures with children
(Desirable): Has supported others in escalating safeguarding concerns
Governance (Essential): Can describe what clinical governance means
(Desirable): Can demonstrate engagement in an audit or service development project and explain the outcomes; Has engaged with CQC preparation or inspections; Demonstrates an understanding of incident reporting and learning from incidents; Demonstrates an understanding of how staff training, development and well being contribute to good governance

Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Certificate of Sponsorship
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website.

UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see the NHS Careers website.

Employer details
Employer name: Whittington Hospital NHS Trust
Address: Tynemouth Road Health Centre, 24 Tynemouth Road, London, N15 4RH, United Kingdom
Employer's website: Apply via the company portal

Employer contact details
For questions about the job, contact: Clinical Lead, Stephanie Hynes, stephanie.hynes@nhs.net, 07776472197

Whittington Health serves a richly diverse population and is committed to equal opportunities. Whittington Hospital NHS Trust's privacy notice is available on the employer's website.