Volunteer Occupational Therapist

Role Overview

As an Occupational Therapist in our rehabilitation team, your role will be to remotely provide age-appropriate and tailored occupational therapy assessment, advice and intervention to children with acute trauma and injuries and those with chronic conditions in Gaza. You will work as part of a multidisciplinary rehabilitation, health, and medical team, alongside staff based in Gaza and internationally across several countries.

Key Responsibilities

• Support the Rehabilitation team's mission by effectively engaging with the CNN Multi-Disciplinary Team to remotely provide optimal rehabilitation advice and intervention to injured and disabled children in Gaza.
•  Maintain consistent communication that enables effective patient care, operational efficiency, and timely decision-making.

• Assess patients' physical and functional conditions and equipment requirements to determine treatment needs.

• Plan and implement therapeutic interventions to help patients develop, recover, or maintain the skills and function necessary for daily living.

• Develop, monitor and evaluate individualised treatment plans to improve and/or maintain patients' ability to perform age-appropriate daily activities
• Provide advice on appropriate therapy to enhance function, independence, coordination, play and fine motor skills.
• Provide support to the rehabilitation clinicians and team, in and out of Gaza.
• To offer clear, focused, and accessible rehabilitation advice and interventions through written programmes and other relevant materials, all provided in the local language (translation support available).
• To use a child-centred, goal/task-focused and functional/play-based approach, alongside ‘SMART’ concepts, and to ensure all advice provided is realistic and achievable.
• Identify the necessary resources to ensure optimal patient rehabilitation.
• Collaborate with other healthcare professionals, including doctors, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, and caseworkers
• Utilise WhatsApp for real-time communication and SharePoint for documentation, as well as other relevant systems and programmes.

• Maintain accurate patient records and document progress.
• Stay up to date with best practices and advancements in Occupational Therapy.
• Contribute to rehabilitation MDT meetings.
• Contribute to the leadership and coordination of the Rehabilitation team, ensuring effective collaboration and communication among team members.
• To be proactive in volunteering time and expertise, and to proactively contribute to group discussion and communication, including volunteering for both patient-related and team tasks/responsibilities.
• Perform any other duties as required from time to time to support the rehabilitation program and CNN’s goals.

Skills and Experience Required

• Qualifications: A degree or equivalent in Occupational Therapy, and relevant regulatory registration.
• Preferred Experience: Experience working with children. A wide range of experience across paediatric clinical specialities and age groups. Experience with equipment provision, adaptations or wheelchairs. Experience working as part of a team, including multidisciplinary teams. Experience working with people from different cultures and languages, and experience of using app/web-based communications (such as WhatsApp) and virtual meeting and storage platforms (such as MS Teams and SharePoint)

Knowledge & Skills

• Key Knowledge Areas:  Paediatric conditions, child development, therapeutic approaches and child safeguarding. Knowledge of techniques and strategies to optimise/improve fine motor skills, independence and access.
  
• Key Clinical Skills: Family/child-centred assessment and goal setting, clinical reasoning, intervention techniques (including play-based therapy, developing daily living skills, and sensory integration), and equipment provision and adaptation.

• Key Personal Attributes: Excellent communication, empathy, teamworking, collaboration, creativity, problem-solving and flexibility.

Commitment

The role requires a minimum commitment of 5 hours per week

Application Process

To apply, please submit your CV and a brief cover letter outlining your relevant skills and experience.