Consultant in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry - Riverside Unit

Job overview

Are you passionate about making a positive impact on the lives of young people?

We are seeking to appoint two passionate, highly motivated, and enthusiastic Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists to join the Riverside Adolescent Unit.

This is an exciting opportunity for experienced senior clinicians to provide clinical leadership, support team development, and play a key role in shaping the service ahead of its planned reopening in 2025.

You will take a pivotal role in developing and delivering the clinical model, helping to ensure the service is ready to meet the needs of young people requiring specialist mental health care.

You will work as part of a skilled, multidisciplinary team dedicated to creating a centre of excellence for adolescent mental health care.

The Riverside Adolescent Unit, based at Blackberry Hill Hospital in Bristol, is a General Adolescent Unit providing care for young people aged 13–18 who require intensive assessment and treatment for severe mental health difficulties that cannot be effectively managed by community CAMHS.

The unit supports a wide range of complex presentations, including psychosis, mood disorders, severe anxiety, and eating disorders.

With 12 inpatient beds and 4 dedicated day programme places, the service is committed to delivering high-quality, person-centred care in a collaborative and supportive environment.

Main duties of the job

The successful candidate will provide direct patient care while taking on a clinical leadership role for our newly designed unit. You will be instrumental in shaping and implementing our clinical model.

Working alongside your consultant colleague, you will serve as the named consultant and responsible clinician for a proportion of young people on the unit.

You will oversee their care under the Mental Health Act, managing all aspects of the legal process, including acting as the Responsible Clinician for Mental Health Act Tribunals.

You will oversee referrals, conduct initial assessments, and respond to requests from community CAMHS for a Tier 4 opinion. In collaboration with the senior leadership team, you will contribute to the Access Assessor role for referrals within the local area.

Clinical duties will include initiating and reviewing medication, chairing CPA meetings, attend weekly ward rounds and liaise with families/carers and link with the community CAMHS teams (3 Bristol CAMHS teams, South Glos CAMHS and North Somerset CAMHS).

You will work as part of the Provider Collaborative for adolescent inpatient care for the South West of England. This includes regular liaison with the other 3 adolescent inpatient units within the South West and the respective intensive outreach teams, reviewing all referrals and complex presentations and providing and receiving peer support.

You will be part of the Riverside Operational Management Group.

Working for our organisation

Our outstanding people promote mental health and wellbeing. The expertise and resources within AWP are dedicated to a person-centred approach for those who use our services and for all employees. We recognise that happy and fulfilled employees give better care.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please refer to the accompanying job description for full details on the roles and responsibilities of this post.

Person specification

Qualifications

• Fully registered with the GMC with a licence to practise at the time of appointment.
• Include on the Specialist Register or within 6 months of gaining CCT in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
• Approved clinician status OR able to achieve within 3 months of appointment.
• MB BS or equivalent medical qualification.

• Relevant Higher Degree e.g. MD, PHD, Msc or other additional clinical qualifications
• MRCPsych or MRCPsych equivalent approved by the Royal College of Psychiatrists
• Additional clinical qualifications

Experience

• Wide breadth of clinical experience working with children and young people with mental health problems and their families
• Knowledge and evidence of participation in CPD.
• Evidence of effective multidisciplinary team involvement.
• Evidence of effective multi-agency working

• Specific additional therapy training (e.g. Positive Behavioural Support, CBT, systemic therapy, DBT etc.)

Personal Skills

• To possess leadership skills and be able to work collaboratively in a multidisciplinary team.
• Ability to manage own time, workload and prioritise clinical work
• Able to demonstrate excellent communication skills, in order to effectively work with patients, carers and staff.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills

Clinical Skills

• Skills in psychiatric assessment, formulation and risk management (including safeguarding) as well as psychopharmacology in children, neurodevelopmental disorders and attachment difficulties.

Knowledge

• Understanding of the management skills required to function successfully as a Consultant.

Teaching

• Commitment to and experience of undergraduate and postgraduate learning and teaching.
• Understand principles of teaching.

Research & Audit

• Experience or involvement in a research project and publication.
• Ability to supervise junior medical staff undertaking research projects.
• Experience of carrying out an audit project

Management

• Evidence of management/leadership skills training.

This includes people with a variety of disabilities and neurodivergent conditions (for example autism, ADHD, sensory, physical and learning disabilities).

We encourage applications from people who wish to work on a flexible basis, recognising that flexibility may mean a range of different working patterns and hours, we do our utmost to work with our staff to meet their needs and the needs of our service users.

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Please apply to join us, we would love to hear from you. Any personal details you supply to us are kept safe in line with the General Data Protection Regulations.

Adverts normally close for application a few minutes before midnight on the closing date and we will let you know if we are offering you an interview by email via our recruitment system ‘TRAC’. We contact all applicants within 4 weeks after the closing date, so please check your emails regularly once you have submitted your application; you are welcome to contact us, via the TRAC system, if you have any queries about your application.

Please note the use of AI is monitored and if you have used it in your application you are required to declare this.