Clinical Psychologist Paediatrics

Job overview

This job represents an exciting opportunity to provide a qualified specialist clinical psychology service to patients being seen within the Paediatric and Neonatal Services at Chelsea & Westminster NHS Foundation Trust across all sectors of care; providing specialist psychological assessment and therapy at the same time as offering advice and consultation on patients’ psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues and to other, non-professional carers, working autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures.

Experience of working in paediatric psychology is  desirable, but not essential as  you will be supervised by an experienced Consultant Clinical Psychologist and part of a developing paediatric psychology team.

You will have an interest in applying a range of psychological models in a flexible way, working directly with children, young people and their families. There will be indirect work via liaison and consultation with multidisciplinary teams and external agencies. Part of your role may include staff support, providing debriefs and regular reflective practice to teams, as well as MDT teaching.

You will be part of the wider CNWL Paediatric Psychology Service. This service meets monthly for business, journal and research presentations, as well as clinical and skill sharing. There is also a CNWL paediatric diabetes specialist interest group that meets quarterly.

Main duties of the job

• WTE of the role will be to provide input to children, young people and their families seen within the general paediatric psychology service and 0.3 WTE will be dedicated to the specialities of paediatric oncology, plastics and neonates, both inpatients and outpatients. A further part of the role will be to utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research across the areas served by the paediatric psychology service.

You will also provide support to the MDT staff including Reflective Practice, Consultations and Debriefs

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the team 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 formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
• To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
• To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
• To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
• To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.
• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
• To act as care coordinator, where appropriate, taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of psychological care plans including clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved the network of care.
• To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.