Clinical/Counselling Psychologist Islington Young People's Service

Job overview

Band 7 Clinical/Counselling Psychologist - Islington Young People's Service

We are seeking an energetic, innovative, and skilled Clinical or Counselling Psychologist with a passion for community psychology approaches to join the trust's Young People's Service, specialising in working with young adults (18-25), providing assessment, treatment and consultation around Young Adults' mental health. Core Team Community Mental Health Services are undergoing widespread, innovative transformation and investment over the next 3 years. Camden & Islington NHS Foundation Trust are at the forefront of this transformation, developing a more holistic, recovery oriented, biopsychosocial approach to supporting people with Mental illnesses, in partnership with primary care, other community NHS providers and the voluntary sector. The Young People's Service mission is to reach young people who find mainstream mental health offers to be out of reach. The post holder will work flexibly to provide accessible, consistent, and boundaried relational support to young people who have often lost trust in services.

Main duties of the job

• Specialising in working with young people aged 18-25 who find mental health support hard to access, the post holder will work to re-build trust with these young people - using a relational model and goal-based outcome monitoring to co-produce what positive progress is with each young person.
• Providing a combination of consultation, liaison and advice to other professionals including youth workers, GPs, mental health practitioners to help them better engage with young adults supported by the YPS.
• The post holders will be one of the providers of psychological formulation and work closely with YPS colleagues as well as leaning on support within the wider core team MDTs.
• The post holders will provide specialist psychological assessment and make recommendations for intervention using the evidence base and NICE Guidance.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The Young Peoples' Service has been set up to provide specialist support and intervention to young adults for whom traditional offers of support can fall short. In particular, young adults who may be disenfranchised and marginalised from mainstream society, who may have been involved in the criminal justice system or be labelled as 'hard to reach' in some way. Built on innovative work by MAC UK and Project 10/10, NLFT   continues to lead the way in making services more accessible and taking a trauma-informed, community psychology approach to systemic change. The team will always consider a young person's social context and the impact that this may have had on their mental health and wellbeing when developing ideas about how best to provide help and support. As a Psychologist embedded in Islington's Core Team, you will be uniquely positioned to influence the culture of how we work in new and collaborative ways, co-creating this approach with the young people. Providing direct assessments and Psychological Interventions for young adults as well as providing training and consultation for colleagues within the Core Team and community partners, you will be working to raise the profile of Young Adult work across the rest of the service. You may have a background in CAMHS and/or Adult Mental Health; both will be welcomed, provided you have energy and enthusiasm for making a difference to the mental health and wellbeing of young people. As well as being strongly influenced by community psychology approaches, we are committed to training all YPS staff in AMBIT, but also draw on other mentalisation-based models in our work. You will have regular clinical/professional and Line Management Supervision, access to a robust training and CPD offer from the Trust, and your ideas for training options for the service will be welcomed. You will be joining two new dynamic and well-resourced clinical pathways dedicated to meeting the needs of young people, rooted in collaborative and creative approaches.