Heidi Hanslip

Specialising in: older age mental health (memory, anxiety, depression), rehabilitation, care needs assessments, home adaptation and aids advice.

Locations covered: Bournemouth, Christchurch, Poole and nearby areas.

Heidi is a passionate and empathetic Occupational Therapist who thrives on providing a holistic approach to her patients to help them live their best life by enabling them to do the activities that are most important to them. There are a number of ways in which Heidi is able to do this:

• Advising on physical solutions such as aids, equipment, or adaptations to the home that make tasks easier to complete
• Adjusting techniques to make tasks more manageable
• Anxiety management
• Supporting those with a fear of falling
• Low mood
• Finding appropriate opportunities for social contact and community engagement
• Increasing confidence
• Physical and functional rehabilitation (similar/crossing with physiotherapy)

Heidi has a wealth of experience in working with the elderly and has found a particular passion for supporting those older people who are suffering with anxiety, low mood and memory issues that affect their day-to-day life.

Heidi works with Medella 2 days a week. The rest of the time, she works for the NHS where she enjoys seeing patients both within the acute setting of the hospital as well as those within their own homes, offering education and advice around well-being and providing a tool kit that can be utilised by the patients in order for them to be able to live a good, positive quality of life. Heidi’s work within the NHS means she is kept up to date with all the services available to our older people in the Dorset and Hampshire areas and can easily link with and/or refer to other professionals including GP’s, memory clinics and social services if appropriate.

Heidi has worked in multi-disciplinary therapy teams since 2006, building skills, experience, and passion through working alongside many wonderful collegues and seeing to the needs of thousands of patients. Beginning her career as an assistant alongside raising a young family, she realised that OT was the profession for her so graduated from Bournemouth University in 2018 once her children were older. After Heidi qualified, she initially worked in a rehabilitation ward for older persons at Bournemouth Hospital. Here she ran exercise classes, activity groups and provided mobility work to patients as well as supporting those lacking in confidence and experiencing low mood and anxiety through use of music, memory stimulation and massage for example whilst they awaited their return home. She continually promoted independence in order for patients to return home & have a fulfilled quality of life. In 2020 Heidi moved to a position within a mental health team providing a ‘Recovery Through Self Discovery’ programme which a Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) approach was adopted. Within this setting she specialised in anxiety management and facilitated groups that were designed how to understand, manage & challenge anxiety to provide individuals with the tools to be able to function day to day when facing the difficulties of living with an anxious brain. Heidi then returned to Bournemouth Hospital as a Senior Therapist working both within the hospital and also in the community where she is able to use all her learnt skills within individuals own homes.

Heidi Hanslip HCPC number: OT78328

Heidi Hanslip RCOT member: BT0254144