Job Description
An exciting opportunity has arisen in Hounslow CAMHS for a Band 7 (0.8 WTE) Psychologist to work in Tier 3 CAMHS taking up two different roles that offer variety and opportunities for professional development.
The role is split across the Child & Family Team (five sessions) and the Community Adolescent Team (three sessions). The post holder will offer clinical assessment and evidence-based therapy to children, young people (aged 5-18) and families where there are severe and complex mental health difficulties.
We are a friendly, busy, borough-located service that prides itself in thinking and implementing creative and innovative ways of delivering care. We offer excellent CPD opportunities and a wide range of experience.
The post would be suited to someone who is passionate about delivering a high quality psychology service with young people and families and who wants to develop their clinical and professional skills.
You will be providing specialist psychological assessments and evidence based interventions for children, young people and families where there are severe and complex mental health difficulties. There will be opportunities for supervision of assistant psychologists and where appropriate of trainee psychologists and clinical associate psychologists, and to support service development and service user participation within the service.
The post is spilt between the Children and Family Team and the Community Adolescent Team, multidisciplinary teams, which are part of a thriving Tier 3 CAMHS service. There are regular psychology meetings and excellent CPD opportunities with whole-service trainings in therapeutic approaches, as well as funded external courses and specialist supervision groups. There are also many opportunities to develop further in role; for example through being part of quality improvement projects, or developing particular areas of interest.
You will be well-supported in the post and will receive clinical and professional supervision from a Band 8a Psychologist.
West London NHS Trust is one of the most diverse providers of mental health, community and social care in the UK.
Our 3,982 staff care for people in hospital and in the community, helping them to recover and go on to lead full and productive lives. We aim to be the best organisation of our kind in the country.
We provide care and treatment for more than 800,000 people living in the London boroughs of Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham and Hounslow, delivering services in the community (at home, in GP surgeries and care homes), hospital, specialist clinics and forensic (secure) units.
We’re rated good overall by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
Together, we’re committed to promoting hope and wellbeing, working with patients, service users, carers, families and partners across the communities we serve.
We are keen to ensure that our workforce reflects the community it serves, particularly in terms of ethnicity, gender, disability, LGBTQ+ and experience of mental illness.
Post title: Specialist Clinical/Counselling Psychologist
Teams: Hounslow CAMHS Children and Family Team and Hounslow CAMHS Adolescent Team
Key relationships
Other CAMHS staff
Consultant Psychiatry Team Leads
CAMHS Associate Director
Service Manager and Operational Manager
CAMHS Psychology Leads
Other professionals working with children and young people in socialcare, health, education and the voluntary sector
Service users: Children and Young People, foster carers, parents and families
Trust corporate departments including: Human Resources, Training and development, IT
Service commissioners
Job summary
The CAMHS service in Hounslow, which is part of West London NHS Trust, is seeking to recruit a 0.8FTE Band 7 Clinical or Counselling Psychologist to work across the Child & Family Team (0.5WTE) and Community Adolescent Team (0.3WTE) in Hounslow tier 3 CAMHS. The psychologist will offer services to children and young people and their families who are referred into these teams. This will involve offering assessment, therapeutic work and on-going care co-ordination to children aged 5-18 and their families. They will join 2 excellent and well-established teams, both staffed by experienced multi-disciplinary workers, including another psychologist, consultant psychiatrist, nursing, medical staff, specialist teachers and a family therapist. They will be part of the thriving psychology department based in CAMHS, which also has several tier 2 psychologists within it. This, in turn, is part of the wider 3-borough CAMHS service, which includes Ealing and Hammersmith and Fulham boroughs. The post holder will be offered high quality and consistent supervision from within the service. We are looking for a skilled, hard-working and enthusiastic psychologist who is passionate about delivering high quality and effective services to children and young people. There will be good opportunities for CPD and development, alongside other supports. The post would suit psychologists who already have some experience of working in CAMHS services or who have an interest in this area of work.
Key Result Areas & Performance:
The post holder will join a multi-disciplinary CAMH service which is responsible for the delivery of specialist Tier 3 mental health services to the children of the Borough of Hounslow.
Clinical:
1. To provide psychological assessments of children with emotional and developmental difficulties, 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, including frontline workers in health, education, social services and the voluntary sector.
2. To contribute to specialist multidisciplinary assessments for children with emotional, behavioural and neurodevelopmental conditions.
3. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of emotional and behavioural difficulties of clients, 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.
4. To be responsible for developing and 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, maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses and taking account of changing needs during the course of delivering the intervention.
5. To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical, environmental and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.
6. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
7. To collaborate with other members of the multi disciplinary and multi agency teams as appropriate in devising appropriate psychotherapeutic treatments for children, families and groups.
8. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
9. 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.
10. In providing care to clients to liaise and work with family members and others involved in the client’s care, including frontline workers in health, education, Children Services, inpatient services and the voluntary sector.
11. 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.
12. To act as care coordinator, where appropriate, taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans including clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved the network of care.
13. To communicate in a highly skilled and sensitive manner, highly sensitive and complex 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.
Teaching, training, and supervision
1. To receive regular clinical professional supervision from an experienced clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.
2. To gain wider post-qualification experience and skills relevant to clinical psychology, child and adolescent mental health and the service (as agreed with the professional psychology manager), by relevant study and attendance at training events, courses and conferences.
3. To develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training and supervision and to provide consultation and supervision to other workers.
4. To provide professional and clinical supervision to assistant and/or graduate psychologists.
5. To supervise trainee clinical psychologists if appropriate.
6. To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings.
Management, recruitment, policy and service development
1. To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the Service’s operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, quality improvement, service evaluation and audit.
2. To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
3. To manage the workloads of assistant and graduate psychologists, within the framework of the team/service’s policies and procedures.
4. To be involved, as appropriate, in the shortlisting and interviewing of assistant / graduate psychologists.
Research and service evaluation
1. To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
2. To undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research.
3. To undertake project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within the service to help develop service provision.
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