Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologist

Job overview

This is an exciting opportunity to join a busy, developing service which has a systemic underpinning, offering NICE concordant systemic therapy for eating disorders as its core intervention. You will provide specialist multi-disciplinary assessment and expert clinical interventions to children and adolescents with eating disorders, and their families.  There will also be opportunities for the post holder to contribute to ongoing service development potentially focusing on emotion dysregulation and / or less common feeding and eating disorder presentation pathways and / or working with children and families with complex needs or with safeguarding concerns.

The growing specialist multi-disciplinary team is made up of psychiatrists, nurses, OTs, systemic psychotherapists, clinical psychologists, assistant psychologists, a consultant paediatrician and a dietician

Suitable applicants will have experience in a CAMHS setting and have good knowledge and skills related to NICE concordant treatments for eating disorders and common co-morbid disorders such as OCD, depression and anxiety. In addition, applications from clinical psychologists who have an interest in systemic working, and/or experience of working with children and families with complex needs or with safeguarding concerns would be welcomed.

Main duties of the job

• To offer assessment and evidence based psychological therapies for young people with an eating disorder and their families.
• To facilitate psycho-educational parents groups and other groups.
• To work with co-morbidities, using formulation driven care-planning.
• To implement behavioural management plans.
• To offer consultation to colleagues in other services.
• Support management of ROMs and audit.
• To hold a case load and act as case manager.
• Supervision of other qualified clinical psychologists and trainees, assistant psychologists, psychology placement students and volunteers.
• Attend all multi disciplinary meetings and care planning reviews and contributes to thinking about young people and their families from a psychological perspective.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The Community CAMHS Directorate is located within South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust.  The Trust is responsible for the provision of mental health services to the population of Wandsworth, Merton, Sutton, Kingston and Richmond as well as providing a range of specialist services to a set of wider, regional  and national catchment areas.

Since a major reorganisation of CAMHS services in 2014, the CAMHS directorate has existed as locality Tier 3 teams based in each borough, and dedicated services for Eating Disorders, Neurodevelopmental Assessment, Complex Learning Difficulties, Multi-Systemic Therapy and Emergency Care.

Teams are multi-disciplinary, with an evolving skill set. Skills evolution is led by expressed patient need, focusing on patient value, and developed via analysis of clinical outcomes.

An electronic clinical record and information system (CYP IAPTUS) is in use.

CYP CEDS provides out-patient and consultation services to children and adolescents experiencing an eating disorder and the associated range of mental health and developmental problems for all five CCGs that commission our services.

CYP CEDS is a multi-disciplinary, integrated service with appointments-based outpatient treatment as well as additional more intensive interventions. The MDT comprises consultant and trainee psychiatrists, clinical nurse specialists, clinical psychologists, a counselling psychologist, family therapists, a creative therapist, a dietitian, and a  consultant paediatrician.

The parameters of the service are defined by the 2015 Access and Waiting Time guidance, and the 2016 QNCC-ED standards, providing quick access to evidence-based therapies for all young people with an eating disorder in our catchment area.

There are several additional interventions for Intensive Community Care that continue to be developed, to supplement the core pathways for those who most need it. These include brief paediatric admission mainly to St George’s Hospital with close liaison support, crisis or assessment-focussed home outreach, and Tier 4 in-reach.