Specialist Dietitian for Learning Disabilities

Job Description

We are delighted to announce an excellent opportunity for an enthusiastic and self-motivated Dietitian to work across North Yorkshire and York Community Adult Learning Disability teams. This busy and rewarding post will provide a rare opportunity to develop your knowledge and skills in the specialist field of Learning Disabilities and Mental Health. This is an exciting opportunity for the successful post holder to be instrumental in launching a new in- house dietetic service. Under the guidance of an LD Lead dietitian, you will be required to scope the community LD teams in North Yorkshire and York; develop and promote the dietetic service in this region; and provide dietetic input to the relevant clients.

This role has a strong emphasis on the management of obesity and associated long term health problems, oral nutrition support and health promotion. Our Trust is part of a regional weight management plan “A Weight Off Your Mind” which aims to address the weight management needs of people with mental illness and/or learning disabilities in our care. We recognise this is a health inequality issue and we want to bring the physical health, life expectancy and quality of life of our service users in line with those of the general population. The successful post holder will be enthusiastic about working with this client group; have a warm, compassionate manner and an appreciation of the challenges that individuals with an LD experience. This role requires excellent time management and organisational skills and the ability to work autonomously as well as part of a team.

TEWV provides specialist care across Teesside, Darlington, County Durham, North Yorkshire and the Vale of York. The successful post holder will be a valued part of a supportive, wider dietetic team which covers Adult Mental Health, Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services, Eating Disorders, Mental Health Services for Older People and Secure Inpatient Services. The dynamic dietetic team is supported by our Professional Head of Dietetics and highly skilled Lead dietitians. The TEWV Dietetic Team is the largest and most established specialist Mental Health and Learning Disability dietetic team in the UK and has strong links with the British Dietetic Association (BDA) and Mental Health Specialist Group of the BDA.

In addition to a robust clinical and managerial supervision structure, we have bi-monthly speciality dietetic team meetings to develop your skills and to provide peer support.  The post holder will have access to both formal and informal training  and will be supported to engage with the complex needs of this client group. There are regular opportunities to network with colleagues; to share best practice; and to celebrate our successes as a profession working within Mental Health and Learning Disabilities. Dietitians within TEWV work closely with other health care professionals and Multi-disciplinary team work is integral to dietetic care. Our Trust is committed to providing first class Continuous Professional Development (CPD). With this role, comes the opportunity to participate in policy development, audit, research activities, pathway development, staff and student training.  We offer placements for students on the MSc pre-registration course in Dietetics at Teesside University.  This is a very exciting new development for our local area. We are keen to support involvement in student training.

The successful candidate would need to be capable of independent travel. The majority of our work sites and hospitals have free parking. Staff Wellbeing is a Trust Priority and we support maintaining a positive work life balance. Please see our Trust Website to hear about all the benefits of working for TEWV. For further information, please contact LD Lead Dietitian, Angela Norris (angela.norris1@nhs.net).