Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologist

Job overview

Band 8a Clinical or Counselling Psychologist Part Time Hours (22.5hrs; 0.6 WTE)

The Kingston & Richmond CAMHS SPA provides out-patient and consultation services to children experiencing a range of mental health and neurodevelopmental difficulties. We are a team composing of Psychologists, a Psychiatrist, Mental Health Nurses, Assistant Psychologists, Administrators, as well as Trainees and Students on regular rotation. We are a friendly team who value each other’s skills and expertise, as well as the importance of having good supportive relationships with each other.

This role is open to qualified clinical psychologists with the following:

• Qualification as Clinical or Counselling Psychologist registered as a practitioner psychologist with the HCPC.
• Experience of working with children and young people
• Experience of work within a multi-disciplinary team
• Experience of supervising assistant psychologists and/or trainees
• The ability to relate and provide accessible services to a diverse community.
• The ability to efficiently manage a caseload.
• Knowledge and skills in risk management and safeguarding
• Ideally a special interest in child neurodevelopment and neurodiversity
• The ability to adapt to the fast-paced nature of CAMHS SPA work, with good IT and computer recording skills to navigate between the various IT record systems within CAMHS, SWLSTG Trust and Achieving for Children

Main duties of the job

The successful candidate would be a key clinician within the CAMHS SPA, offering mental health assessments as described above. They would also form part of the leadership team within the service, with opportunities for supervision of placement students, trainee clinical psychologists, Assistant Psychologists and qualified clinicians within the service as appropriate. There would also be opportunities for service development, with a key role of supporting for the ongoing development of our SPA and its integrated role both within the wider CAMHS Service and with our Achieving For Children partners.

There will also be opportunities to take on other activities (e.g., therapeutic work) within the local community tier 3 CAMHS service.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To provide specialist assessments of children/ young people and their parents/carers referred to the service based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological and where appropriate, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews in line with CYP IAPT methodology.
• To formulate and implement plans for evidence-based interventions, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, to improve the parent/child relationship.
• To be responsible for implementing a range of psychotherapeutic interventions employed individually and in synthesis, maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses, adjusting and refining formulations or understandings, drawing upon different explanatory models and employing methods of intervention that are based upon evidence of efficacy.
• 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 and the family.
• 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 mental health advice guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to the care of the young child and their parents/carers
• To contribute to and/or use evidence-based, integrated working tools and processes, to ensure young children and their parents/carers receive holistic and co-ordinated services in response to their mental health needs.
• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for young children and their parents/carers.
• To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of young children and their parents/carers who are under their care.
• To monitor progress during the course of interventions, ensuring that all interventions are fully assessed, planned, implemented and evaluated in conjunction with CYP IAPT minimum dataset standards.
• To maintain accurate and accessible health care records according to Trust policy and Information Governance requirements.
• To demonstrate high level communication skills, both written and verbal, within all agencies.