Clinical Psychologist - Child & Family Mental Health

Job overview

Are you a motivated and enthusiastic newly qualified or early-career Clinical Psychologist looking to develop their skills within a supportive and progressive service. The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) in (West Dorset) Weymouth & Portlandt is looking to recruit you.

In Dorset, we are transforming our Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services into a Family Mental Health model that embraces and adopts the THRIVE framework. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to service development and innovation, supporting a whole-family approach grounded in compassion, collaboration and shared decision-making.

You will provide a specialist clinical psychology service to children, young people and their families, delivering high-quality psychological assessment, formulation and evidence-based interventions for complex mental health presentations. Working autonomously within professional guidelines, you will manage a defined caseload and contribute to multidisciplinary and multi-agency care planning.

You will use a range of psychological models and assessment tools to inform intervention, undertake risk assessments and contribute to effective risk management. The role includes providing specialist consultation and advice to colleagues and partner agencies, contributing to service development, audit, outcome evaluation, and maintaining accurate clinical records. Regular supervision, continuing professional development and reflective practice are integral to the role.

Main duties of the job

As part of Dorset HealthCare, you will contribute to a compassionate, collaborative and learning-focused service, working closely with health, education, social care and voluntary sector partners to support integrated care pathways. We offer regular high-quality supervision, continuing professional development, and opportunities to be involved in service development, audit and research.

You will provide a specialist psychological service to children and young people with a range of mental health difficulties, working directly with service users and their families, and indirectly through consultation and advice to colleagues within the multidisciplinary team and partner agencies.

You will deliver high-quality psychological assessment, formulation and evidence-based interventions, working autonomously within professional guidelines and service policies. The role requires excellent communication skills and the ability to work with complex, sensitive and emotive presentations.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

For the main duties and responsibilities for this role please read the attached job description and person specification. When completing your application please ensure your supporting statement reflects the criteria set out in these documents by showing how your experience and skills apply to this post.

We understand that AI can be a useful tool when completing your application. However, we are seeing an increasing over-reliance of AI tools, which can negatively affect your application as it reduces a candidate’s individuality, and makes it difficult for us to gain a clear and authentic understanding of your experience, skills, and in turn your suitability for the role.

All submissions must be truthful and if you do use AI, it should only be used to enhance your application and not create your supporting statement in its entirety. Your supporting statement should be in your own words and must accurately reflect your personal experience and achievements. Where we have concerns that AI has been used to generate content that misrepresents your experience and suitability for the role, we may withdraw your application.

As part of our vision to have a skilled, diverse and caring workforce, Dorset HealthCare offers support for people getting into work. We offer an employability service to support individuals with application writing, interview skills and other employment support. If you would like or know of anyone who would value this support, please do contact dhc.wideningparticipation@nhs.net

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.