Principle Clinical Psychologist

Job overview

This is an exciting time to join our Trust. South West London St. Georges is at the beginning of an exciting journey of transforming our community mental health services. In 2021/22 the Trust benefited from significant investment in community mental teams to strengthen provision across all our boroughs.

About the team:

The CYP Community Eating Disorders Service is part of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) Directorate of Southwest London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust, a well-established provider of mental health services to the populations of Wandsworth, Merton, Sutton, Kingston and Richmond, as well as providing a range of specialist services to a wider, regional and national catchment area.

The post is within a multidisciplinary team providing a community out-patient service, in addition to a developing intensive treatment service.  The service has close links with the in-patient specialist eating disorders unit (Wisteria Ward) on site, outpatient consultant paediatric care provided on site as part of the MDT, and brief inpatient paediatric care at nearby St George’s Hospital.  We also work closely with our colleagues in specialist adult eating disorder services on site which cover community, day, and inpatient services, and with whom we have developed a transitions family therapy clinic.

Main duties of the job

An exciting opportunity has arisen for an enthusiastic Clinical Psychologist (1.0WTE) to join the CYP Community Eating Disorders Service in a senior clinical role. Suitable applicants will have extensive experience in CAMHS settings and in supervision and consultation.  They will have excellent knowledge and skills related to NICE concordant treatments for eating disorders and would most likely have worked in a specialist CAMHS eating disorders service at some time.

The post holder will contribute substantial therapeutic expertise in working with families where a young person has an eating disorder, as well as contributing to consultation and development of multidisciplinary team members and providing supervision to staff members delivering eating disorder-focused family interventions (as agreed with the professional lead). Supported by the clinical and professional leads for the service, the post holders will play a significant role in implementing evidence-based interventions and in development of the clinical model, particularly relating to adaptations for working with young people who may be also be experiencing co-morbid difficulties with emotion dysregulation, group approaches and complex case reviews. An interest in teaching, service development, quality improvement, audit and research would be desirable.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The post holder will:

• Ensure the systematic provision of a high quality specialist psychological therapies service including clinical psychology and systemic family psychotherapy to children, young people and their families/carers within the designated clinical service area
• Providing ongoing consultation to other Tier 3 CAMHS services within the trust specifically formulating cases where there may be an element of disordered eating within the broader context of difficulties regulating emotions
• To work with the Leadership Team to develop service provision for young people with disordered eating alongside emotion dysregulation
• Supervise and support the psychological assessment and therapy provided by other psychology and psychotherapy (P&P) staff and other clinical members of the team who provide psychologically based care and treatment by agreement with the CYP Community Eating Disorders Service Professional Lead for Psychology and Psychotherapies.
• Work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service area, working with the CYP Community Eating Disorders Service Professional Lead for P&P.

• To coordinate psychological assessment, treatment and therapy resources across the teams.
• Utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research. To propose and implement policy changes within the designated clinical service area

• Practice clinically within a designated setting, and by example will uphold high standards of psychological and psychotherapeutic assessment, treatment and care.
• Be a source of advice and guidance in relation to risk management and safeguarding.
• Be responsible for the clinical governance structures that support and guide multi-disciplinary colleagues providing psychological therapies in community settings in designated service areas.  These governance structures include professional and clinical supervision, PADR processes, CPD and training needs, and recording standards.

• Directly provide clinical supervision to psychology and/or psychotherapy colleagues, and professional supervision to colleagues from a range of psychology and psychotherapy disciplines.  Some supervision may be provided across borough boundaries.

• Have a significant role in ensuring that the quality of child mental health work provided in the community is reflected both in clinical records and in data collected that will include the CAMHS minimum data set and CYP IAPT measures.  It will be important to contribute to efforts to maximise the benefits of the electronic clinical record system that the service has adopted, and to ensure that clinicians record risk in accordance with policy and guidance.
• Provide coordinated service leadership in designated areas in conjunction with Clinical Leads and Team Managers, advising on service developments.
• Coordinate with Team Managers and Clinical Leads in managing clinical performance concerns.
• Work to promote synergy and connection between local authority, third sector and health services so as to foster joined-up care and to maximise the benefit of available mental health resources for children, young people and their carers.

• Promote service user involvement in shaping services.
• Promote equality of access to healthcare and awareness of how social difference can influence treatment outcome and service user experience.