Clinical Psychologist for CAMHS Single Point of Access (SPOA)

Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen to join NLFT CAMHS Single Point of Access (SPOA) as a Clinical Psychologist. This role is suitable for someone who is passionate about providing high quality mental health care to support children and young people and their families.

The purpose of the Single Point of Access (SPOA) is to assess children and young people being referred in to the CAMHS Division to ascertain the most appropriate service to meet their needs. The post requires significant clinical and organisational skills. You will adhere to the goals of ‘No wrong Front Door’ and support the operations of the Access Team who seek to identify the right service for a young person at the right time. We have developed a system of triage to help identify needs, assess risk and if appropriate offer initial assessment and brief intervention, using the iThrive model. As SPOA work closely with the other CAMHS teams, it is likely that there will be opportunities for work across teams in line with the post holder’s interests or skills.

Main duties of the job

• Coordinate the day to day running of the SPOA team, including screening new referrals, allocating these to the access clinicians.
• Complete telephone triages/screening for young people who are referred to our service, making contact with families, allied professionals, the young person themselves.
• Complete over the telephone risk assessment, management plans.
• To provide (specialist) psychological assessments to children who are referred to the using a variety of sources including psychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations, semi-structured interviews with clients, family members and others involved in the child or young person’s care.
• To provide brief interventions for young people referred to SPOA or other CAMHS teams
• Help to manage and maintain clear waiting lists for the clinical teams that sit within the CAMHS Division.
• To provide advice and on clients’ psychological care.
• To work within Trust and professional guidelines, to a clear CAMHS job plan.
• To support and promote the use of measures to evolve clinical practice and enhance user experience within supervision, team meetings and other forums.
• To utilise research skills for practice evaluation and service development, as required by the service and set out in the job plan.
• To be involved in co-production, to support the development of services.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Contribute to the day to day running of the SPOA team, including screening new referrals and allocating these to the access clinicians. Manage and maintain clear waiting lists for the clinical teams that sit within the CAMHS SPOA.Manage and maintain a clear duty Rota for the SPOA.

• Complete telephone triages/screening for young people who are referred to our service, making contact with families, professionals involved in their care, and the young person themselves.
• Complete over the telephone risk assessment and management plans.
• To provide some specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the service based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological and neuropsychological tests, 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 support with the planning of evidence-based psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems, based on formulation.
• Where appropriate, to implement a range of brief psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
• Engage in risk assessment and management as required for new referrals and those waiting for treatment, and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
• To attend multi agency meetings to support the referral and assessment of children and young people to specialist CAMHS.
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• Work alongside admin colleagues to ensure a smooth and timely response/screening for all new referrals into the CAMHS Division.
• Ensure the safe delivery of Key KPI’s and access to treatment standards.
• Comply with the service requirements for the completion of routine outcome measures.

To be noted:

• This is not an exhaustive list of duties and responsibilities, and the postholder may be required to undertake other duties which fall within the grade of the job, in discussion with the manager.

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.