School Age Speech and Language Clinical Care Group Manager
The post holder will provide strategic and operational leadership for School Age Speech and Language Therapists across mainstream schools, special education, and specialist resource bases, ensuring high-quality outcomes for children and young people.
They will manage teams across multiple sites and commissioned contracts, embedding integrated service delivery models agreed with commissioners. Key responsibilities include monitoring performance, activity, and outcomes, and leading service improvement initiatives based on enablement and co-production principles. Working with Clinical Leads, schools, agencies, CYP, and parent/carer organisations, they will embed a culture of continuous quality improvement, ensuring services remain responsive, sustainable, and value for money.
The role also involves leading transformation projects aligned with local priorities, developing integrated care pathways across therapy and education partners, and strengthening collaboration with the wider Children’s Directorate, Local Authority, voluntary sector, and health partners. They will shape SLT services to meet population needs and commissioning priorities, embedding safeguarding and welfare promotion throughout service delivery, and may represent the service in high-level meetings with commissioners and senior trust representatives.
Main duties of the job
This role involves providing strong clinical and operational leadership to ensure safe, effective, and child-centred services within Speech and Language Therapy and integrated care teams. Responsibilities include maintaining governance and quality standards, safeguarding children and young people, and ensuring services are culturally sensitive, dignified, and responsive to feedback. The post holder leads staff recruitment, supervision, wellbeing initiatives and professional development, while fostering collaboration, succession planning and compliance with regulatory frameworks. They drive service development and innovation, manage budgets and resources to meet performance targets, and oversee workforce planning, disciplinary processes and integrated team working. Additionally, they ensure accurate information management, risk monitoring and compliance with audits, while promoting research-based practice and continuous improvement. Overall, the role balances clinical excellence, staff leadership, financial accountability, and strategic service development to deliver high-quality outcomes for children, young people and families.
About us
North Mid is part of North Central London integrated care system – consisting of the NHS and Local authority organisations in Camden, Islington, Barnet, Enfield and Haringey. As with other ICSS, we are working increasingly closely with partners and indeed many of our financial and performance objectives are measured at this system level. Whilst all organisations remain as standalone, statutory bodies we have an ICSS infrastructure for making shared decisions and agreeing shared approaches.
We are proud of our staff and want to ensure their training allows them to provide excellent clinical care. We are also a training unit for medical students from UCL and St George’s University Grenada, and for nursing and midwifery students from Middlesex and City Universities.
Job responsibilities
Clinical Responsibilities
- Ensure services meet governance, safety and quality standards.
- Collaborate with Clinical Leads to deliver high-quality evidence-based care.
- Provide supervision, appraisal and support for Speech and Language Therapists.
- Champion compliance with HCPC, CQC and professional guidelines.
- Maintain child- and young person-centred, research-based practice.
Responsibility for Children & Young People
- Manage day-to-day service delivery for CYP and families.
- Safeguard welfare, dignity, and cultural sensitivity.
- Monitor satisfaction surveys, feedback and implement improvements.
- Ensure safe use of equipment and adherence to health and safety policies.
Responsibility for Staff
- Lead and manage SLT teams, fostering inclusion and wellbeing.
- Oversee recruitment, retention and career development.
- Provide mentorship, supervision and guidance on complex cases.
- Promote staff wellbeing, flexible working and team-building.
- Ensure compliance with standards, succession planning and strategic resource allocation.
Policy & Service Development
- Work with Care Group leads to implement service strategies.
- Identify opportunities for service innovation and integration.
- Ensure responsiveness to complaints and feedback.
- Keep services aligned with national/local NHS policies and commissioning requirements.
Financial & Physical Resources
- Achieve performance, activity and financial targets.
- Manage budgets, waiting times, KPIs and resource deployment.
- Monitor financial performance, prepare business cases and support cost improvement programmes.
Leading & Managing
- Provide operational leadership for Integrated Health Care Teams.
- Ensure safe, compassionate and efficient services within budget.
- Oversee workforce planning, recruitment, retention and disciplinary processes.
- Promote trans-disciplinary working and compliance with training requirements.
Information Resources
- Monitor risks, patient safety and maintain risk registers.
- Ensure accurate records for performance, audit and FOI requests.
- Share learning from audits and quality metrics across care groups.
Research & Development
- Coordinate and monitor clinical audits and mandatory data collection.
- Promote research-based practice and attend professional development courses.
Please review the Job Description for more information.
Person Specification
EDUCATION AND QUALIFICATIONS
- RCSLT Recognised Diploma/Degree in SLT
- HCPC Registered.
- Evidence of up-to-date CPD portfolio
- A qualification at Master’s Degree level or equivalent in a relevant subject relating to this client group
EXPERIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE
- Experience of working with out-patients and community MDT setting
- Experience in clinical supervision
- Experience in working with diverse cultures and complex clinical problems
SKILLS AND ABILITIES
- Fluent in written and spoken English including the ability to generate letters and reports of a high calibre.
- Highly advanced communication skills including the ability to participate in high level meetings regarding either patient care or clinical strategy.
- Highly advanced clinical reasoning, analytical and problem solving skills especially concerning patients with neurological conditions and adult acquired pathology.
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.
£61,631 to £68,623 a yearPro-rata including Outer HCAs per annum
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