About The Role
Occupational Therapist - Early Help & Wellbeing
Permanent, Full Time
£37,185 to £50,081 per annum
Location: South Essex (Basildon & surrounding areas)
Working Style: Community-based worker
The Team
The Early Help & Wellbeing Team is a welcoming, compassionate and innovative team to work in, offering preventative and early help to connect people who are experiencing difficulties with their mental wellbeing and/or neurodivergent conditions to opportunities in their own communities and provide support that enables them to achieve personal ambitions, goals and aspirations.
Mental health social care is transforming into a new operational delivery model improving our early intervention and prevention offer to Essex residents with a focus on people currently not receiving services or falling through existing gaps. The offer is to ensure care act compliance across the system offering information advice and guidance and providing support to improve wellbeing outcomes. Within this service there will be a mixture of the team carrying out direct work alongside people and completing care act assessments relevant to wellbeing outcomes and the completion of care act reviews.
The Role
We’re an adult social care service committed to empowering the people of Essex to have greater choice and control over how they live their lives. We think everyone should have the chance to live a fulfilling life with people they love and care about, doing things that matter to them and living in a place they can call home.
Our Occupational Therapists work in partnership with people, their families, and carers; listening, understanding, and co-creating person-centred and strengths-based solutions that empower individuals to live life on their terms. We recognise that everyone’s journey is different and with the right support, each one can be meaningful and fulfilling. We’re determined that with the right support, everyone can maintain or achieve some independence and we’re proud to be working to make these ambitions a reality.
Being an Occupational Therapist at Essex County Council is as diverse as it is rewarding. Working across all areas of adult social care within the framework of our statutory Care Act requirements, you’ll have the opportunity to practice creatively, carrying out holistic assessments, delivering meaningful interventions, and ensuring safeguarding is at the heart of everything you do.
About You
If you share our vision, enjoy meeting people and hearing their stories you might be interested to find out more about what we do.
If you’re also an Occupational Therapist registered with HCPC with that winning combination of creative thought, reliability and practical ability to get things done, we’d really love to hear from you!
You’ll have a broad understanding of our statutory responsibilities and a commitment to meeting these in a person-centred way. You will also need a willingness and passion to learn and develop your professional practice, particularly in supporting neurodiverse people or people with mental wellbeing difficulties.
You’ll be able to demonstrate evidence-based practice, with an awareness of financial considerations and risk.
You will have strong communication skills, with the ability to develop strong relationships with partner agencies and the local community to provide a supportive framework.
This role involves travelling around Essex and beyond. A driving licence and car - or the ability to meet the mobility requirements of the role through other means - is essential.
Why Join Us?
In June 2025, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) rated our Adult Social Care services as “Good” with a score of 73%
“The local authority had a good structure and processes in place to enable people to be supported successfully, and support people to remain independent and live healthy lives. The workforce was passionate about supporting people to achieve these outcomes and the local authority had good knowledge of their area, the people living there and the demographics.”
You can read the full report on the CQC website here.
Our teams are busy, but they’re also warm, welcoming, friendly and supportive. Our fantastic team managers are here to help you manage your workload and develop your practice.
We take your career just as seriously as you do, and we have a continuing professional development offer that’s second to none.
We welcome diversity because it makes us grow and we’re determined to become a fully inclusive and an anti-racist organisation.
What We Offer
We’ll support you to be your best and will offer:
- Ongoing opportunities for continuing professional development
- Flexible working options
- Employee wellbeing and counselling
- Lease Car scheme
- Life assurance of three times annual salary
- Local Government Pension Scheme. View Key Facts and FAQ’s about the LGPS.
- Volunteering leave
- 27 days annual leave (plus bank holidays), rising with service
- Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) - access to free and confidential information, support, and guidance from a team of highly qualified professionals.
- Employee Networks – communities to support you, connect you and help influence change at ECC
- Payment of your professional registration fees!
Whatever you want to achieve in your career, you can do it here.
Apply now.
For more information, please contact
[email protected]In February 2025, Greater Essex was accepted onto the Government’s devolution priority programme, which will see local authorities in Essex work towards establishing a Mayoral Combined County Authority by May 2026. You can read more about devolution and local government reorganisation (LGR)) on our careers site
Essex County Council is proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. We’re committed to interview all disabled applicants who choose to apply under our Job Interview Scheme if they meet the minimum requirements of the job. Please speak to our Recruiters if you require any reasonable adjustments during the process. We’re also committed to interview all veterans and care leavers, who meet the minimum requirements of the role for which they are applying.
Once you’ve secured your role within Essex County Council you will receive many great employee benefits, including support for unpaid carers and flexible working arrangements to accommodate their needs.
At Essex County Council, we value integrity and ethical behaviour. We kindly ask that you embrace our code of conduct and the Nolan principles, including throughout the recruitment process. Your commitment to these standards helps us maintain a positive and respectful workplace for everyone.
As part of employment with Essex County Council (ECC) should your role require a DBS check you will be required to register with the DBS update service. The DBS update service ensures all registered DBS certificates are kept up to date and allows authorised parties to view the status of your certificate. This is an annual subscription, and you will be responsible for ensuring this is maintained. For further information on the DBS update service please go to https://www.gov.uk/dbs-update-service.
Essex County Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults, and expects all employees and volunteers to share this commitment.
If you would like to be kept up to date on other relevant opportunities, blogs, news, events and industry related news at Essex County Council, please join The Essex Talent Community
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