Lincolnshire rehab unit seeks Band 5 speech therapist for adults with acquired brain injury
Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust is recruiting a Speech and Language Therapist for its inpatient neurorehabilitation service at Ashby rehabilitation ward in Lincoln. The post is aimed at clinicians interested in adult communication disorders, swallowing support, and the structured rehabilitation that follows acquired or traumatic brain injury. It is a permanent, part-time Band 5 role, with funding for up to 33 hours a week and flexibility to be discussed at interview.
This is a ward-based post built around complex neurological caseloads rather than routine outpatient therapy. Ashby is an 18-bed unit admitting patients aged 16 years and older, with most of the caseload made up of people recovering from brain injury. Communication impairment on such a ward is rarely limited to one domain; aphasia, motor speech disorders, and cognitive-communication problems often coexist, and each can alter how a patient understands instructions, expresses needs, participates in therapy, and engages with family members. In practical terms, speech and language therapy becomes part of the neurological recovery process itself, not an accessory service layered on afterward.
The trust is looking for a proactive therapist who can work closely with patients, families, and the wider multidisciplinary team. That requirement fits the reality of neurorehabilitation, where communication support often has to be built around fluctuating attention, fatigue, impaired self-awareness, and inconsistent performance across the day. A patient may manage one-to-one conversation in the morning and struggle to follow a simple ward discussion by afternoon. Those swings demand careful assessment, clear documentation, and flexible intervention planning.
Communication support after brain injury depends on more than language testing
The caseload described for this post includes higher-level cognitive-linguistic and social communication difficulties after brain injury. Those deficits can be subtle and easily missed if assessment stops at naming tasks or simple comprehension checks. In a ward environment, impaired inference, reduced pragmatics, poor topic maintenance, and slowed processing can be more disabling than obvious aphasia, particularly when patients are trying to participate in discharge planning or understand risk information. Effective intervention therefore relies on direct observation, patient-centered strategies, and close coordination with nursing, therapy, and medical staff.
The role also includes the use of augmentative and alternative communication where appropriate. For some patients, AAC is not a fallback; it is the only way to preserve autonomy while language recovery is still evolving. A communication board, gesture system, written cue, or low-tech device can reduce frustration, improve safety, and prevent the kind of repeated misunderstandings that erode confidence on the ward. In neurorehabilitation, communication access often determines whether a patient can meaningfully take part in their own care.
One sentence in the advert stands out clearly: independent dysphagia competence will not be achievable in this post because of the complexity of the Ashby caseload.
Instead, the successful applicant will be supported toward Level B competencies within the RCSLT Dysphagia Competency Framework where relevant to the role. That matters because swallowing concerns are common in neurological rehabilitation, yet the scope of practice has to match both patient complexity and supervision structure. For a Band 5 therapist, this creates a defined learning pathway rather than an unrealistic expectation of full autonomy in a highly specialised setting. The post is therefore as much about supervised development as it is about service delivery.
Weekend cover and flexible working shape the post as a service role
Regular weekend and Bank Holiday work is part of the rota. In inpatient rehabilitation, that arrangement is often necessary because communication and swallowing needs do not pause for weekdays, and continuity of care can be lost if assessment, strategy reinforcement, or family support is delayed. The advert also emphasises flexible working, including part-time hours, compressed hours, job shares, and hybrid models where service needs can still be met. For a therapy service trying to recruit and retain staff, that kind of flexibility is not cosmetic. It directly affects workforce stability, morale, and the ability to keep a specialist ward covered by clinicians who understand the local pathway.
Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust also points to its position in the top 25 per cent of community trusts for overall staff engagement in the 2021 NHS National Staff Survey. While that survey finding is not a clinical outcome, it does give context to the workplace culture being offered to applicants. In rehabilitation services, team cohesion has a real impact on patient flow, therapy consistency, and the quality of multidisciplinary handover. A small, supportive SLT team can make a major difference when caseload complexity is high and staffing continuity matters.
The trust says it is committed to equality of opportunity and encourages applications from candidates who are underrepresented in its workforce. It also describes itself as an ambassador of a learning culture, with an apprenticeship pathway designed to support career progression. For early-career therapists and final-year students awaiting registration, that combination of formal support and structured supervision may be especially relevant. The advert explicitly welcomes applications from final-year SLT students and from candidates with HCPC registration pending, widening the pool beyond fully established practitioners.
Recruitment priorities reflect the realities of inpatient neurorehabilitation
The qualification profile for this post is narrow in the right way. Neurorehabilitation needs clinicians who can adapt written and spoken communication, explain complex information to distressed families, and respond to changing cognitive status without losing therapeutic structure. Excellent interpersonal skills are not a soft add-on here; they are central to safe practice. So is the ability to tailor communication for people with expressive aphasia, receptive aphasia, motor speech impairment, or combined deficits after brain injury.
With the closing date set for 22 November 2026, the advert presents a defined opportunity for therapists seeking experience in adult neurological rehabilitation within an NHS inpatient setting. The post is based at Lincoln County Hospital, and enquiries are directed to the trust’s operational lead, Jennifer Burnett. For applicants, the central clinical question is straightforward: can they contribute to a ward where communication support, swallowing awareness, and multidisciplinary rehabilitation have to function as one coordinated service? The advert makes clear that the answer will depend on adaptability, supervised development, and the ability to work with one of the most complex caseloads in community-based neurorehabilitation.