Adult social care
Occupational therapist jobs
Working out the equipment, adaptations and routines that let someone keep doing the things they need to do at home.
This page is the guide. The 116 area pages below carry the published figures for each local authority, and the adverts live on this site right now.
Search the adverts
Starts from occupational therapist jobs. You can widen it on the next page.
Live adverts
Occupational therapist jobs across the UK
Loading the current adverts.
Open adverts for Occupational therapist jobs across the UK, as a plain list
What the published data covers
Adding up the published local figures across the 116 areas with data gives 3,815 on the measure this role is indexed by, which is occupational therapist, filled posts. The middle area records 25. That is arithmetic over local releases, not a national statistic, and areas the publisher withholds are simply absent from it.
The largest are Nottinghamshire at 150, Essex at 125, Kent at 100, Norfolk at 100, Surrey at 100. Coverage runs across 9 regions of England.
For national context, Skills for Care reported an adult social care vacancy rate of 6.2%, about 96,000 posts, in the year to March 2026, down from 7% and the lowest since 2015-16, against a whole-economy rate of 2.2%. Source: Skills for Care, reported by Community Care and National Health Executive, 2026. The area figures above are from the ASC-WDS local release for 2024/25.
Occupational therapist: the full picture
Community practice
Council and community OT work is largely home based. You assess in the environment the person lives in, which is why the job is so different from a hospital post: you cannot standardise the setting, only your reasoning about it.
Recommendations range from a perching stool to a level access shower or a through-floor lift, and the larger ones run through the Disabled Facilities Grant process with its own eligibility tests and waiting times.
Registration and scope
HCPC registration is essential and renews on a two-year cycle with a continuing professional development audit. Many councils also employ OT assistants and trusted assessors, and part of the senior role is supervising that work.
Manual handling and specialist seating are the two areas where councils most often fund further training. Ask how equipment budgets are held, because that decides how quickly your recommendations turn into somebody's bathroom.
Before you apply
- HCPC registration as an occupational therapist
- A recognised occupational therapy degree
- Enhanced DBS check, paid for by the employer
Occupational therapist jobs: common questions
What qualifications do I need to work as a occupational therapist?
HCPC registration as an occupational therapist. A recognised occupational therapy degree. Enhanced DBS check, paid for by the employer.
Where does AceLeads Jobs have published figures for occupational therapist jobs?
In 116 English councils with adult social services responsibilities. Skills for Care collects the workforce data set for England only, so there is no equivalent local figure for Wales or Scotland. Adverts themselves are UK wide.
Do you decide who gets sent to an employer?
No. You read the adverts, you choose one, and you apply to that employer yourself. Nothing on this site forwards a person to a job they did not apply to, and no employer is given a list of people.
What does it cost to use?
Nothing, ever. It is always free for job seekers, and employers pay to advertise. There is no premium account, no paid profile and no fee of any kind on the job seeker side.