Join the Allied Health Professions

Physiotherapists help people with a range of problems affecting movement - using exercise, massage and various other techniques.
Anyone with physical problems caused by illness, injury, disability or aging might get help from a physiotherapist.
Physiotherapists work across all six community learning disability teams in Sussex. We work very much as part of a collaborative team with a variety of other health professionals. Our role is wide and varied from falls prevention and rehabilitation to the management of long-term physical disability and health promotion.
As part of this team, you could be based in a hospital, or work out in the community, in a health centre or visiting service users’ homes.
 

When people with learning disabilities need the extra support of a hospital stay to help with their mental and emotional health and wellbeing, they may also need the skills of a physiotherapist to help support their mobility. 
A physiotherapist will work with people whilst they stay as an inpatient to keep them steady, prevent falls and improve and increase their physical functioning and mobility.

We are currently developing a new physiotherapy service providing specialist provision around mobility and falls prevention, postural care, physical activity and health promotion in to our acute inpatient units.

An occupational therapist helps people continue their work, studies, leisure activities and everyday tasks during illnesses, injuries, disabilities or ageing.

They can help people learn to use assistive technology, help adapt their home or workplace to meet their needs, and work with people to find new ways to approach tasks.

Occupational therapists work as part of a team with a variety of other health professionals. They can also supervise junior staff or occupational therapy support workers.

Occupational therapists can help all kinds of people, from children to older people, with mental health problems, learning disabilities, and a range of other conditions. You could work with individuals and their families, and with groups of people.

They support people with a range of interventions to enable them to return to or optimise participation in all the things that people do - for example, caring for themselves and others, working, learning, playing and interacting with others. Being deprived of or having limited access to any or all of these can affect physical and psychological health, so occupational therapists have an important contribution to make to supporting people’s wellbeing and rehabilitation.

Speech and language therapists help people of all ages in Sussex Partnership. Speech and language therapists support people referred with speech, language and communication problems and people with eating, drinking and swallowing difficulties. 

We have more than 30 speech and language therapists at Sussex Partnership working in our learning disability, adult mental health, dementia, forensic, gender and CAMHS services.
 

A dietitian helps people make informed and practical choices about food, based on the science of nutrition. As well as diagnosing and treating dietary and nutritional problems, dietitians teach people to understand food, promote good health and prevent disease.

Dieticians at Sussex Partnership can help people with a range of issues such as those wanting to lose or gain weight, or those with eating disorders, digestive problems or allergies.

Dieticians are the only qualified health professionals who assess, diagnose and treat diet and nutritional problems at an individual and wider public health level.

Dieticians use the most up–to-date public health and scientific research on food, health and disease, which they translate into practical guidance to enable people to make appropriate lifestyle and food choices. Dietitians are the only nutrition professionals to be regulated by law, and are governed by an ethical code to ensure that they always work to the highest standard.
 

Art therapists use art as a form of psychotherapy to encourage clients to explore a variety of issues including emotional, behavioural or mental health problems, learning or physical disabilities, life-limiting conditions, neurological conditions or physical illnesses.

People of all ages from children to the elderly, regardless of artistic experience, can use art therapy in this way as an aid to support them with their particular concern.  It is not a diagnostic tool but rather a mode of communication and expression.
 

Drama therapists are both clinicians and artists that draw on their knowledge of theatre/drama and therapy to use performance arts as a medium for psychological therapy.  Clients are able to explore a wide variety of different issues and needs from autism and dementia to physical/sexual abuse and mental illness in an indirect way leading to psychological, emotional and social changes.

Music therapists engage people in live musical interaction to promote an individual’s emotional wellbeing and improve their communication skills.  The people they work with do not need to have any previous experience of playing a musical instrument (or even singing) as this established psychological clinical intervention utilises their unique connection to music and the relationship established with their therapist to help:

• Develop and facilitate communication skills
• Improve self-confidence and independence
• Enhance self-awareness and awareness of others, and
• Improve concentration and attention skills.