New graduate Speech Pathologist

About the role:

We have a permanent position available for a new graduate Speech Pathologist to work alongside our existing team in our bright, modern, and well-resourced Nowra clinic.

This position can be full time or part time (min. 3 days per week) and can include work from home days if desired. On your work from home days, you will support telehealth clients and conduct mobile visits in your local area.

For the ideal team member, we offer additional flexible working arrangements such as choosing your own start and finish times, working more hours over fewer days, and/or school-term only employment.

We are looking for a Speech Pathologist who loves developing meaningful connections with children and young people to help them to become confident and capable communicators. Ideally, you are also passionate about supporting families living in regional and rural communities to access quality healthcare services.

In this role, you will provide discipline specific assessment and therapeutic support to children and adolescents aged 0 – 18 years living with a disability and/or developmental delay.

You will have the opportunity to develop (or consolidate!) your skills as a “generalist” SP, working across the speech, language, fluency, literacy, feeding and AAC areas of practice. However, you will also be encouraged to explore areas of special interest and to shape your caseload to match your passion/s.

We will support, inspire, and encourage you to provide person-centred practice, build families’ and educators’ capacities to support the client, and facilitate community inclusion. You will actively engage with other allied health professionals and community organisations to holistically care for clients, to provide consultancy support, and to facilitate referral networks.

About us:

South Coast Speech Pathology (SCSP) is an innovative, private practice based on the South Coast of NSW. We help paediatric clients living with communication, learning and swallowing difficulties across the Shoalhaven, Eurobodalla and Illawarra, with clinics located in Nowra and Moruya. Our team stays connected virtually via our online networking platform and fortnightly team meetings. We connect in-person every term at our quarterly Team Days.

Our mission is to ensure that children and their families living in regional and rural areas of Australia have the same access to quality allied health services as those who live in the city. SCSP is a private practice with a social conscience; we value relationships first, and people over profits. Our team members work with us, not for us.

SCSP provides services to NDIS and private clients, alongside our partnerships with local primary schools, childcare centres, and charities. We facilitate workshops and in-service training to educational and disability support teams. SCSP also takes university students on clinical placement who help us to run our pro-bono student-led clinics for children who face barriers to accessing services (incl. financial, social and geographical).

Our Director, Claire, is a current practising Speech Pathologist with over 10 years' experience working in private practice, not-for-profit and school settings. She has additional post-graduate qualifications in literacy-based learning disorders and psychology, and has completed training in language interventions, DIR/Floortime, challenging behaviours, paediatric feeding, and AAC. Claire is passionate about supporting new graduate and early career therapists to find joy and confidence in their professional role, and takes an individualised approach to supervision and mentoring.

Claire maintains a full clinical caseload which means that she can apply her current clinical experiences to all aspects of SCSP. Supervision, caseload management, service delivery, and administration are all approached from the perspective of a Speech Pathologist first and foremost.

Our team of 7 Speech Pathologists, 1 Early Childhood Teacher/Keyworker, and 2 Allied Health Assistants is warm, respectful and welcoming. Your wins will be celebrated and your challenges supported. We pride ourselves on our amazing team culture and positive work environment. We maintain this by ensuring that new team members are the right fit for SCSP (and vice versa!)

SCSP supports our therapy team to maintain a healthy work-life balance through the flexibility to schedule their own appointments, and the provision of administrative support, regular clinical supervision, and access to on-going professional development. We have a defined career development framework to support your professional growth (including skill development and job satisfaction) with opportunities for clinical expertise and portfolio coordination pathways.

All new team members, regardless of experience, will undergo a personalised induction program that matches your existing clinical skills, knowledge, and identified professional learning goals. We don't treat our clients with a “one size fits all" approach, so why would we treat our team members this way!

We set realistic caseload expectations so that our therapists can focus on what they do best – helping their clients to achieve their communication, learning and swallowing goals. Our productivity targets include face to face supports, travel, personalised resource development (e.g. AAC, social stories, visuals) and report writing, and are designed to match your level of experience:

• 40% average (approx. 15 hours/week) for our new graduate SPs
• 50% average (approx. 19 hours/week) for our early career SPs
• 55% average (approx. 21 hours/week) for our intermediate SPs
• 60% average (approx. 22.5 hours/week) for our senior SPs

About you:

• Recognised degree in Speech Pathology
• Have, or be willing to obtain, Membership of SPA, Medicare provider number, Professional indemnity insurance, Working with children check (NSW), First Aid Certificate.
• Driver license and reliable insured car to undertake mobile visits as needed.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• A desire to work with paediatric clients from a wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds.
• Independent, flexible, organised, and proactive.
• Strong problem-solving abilities.
• Patient, empathetic and share our passion for reducing barriers to accessing allied health services in regional and rural Australia.
• Community-minded, and motivated to live and work in regional Australia.
• Tech savvy and proficient in the Microsoft Office suite of applications.

What we offer:

• Competitive remuneration.
• Annual PD budget.
• Eligibility for rural grants to access up to $10 000 per year for professional development.
• Two hours of direct supervision per fortnight with the Director, plus in-person, online, and phone support from the Director and other team members as required.
• Fortnightly team meetings focused on developing your clinical skills, quality improvement projects, peer mentoring, and team bonding (including cake!)
• Internal professional development provided once per term at our Team Day.
• Flexibility with your working hours – early riser? Start at 8am and finish the day with a walk on the beach. Prefer a sleep in? Work from 10am!
• Plenty of resources, up-to-date assessments and a generous budget for new additions. We like to keep things fresh!
• Realistic and achievable productivity targets – we take a flexible and understanding approach to managing therapists’ caseloads.
• On-going support! Our provisions for new graduates are the same as our provisions for our senior therapists. We believe in life-long learning and we won’t withdraw support once you have hit a particular career milestone.
• MacBook (laptop), iPhone and iPad provided.
• Be part of an established business with genuine opportunities for career development, future leadership roles and quality improvement projects.

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