Assistant Psychologist

Job overview

To support and enhance the professional psychological care of children, young people and their carers across all sectors of care; providing psychological interventions under the supervision and direction of a qualified HCPC registered psychologist, working according to the plan agreed with a qualified HCPC registered psychologist and within the overall framework of the Service’s policies and procedures. To assist in clinically related administration, conduct of audits, collection of statistics, development of audit and/or research projects, teaching and project work.

The post holder will join the CAMHS ND or LD team which is responsible for the delivery of specialist CAMHS service to children who have a high degree of need in the Borough of Enfield.

Main duties of the job

To support with co-facilitating manualised group interventions

To support with co-facilitating psycho-education sessions

To support specialist psychological assessments of children and young people

To support the development of formulations, including scoring of self-report measures, rating scales, outcome measures

To support with direct and indirect structured observations and semi structured interviews with clients, family members and others involved in the client’s care, when and where appropriate.

To offer support and guidance to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan, as appropriate.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

To assist in the coordination and running of therapeutic groups and workshops, where appropriate.

To attend and contribute to appropriate multi-disciplinary or multi-agency meetings, for example linking with schools.

To engage in multidisciplinary discussions around formulation and care planning involving the psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s problems, under the supervision of a qualified professionals, including psychologist, in the CAMHS clinics, and in community settings where agreed.

To support with waiting list oversight, team protocols, audit, service development, quality improvement projects and service user participation.

To assist clinicians with psychological assessments of children and young people with possible high degree of need, including self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with clients, family members and others involved in the client’s care.

To assist with specialist assessments (e.g. Neurodevelopmental Assessments)

Undertake 1:1 manualised interventions with close supervision from their clinical supervisor

To assist with psychometric assessments

Making and modifying clinical resources

Supporting with routine Welfare check calls, where the risk / complexity is deemed low and where there are no known historical or current safeguarding concerns. Their clinical supervisor must directly supervise these tasks and is clinically responsible for the outcome and for signing off the work.

Supporting with clinically relevant service-level projects.

Assisting with entering notes of the post-assessment MDT discussions directly into RiO to ensure robust and timely clinical governance around decisions made

Shadowing clinical staff during assessments and interventions.