Our teams

Initial assessment team

Tower Hamlets’ diversity means that every day is different in the initial assessment team. We want you to think and act fast to support the most vulnerable people in our population, often in a crisis situation.  Our ability to work at this pace is underpinned by our exceptional skills in information gathering, risk assessment, critical analysis, multi-agency working and action planning.  

We are a friendly, multi-disciplinary team comprising social workers, occupational therapists and first response officers. As the first point of contact for all referrals, adult safeguarding alerts and enquiries related to adult social care we provide triage, adult safeguarding triage and duty functions for the locality teams.  

You will have the opportunity to use your range of social work skills across the different functions, with a caseload that requires as a minimum - duty home visits, safeguarding planning meetings and telephone triage. You will need to act proportionately to any given situation and ensure that your record-keeping is clear, concise and timely.

We employ strength-based practice to promote the safety, wellbeing and independence of the residents in our borough, and their carers, and you will need to make best use of preventative support such as reablement and assistive technology. Knowledge of the wide range of resources in and around Tower Hamlets is crucial when delivering our service, and you will be given the opportunity to gain and continuously develop that knowledge as part of the team.

If you have the skills we require and enjoy the challenges and achievements that only a service sitting at the heart of Adult Social Care can bring, then Initial Assessment is the team for you.

Tower Hamlets Connect is the point of contact for the initial assessment team. 

Tel: 0300 303 6070 (weekdays 9am-5pm)
Email: enquiry@towerhamletsconnect.org

Service manager email: Gillian.BeadlePhelps@towerhamlets.gov.uk

Brokerage service

This service is responsible for organising support arrangements for people with a range of urgent and longer-term needs. This includes finding and negotiating residential and nursing placements, securing urgent services and brokering support as part of a personal budget. This Service is also responsible for ensuring our Framework financials data is up to date with commissioned services.

Brokerage manager email: Nasim.Ahmed@towerhamlets.gov.uk 

Central safeguarding team

The central safeguarding team is a vibrant and growing team, currently expanding its role in operational safeguarding, safeguarding audit and quality improvement work. If you join us, you will gain varied experience in safeguarding enquiries, auditing and close working with commissioning colleagues supporting care providers. If you are an experienced best interest assessor, you will have the opportunity to do deprivation of liberty work.

We are an innovative team with a strong learning culture. One of our key areas of development is to work closely with Childrens Services, reflecting our commitment to understand and support vulnerable adults, their families and network. Consequently, we are seeking candidates to express interest in transition posts including transition best interest assessors and work within the Safeguarding Service.

Service manager email: Gillian.BeadlePhelps@towerhamlets.gov.uk

Community learning disability service

The community learning disability service is a team of health staff and social workers who assess and support people who live in Tower Hamlets with a learning disability, their families and carers We help people to be as independent as possible by offering advice, therapy and practical support. 

We help adults, (persons aged 18 or over) with a learning disabilities who live in Tower Hamlets to

  • live a healthy independent and safe life
  • have a place to live
  • understand money
  • have a job or support with training or employment
  • make decisions and choices
  • have positive relationships with friends and family
  • go out have fun and meet new people
  • get around and be respected in the community
  • prepare for a hospital stay or visit to your GP

We also support parents and carers of someone with a learning disability in their caring role and to have a better life.

Our team is made up of Health professionals, social workers, managers and administrators.

Service manager email: mary.marcus1@nhs.net  or mary.marcus@towerhamlets.gov.uk

Community mental health team

Tower Hamlets has four community mental health teams serving the needs of its adult population and one CMHT for older people which works with those over 65 years.

These are all multi-disciplinary teams, whose focus is on the care and support of people with severe and enduring mental health problems. Teams provide early assessment, comprehensive programmes of treatment and continuing care for clients.

Their objective is to assist people with their recovery, reduce relapse of illness and admission to hospital and to enable people to remain at home wherever possible, thus improving their quality of life.

Service manager email: linda.wiafe-ababio@towerhamlets.gov.uk

Hospital social work team

 Our hospital social work team, based in the Royal London Hospital grounds, is a very busy team.  Our team consist of an operational team manager, projects development manager, four senior practitioners, social workers, two first response officers, a reimbursement officer and two secretaries.  We provide an advice, assessment and support function to enable patients to get home safely after a period of stay in hospital.  We aim to get the majority of patients back to their own home and we promote schemes such as Home First and Discharge to Assess.

Our busiest and largest client group is from the care of the elderly wards; we also work with the Accident and Emergency department and pre-admission wards to advise and assess patients who present with social issues.  We support patients who have experienced a stroke, those needing post-operative support as well as those patients who are preparing to be discharged from the specialist and general wards in the hospital.

We refer the majority of our patients to our in-house Reablement service who provide an assessment function for those who have lost some independence following their hospital stay; our aim is to provide an opportunity for our residents to maintain or increase their level of independence.

In addition to working with our Reablement and Rehabilitation services, our social workers carry out Care Act 2014 assessments alongside other assessments such as Mental Capacity Act Assessments and Best Interest decisions.  In their statutory role, our social workers lead on work to safeguard adults who are at risk in the hospital or the community.  We also carry out joint assessments with the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG’s) Continuing Health Care staff to determine where health may be responsible for patients ongoing care needs.

We work closely with our health colleagues in multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs) to provide advice and coordinated client centred support to enable our patients to get home safely and in a timely fashion.  Our social workers commission urgent interim and longer term support where patients are eligible for this.  Where our clients are not able return to their home in the long term, we are able to discuss with patient’s suitable alternatives such as extra care sheltered schemes and placements within care homes.

Where patients present with complex issues such as those with no recourse to public funds (NRPF) and those who present as homeless, we enable support through information, advice and referral to other agencies and to universal services as well as carrying out Care Act and Human Rights assessments.

Our work also includes supporting the discharge of Tower Hamlets residents who are admitted to hospitals outside of the borough i.e. hospitals in Newham, Whipps Cross, Homerton, University College London as well as other acute hospitals.

Service Manager: Gillian Beadle Phelps
Email: Gillian.BeadlePhelps@towerhamlets.gov.uk

Localities (including P&R and CHT)

The locality teams deliver a generic social work and occupational therapy service to adults living in four borough localities. The teams deliver high quality support through comprehensive assessment, creative support planning and safeguarding work with people to understand their personal needs and build on their strengths and abilities where possible.

We promote independence and wellbeing, enabling people to achieve results that are important to them. There is a plan to increasingly align social care support within each locality to the local health networks and the voluntary sector to promote the achievement of improved outcomes for our service users and carers.  The aim is to fully integrate social care and health services by March 2019. 

Through the Adult Social Care Improvement Board we are working to improve the quality of the work undertaken and drive up performance standards. Recruiting to a number of key posts within the localities will help us to continue this work.

Service manager (West) email: Christine.Oates@towerhamlets.gov.uk
Tel: 020 7364 2209

Occupational therapy

Occupational therapy in Tower Hamlets is at the forefront of practice. We are a dynamic profession keen to enable our service users reach their maximum potential through timely assessment and provision of equipment, strategies and housing adaptations.

We are seeking enthusiastic, innovative occupational therapists to work in Tower Hamlets to deliver high standard of care to our service users and contribute to the integration agenda for the future.

Service manager email: Alex.Hadayah@towerhamlets.gov.uk

Reablement

The reablement service is occupational therapy led; providing independence and building support (up to six weeks) to optimise a person’s functioning in all aspects of daily living. The service takes a holistic, person-centred and strengths based approach; supporting individuals towards identified goals to improve their physical, social, mental and emotional wellbeing.

Our integrated team of 8 occupational therapists work alongside a specialist reablement nurse, independence planners and 50 enthusiastic and creative in - house reablement officers to support adults to maximise their potential and independence in their own homes. In line with CPD guidance from HCPC and COT staff are encouraged and supported to engage in a wide range of CPD activities including presenting at local and national conferences, formal and informal training opportunities, contributing to service development, peer learning and collaborative working with partner organisations.

We are looking for forward thinking, flexible and innovative therapists with an interest in reablement to join the integrated OT team. If you are an established clinician with excellent communication skills, advanced assessment knowledge and a sound clinical background then we would love to hear from you.

Service manager email: Paul.Swindells@towerhamlets.gov.uk