Infant and Family Clinical Psychologist - Kingston
Job overview
The Neonatal Unit is looking for a Specialist Clinical Psychologist to provide evidence-based psychological assessment and interventions for parents, infants and staff on neonatal units. They work as part of an MDT, provide consultation to medical teams on complex cases and supervise other professionals delivering psychological interventions for parents and providing staff support. They can provide assessment and intervention in four important areas within neonatal units:
- Parental and family mental health
- Infant Mental Health
- Staff Support and Training
Main duties of the job
Neonatal Clinical Psychologist Band 8a- To provide highly specialist psychological support to babies, their families and staff on the Neonatal Care Unit at Kingston.
- To liaise closely with the multi-disciplinary team to provide specialised advice and consultation on babies and families psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues.
- To work systemically, supporting the neonatal MDT to deliver psychologically informed care to babies and their families.
- To contribute to the delivery of teaching, training and supervision for both psychology and non-psychologist colleagues in order to enable them to identify early families who will benefit from specialist input. For example, developing and promoting screening tools for bedside staff to use.
Working for our organisation
Development and staff wellbeing
Your growth and personal happiness matters to us. After all, we can’t expect the best from you if we don’t invest in your development and nurture your wellbeing. From the moment you join us, we’re committed to fostering your professional and personal development within a supportive, empowering environment.Whether you’re just starting your career or looking to advance further, we provide you with the tools and opportunities you need to succeed. We actively support colleagues to take part in research, quality improvement and innovation, whatever their role or level in the organisation.
To support your wellbeing, we offer an extensive range of resources, including an on-site staff nursery at Kingston Hospital, wellbeing practitioners, regular wellbeing classes, dedicated staff physiotherapist, comprehensive occupational health services, 24/7 employee assistance programme, and a range of other support and activities.
We also take every opportunity to thank and recognise the work our teams do, through weekly ‘shoutouts’ and patient feedback, monthly and annual awards.
Wherever you work across our organisation, we look forward to welcoming you.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Please see the attached supporting document/s which contains more information about the role in the job description and person specification
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria- Doctoral level training in clinical psychology
- Registered with the HCPC as a practitioner psychologist
- Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice.
Experiance
Essential criteria- Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care, inpatient and residential care settings.
- Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems,
- Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients’ psychological care and treatment, individually and also within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan
- Experience of working within a multi-disciplinary team.
- Experience of assessing and treating children and young people with mental health needs across the full range of care settings
- Experience of working in a paediatric setting
Knowledge
Essential criteria- Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
- Advanced level knowledge of at least 2 models of psychological therapy relevant to children and families with medical conditions and knowledge of the theoretical and evidence base for them
- Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, highly technical, and clinically sensitive information to children and young people, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS
- Well-developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological approaches for specific problems encountered in this setting
- Knowledge of the academic literature concerning child and adolescent disorders and developmental issues
- Skills in the specialist assessment and treatment of children and young people with chronic or acute medical conditions and their families.