Assistant Practitioner Job Summary
We are expanding our team of Band 4 assistant practitioner roles. This is a great opportunity to join our highly motivated and innovative team based in Worcestershire. We have two new roles, one based in Bromsgrove and one in Kidderminster.
Are you looking for an opportunity to join the NHS and work within Childrens Speech and Language Therapy Services? Do you have experience supporting childrens speech, language and communication in an education setting?
We are looking for positive, enthusiastic practitioners with a commitment to collaborative working to join our team.
As a county wide speech and language therapy team, we offer a strong commitment to supporting personal and professional development with ongoing mentor support, supervision and CPD opportunities.
This is full time post, but we would consider applicants looking for part time.
Assistant Practitioner Main Duties
We are a well-established team offering a range of services for 0-19 year olds. This post will potentially involve working within our early years, mainstream schools and complex needs teams in Worcestershire, working alongside speech and language therapists and other speech and language therapy assistants to deliver universal, targeted and specialist level support. It will include:
Working with families, demonstrating practical ways to support children
Visits to schools to set up targeted and specialist interventions and share resources
Delivery of targeted and specialist interventions in settings and schools
Resource development
Working within our SLTA team to develop our service
We are looking for good team players, with good communication skills, who can be flexible and a supportive member of the team
SALT Assistant Practitioner Interview Questions
- Why did you choose speech and language therapy as a career?
- How do you stay current with evidence-based practice?
- How do you explain the role of a speech therapist to parents or team members who are unfamiliar with our scope of practice?
- What do you find most rewarding—and most challenging—about this profession?
Assessment & Diagnosis
- Walk me through how you would assess a 3-year-old who is late to talk with no words yet.
- How do you decide when to use standardized testing versus dynamic assessment or language sampling?
- How do you differentiate between a language difference (e.g., dialect or second-language influence) and a language disorder?
Treatment & Planning
- Describe your goal-writing process. Give me an example of a recent goal you wrote.
- How do you prioritize goals when a child has needs in articulation, expressive language, and social communication?
- Tell me about a therapy technique or approach you’re particularly passionate about and why.
- How do you adapt activities for children with sensory processing difficulties or very short attention spans?
- Give an example of how you’ve used AAC with a client (low-tech or high-tech).
Collaboration & Parent Coaching
- Describe a time you had to deliver difficult news to a parent. How did you handle it?
- How do you coach parents to carry over skills at home without overwhelming them?
- Tell me about a successful collaboration with a teacher, OT, or behavior therapist.
Challenging Scenarios
- You have a 5-year-old who refuses to participate in therapy sessions. What do you do?
- A parent insists on drilling flashcards for hours at home, but the child hates it and is regressing. How do you approach this?
- You disagree with a teacher’s or IEP team’s recommendation for a child. How do you handle it?
- Describe a time a client wasn’t making progress. What did you change and what was the outcome?
Caseload & Time Management
- How do you manage a high caseload while still providing quality, individualized therapy?
- How do you approach makeup sessions or frequent absences?
Pediatric-Specific Bonus Questions
- How do you build rapport with a selective mute child?
- What are your favorite ways to target /r/ or frontal lisps with elementary kids?
- How do you approach stuttering therapy with a preschooler versus a teenager?
Adult/medical (if relevant)
- How do you approach dysphagia management with a patient who has poor insight?
- Describe your experience with cognitive-communication therapy post-TBI or stroke.
To apply for this job please visit www.jobs.nhs.uk.