Clinical Nurse Specialist - CAMHS Eating Disorders

Job overview

Welcome to CNWL Community Eating Disorders Service for Children and Young People.

Eating Disorders is a specialism within children’s mental health, therefore finding candidates with rich experience is really important. It would be fantastic to have staff ‘ready-to-go', but we appreciate the need to grow and develop people in this field and improve young people’s access to care.

As such we have training in Family Based Treatment (FBT) and Family therapy (FT-AN) for Eating Disorders. The successful candidate will be offered this training as the role requires deliver of these treatments

Main duties of the job

What we do?

The recommended evidence-based intervention indicated for this patient group is Family-Based Treatment FBT, FT-AN, CBT-E, MANTRA for eating disorders. All clinicians in the team are trained to deliver some or all of these interventions. As part of this role, you are expected to deliver FBT or FT-AN, which training will be provided for.

We offer systemic therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy , for those who an individual therapy approach is more appropriate. In addition, we also offer a parent group to support those caring for a young person with an eating disorder. We link with CNWL CAMHS for joint work (for co-morbidities) and other agencies as necessary.

The team consists of nursing, occupational therapists, psychologist, assistant psychologists, systemic Family therapist, a dietician, paediatrician and psychiatry.  We are expanding into the use of systemic practitioners and developing nurses to the Advanced Clinical Practitioner level.  The leads of the service are a Clinical Team Lead, Consultant Psychiatrist, and is linked to the ED service which is overseen by Head of ED and a Clinical Director for ED. More recent developments are improved transition work, development of an Intensive Community Treatment Team and new projects with our neighbours at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

We look forward to welcoming you to our team and helping you to grow. If you have any questions about us and the role please get in touch.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Typical tasks for this role are:

You will undertake in the processing of new referrals to the service by being apart of the duty rota. This involves telephone enquiries, screening and managing new referrals. You will assess, plan and provide clinical interventions relevant to the patient group such as: FBT, FT-AN, supportive clinical management,  and other evidenced based models of care, as well as facilitate physical health monitoring clinics. You will liaise with referrers and offer training, advice and consultation to medical wards, primary and secondary care services and other external agencies as required.

• Working with young people assessing, planning, implementing and evaluating their care.
• Delivering FBT and FT-AN treatments to families
• To develop and maintain therapeutic relationships with young people and their families/carers.
• To liaise with the young person’s professional network, keeping them informed of developments and promoting multi agency collaboration. Liaison with Children’s Specialist Services, Educational services, independent sector mental health providers, counsellors and any other professional related to the child.
• To involve the young person, and where appropriate, their families/carers in delivering programmes of treatment for eating disorders.
• To attend and actively participate in clinical meetings as part of the multidisciplinary team such as referrals meetings, case conferences, care reviews, and network.
• To receive supervision of clinical work.
• To maintain clinical records in accordance with the NMC standards for record keeping and adhere to the NMC Code of Conduct and are in accordance with CNWL Trust Policies and Procedures.
• To participate in the recruitment, induction, supervision, appraisal and development of staff, and to conduct formal and informal supervision of junior clinicians.
• Monitoring of physical and mental health issues related to patients with eating disorders.
• To undertake Venepuncture and ECG procedures or willingness to be trained in order to practice these.
• Knowledge of safeguarding issues and management processes.

Another key part of this role is being a FREED Champion. FREED is First Episode Rapid Early Intervention for Eating Disorders. It is a service model and care package for 16-25-year-olds who have had an eating disorder for three years or less.

FREED helps young people to access specialised evidence-based treatment quickly. The goal is for treatment to start within 4 weeks of referral to an eating disorder service.

FREED operates as a ‘service within a service’. It complements, rather than replaces, existing eating disorder services and treatments.

This includes the following duties:

• Involvement in the FREED mini team.
• Assessing 16-25-year olds on the FREED pathway.
• Attend all age assessment meetings.
• Completing 48-hour FREED engagement calls.
• Attend the weekly FREED huddle.
• Collect data of FREED CYP referrals.