Consultant Psychiatrist in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry - North

Job overview

The CYPF Directorate brings together specialist and community pathways designed to meet the diverse needs of young people. We spread across three localities covering the area from Cambridgeshire across Peterborough and south Lincolnshire with three main bases: Cambridge, Huntingdon and Peterborough.  There are also community paediatrics services in our directorate including paediatric therapies: speech and language, dietetics, occupational therapy.

North CAMHS forms part of the wider CYPF mental health offer and provides community based assessment, treatment, and ongoing support for children and young people experiencing emotional, behavioural, and mental health difficulties.

The team works closely with local partners including schools, primary care, social care, paediatrics, and voluntary sector services to deliver holistic and evidence based interventions. Pathways within North CAMHS include Core CAMHS, neurodevelopmental assessment, crisis response, and targeted support for young people with complex mental health presentations.

North CAMHS is a committed, multidisciplinary service that places the voice of the young person at the centre of care. We strive to deliver compassionate, timely, and collaborative interventions that promote positive outcomes and sustained wellbeing.

Main duties of the job

The principal purpose of this role is to deliver a high quality, evidence based Child and Adolescent Psychiatry service across Community CAMHS pathways, providing expert clinical leadership, assessment, formulation, and treatment for children and young people with a broad range of mental health and neurodevelopmental needs, while working collaboratively within a multidisciplinary team and ensuring full compliance with national standards, NHS policy, and CPFT governance.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• Clinical leadership  a)    Provide senior medical leadership to the North CAMHs, ensuring high-quality clinical assessment, decision-making and safe psychiatric management including timely discharge and follow up. b)    Work collaboratively within a multidisciplinary team, contributing psychiatric expertise to case formulations, risk planning, and the development of care pathways. c)    Lead on the interface with partner services including home treatment team and the crisis team and in-patient services, as well as primary care and education and social care. d)    Provide consultation to multi-agency colleagues working with children and young people and lead on management of safeguarding needs that arise in accordance with local and national best practice standards. e)    There are opportunities for clinical leadership of neurodevelopmental assessment pathway as well.
• Direct clinical care  a)    Provide high quality assessment, formulation, and treatment for children and young people presenting with emotional, behavioural, neurodevelopmental, and mental health needs within the community CAMHS pathway including  b)    Work flexibly and manage clinical complexity, including working with young people and families with comorbid neurodevelopmental disorders. c)    Contribute to the daytime duty consultant rota for the service which supports the duty CAMHS practitioners and paediatric wards for urgent assessments and advice. d)    Participate in the directorate wide consultant out of hours on-call rota (currently 1 in 8) paid at Band A, 5% supplement. Provide non-residential, on call advice/supervision to doctors in training grades and duty CAMH practitioners, 24/7 nurse led all age telephone crisis service and CAMH crisis service.
• System flow  a)    Review of the wait lists and caseloads alongside monitoring of the capacity and demands and clinical thresholds alongside operational management.  b)    Support return to the community for young people requiring a period of in-patient admission
• Clinical Governance and Quality  a)    Contribute to system wide working and attending cross locality CAMHS or CYPF meetings as required to support service development, consistency of practice, and adherence to Trust clinical standards. b)    Contribute to the clinical governance forums in locality and trust wide c)    Lead quality improvement initiatives aligned with Trust and national priorities. d)    Ensure compliance with CQC, Royal College, and trust’s clinical quality frameworks, including audit, incident review, PSIRF, and QI methodology. e)    Maintain standards in safe prescribing, physical health monitoring, and high-quality documentation.
• Workforce, Training & Supervision  a)    Undertake the role of Clinical and Educational Supervisor for resident doctors in psychiatry and general practice. b)    Upskill and support junior colleagues and team’s CPD programme for other disciplines c)    Support induction and ongoing development of the multidisciplinary team. Contribute to consultant-level leadership forums within the directorate and trust wide.
• Strategic Development  a)    Take a leadership role in ongoing CAMHS Transformation work that aims to provide integrated, efficient and effective needs led service to young people across the trust

Notes 7.    This is not an exhaustive list of duties and responsibilities, and the post holder may be required to undertake other duties, which fall within the grade of the job, in discussion with the manager. 8.    This job description will be reviewed regularly in the light of changing service requirements, including the possibility of the work base changing to one of the other Community CAMHS services within the Trust boundary of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. Such a change would be discussed with the post holder and would form the basis of a revised job plan. 9.    The job plan is subject to review annually by the Consultant and Associate Clinical Director. All consultants participate in annual appraisal and will re-validate with the General Medical Council. Collection of 360-degree feedback and patient feedback for these purposes is now routine.