Clinical / Counselling / Educational Psychologist

South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust has a rich history, well-established community links and an international reputation. We provide a full range of local mental health services to the Kingston, Merton, Richmond, Sutton and Wandsworth London boroughs, as well as specialist forensic mental health services, including specialised services such as national deaf adults and CAMHS inpatients and OCD.

We are committed to providing high quality integrated health and social care for local people with mental health problems in South West London and more specialist mental health services for people throughout the UK. The Care Quality Commission already rates our services as ‘good’ however we aim to be ‘outstanding’.

Our Values

We take pride in providing specialist care to our service users where our Trust values; being consistent, compassionate, collaborative, respectful and open is at the heart of everything we do. Our mission is "making life better together".

When you join us, you’ll be part of something special – an innovative and rapidly growing organisation that is helping to redefine the Mental Health, education and social care landscape in the UK.

As a Trust, we are happy to talk flexible working.

Job overview

SWLSTG MH Trust has a long history of providing schools in Merton with a targeted mental health service, meeting mild – moderate mental health within schools. It is a buy-in service with each school typically buying in a clinician for a day per week.

Regular supervision will be offered by the borough MHST Clinical Psychologist Lead and additional service development support will be offered by a Consultant Clinical Psychologist.

In addition to running the team there are opportunities for direct clinical work; offering school staff consultation, training and reflective practice groups; running parent webinars and group work. We also offer the opportunity to train in EMDR.

We pride ourselves on running an inclusive, creative schools service and would be willing to consider a term time only contract if preferred (ideal for working parents).

Main duties of the job

There will be some scope for joining with the whole school approach to mental health work, consultation and training / workshop opportunities offered by TAMHS and the MHSTs within schools.

Applications will be welcomed from qualified Psychologists who have good previous experience of working in Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services.

This post will require:

• Qualification and registration as a Clinical / Counselling / Educational Psychologist
• Strong communication skills
• The ability to work cohesively and collaboratively both within a small team and within the wider school and CAMHS systems
• Strong organisational skills and an interest in service development
• Good experience of direct clinical work with children, young people & parents
• Experience of or strong interest in delivering mental health interventions in school settings
• Experience of supervising
• Commitment to using data and relevant measures to assess clinical outcome

Working for our organisation

We are Proud to Belong at South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust.

We have expert services, a rich history and a clear commitment to providing the best quality care for those with mental ill-health. The Care Quality Commission already rates our services as ‘good’ - we aspire to be ‘outstanding’.

More developments are planned across our sites and services.

We are inclusive and diverse and strive to be actively anti racist. We want to attract people from all backgrounds and experiences to enrich the work we do together. We are proud to co-produce and involve our local communities in all that we do.

We offer flexible working, career development and a variety of benefits to enable a positive, welcoming environment in which our people and their careers can thrive.

Come and join our inclusive teams and help our patients on their recovery journey

As TAMHS is based across a number of schools in Merton, this post will need to be flexible in travelling to different sites in Merton as appropriate. The MHSTs have bases within a local primary and secondary school and there is scope for this post to be regularly based alongside them in order to access peer support

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• Specialist assessments of young children and their parents/carers referred to the service based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological and where appropriate, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews.
• Formulate and implement plans for evidence-based interventions, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, to improve the parent/child relationship
• Implementing a range of psychotherapeutic interventions employed individually and in synthesis, maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses, adjusting and refining formulations or understandings, drawing upon different explanatory models and employing methods of intervention that are based upon evidence of efficacy.
• Evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual and the family.
• All staff exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans
• Provide specialist mental health advice guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to the care of the young child and their parents/carers
• Contribute to and/or use evidence-based, integrated working tools and processes, to ensure young children and their parents/carers receive holistic and co-ordinated services in response to their mental health needs.
• Undertakes risk assessment and risk management for young children and their parents/carers.
• Communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of young children and their parents/carers who are under their care.
• Monitor progress during the course of interventions, ensuring that all interventions are fully assessed, planned, implemented and evaluate
• Maintain accurate and accessible health care records according to Trust policy and Information Governance requirements.
• Demonstrate high level communication skills, both written and verbal, within all agencies.

Person specification

TRAINING & QUALIFICATIONS

• Qualified Clinical Psychologist registered with the HCPC as a Practitioner Psychologist under the domain of Clinical Psychologist, or
• Qualified Child & Adolescent Psychotherapist having successfully completed a training course recognised/accredited by the Association of Child Psychotherapists (ACP) or equivalent, and registered with ACP or
• Qualified Systemic Family Psychotherapist registered with the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) via the College of Family Couple and Systemic Therapy, and post-graduate qualification in relevant mental health/social welfare profession with demonstrable practice over a minimum of four years. • Registered mental health nurse, with postgraduate qualification in CBT (PgDip, MSc or equivalent) with eligibility for accreditation with the BABCP.
• Evidence of continuing professional development.
• Post qualification training in the clinical supervision of trainees.

• Training as part of a CYP IAPT collaborative in a recognised evidenced based approach.
• Formal training in the supervision of a psychotherapeutic modality.
• Further training in a recognised evidence-based psychological therapy.

EXPERIENCE

• Consolidated experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care, and in-patient settings.
• Consolidated experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.
• Demonstrate further specialist training and experience by having received a minimum of 50 hours of clinical supervision of working as a specialist psychologist or psychotherapist over a minimum of 18 months.

• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
• Experience of service development or of a leadership role.

We are Members of Stonewall Diversity Champions and Employers Network for Equality and Inclusion.

As part of the Trust's commitment to Equalities and Diversity, the Trust supports the establishment of Staff Networks groups to promote diversity in the workplace:

• BME (Evolve) Staff Network
• Christian Staff Network
• DiverseAbility
• Deaf Staff Network
• Mental Health Staff Forum
• Women's Staff Network
• LGBTQIA+

We are committed to supporting the Armed Forces Community and has signed the Armed Forces Covenant.

We provide reasonable adjustments to the interview process for any candidates with a disability.

Please note:

• That the closing date listed is a guide only and that the vacancy may close earlier should sufficient number of applicants have been received
• That once you have submitted your application you agree to your application being transferred to a 3^rd party e-recruitment system
• That should you not have heard from us within three weeks from the closing date your application has not successful
• That priority consideration for applications may be given to at-risk NHS employees
• That should you be successful and appointed, you authorise South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust to confirm your previous NHS service via an Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) process
• That your employment is offered subject to successful completion of a Probationary Period depending on your Band (except medical roles)
• That we are a smoke-free Trust