Clinical/ Counselling Psychologist

Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen to work in a band 7 role as a Clinical or Counselling Psychologist within our CAMHS South multidisciplinary team, delivering a high quality service provision that promotes and improves the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people and their families.

CAMHS South is a caring, supportive and hard working team which prides itself on working creatively, innovatively and inclusively.  We have a number of ongoing projects including working in partnership with young people to re design our clinic room spaces, working to better meet the needs of  young people with neurodiversity who are accessing our service, and the development of the intervention offer for families of our young people.

Members of the team won the HPFT 2022 and 2023 staff awards for "inclusion and diversity" and the team have previously won awards for customer service and working in partnership with our adult services counterparts to improve transitions to adult services.

We welcome all new staff to the team with a robust induction process to equip them for the work they will take forwards and promote leadership at all levels within the team.

CAMHS South is a part of HPFT CAMHS, who have been at the forefront of national developments in CAMHS, including CAPA and CYP-IAPT.  The service is rapidly expanding in line the with evolving needs of young people in Hertfordshire.

Main duties of the job

As the Clinical/ Counselling Psychologist you will be expected to:

• Act as a senior clinician in the service and provide supervision to junior and pre-qualified clinicians in the service.
• Provide specialist psychological advice guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan, facilitating the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the teams to the client.
• 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.
• Provide specialist expertise and psychological support to clients, their carers and staff working with the clients.
• 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.
• Act as care coordinator, where appropriate, ensuring provision of a care package appropriate for the client’s needs, taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of the client’s care, including the child/adolescent, their family/carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.
• Maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping and report writing, according to professional and Trust guidelines, including electronic data entry and recording.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Benefits we offer:

1. A coaching network where trained coaches throughout the Trust are matched with staff of all disciplines to provide a powerful development opportunity 2. Leading company discounts and childcare vouchers 3. Salary sacrifice schemes enabling staff to drive a new car or bike - saving on tax and insurance included 4. Wellbeing activities - from mindfulness to yoga, pilates and our signature craft club join our monthly programme of regular and special events to support your wellbeing. Discounts, including Nuffield Health and David Lloyd. 6. Refer a friend to work for the Trust and receive up to £500! (A payment of £250 will be made when the applicant commences employment with us and a further payment of £250 will be made once they hit 6 months continuous service with us, terms and conditions apply).

To ensure the systematic provision of a highly specialist clinical / counselling psychology service to clients of the Tier 3 Specialist CAMHS quadrant multidisciplinary team, across all sectors of care, within the context of the principles of CAPA (The Choice and Partnership Approach) and CYP-IAPT, providing both Core work (as defined by CAPA)

Contributing to Specific/Specialist work (as defined by CAPA) including contributing to provision of a specific model of evidence-based therapeutic intervention across the CAMHS clinics (for example  Specialist provision of Systemic Therapy, Child Psychotherapy, CBT, IPT)

To provide highly specialist psychological assessment and therapy at the same time as offering advice and consultation on clients’ psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues, professionals from other agencies and to other non-professional carers.

The post-holder will offer Core and Specialist/Specific work (according to CAPA definitions) within the quadrant, and Specialist/Specific work as part of a CAMHS-wide therapeutic team as appropriate.

To work effectively as a fully integrated member of the multi-disciplinary team, including taking an active part in MDT meetings.

To provide clinical/professional supervision to less experienced practitioner psychologists within the quadrant MDT.

To provide placements to trainee clinical/counselling psychologists.

To work autonomously within professional practice guidelines and Trust policies and procedures.

To propose and implement policy and service development, undertake research, service evaluation and audit for own team/service and to contribute to the training of clinical/counselling psychologists and others.