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Job summary

Main area
Practitioner Psychologist
Grade
NHS AfC: Band 7
Contract
Fixed term: 12 months (9am - 5pm)
Hours
Full time - 37.5 hours per week
Job ref
455-NLFT-0491-A
Employer
North London NHS Foundation Trust
Employer type
NHS
Site
Enfield CAMHS, Baytree House
Town
London
Salary
£55,524 - £62,652 Per annum inclusive of HCAS
Salary period
Yearly
Closing
16/04/2026 23:59

Employer heading

North London NHS Foundation Trust logo

Specialist Practitioner Psychologist - Family Hubs - 0-5s team

NHS AfC: Band 7

Thank you for your interest in the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT). This is an exciting time to join us and be part of our journey to improve mental health care across North London and deliver excellent services to our local people. We will achieve this through the North London Way, as we: 

  • Collaborate at every level by living our values to create the right conditions for us all to work together.
  • Develop our new Trust culture, to help make our new Trust a great place to work and to receive great care.
  • Empower our teams to lead the planned improvements in our services, by skilling them and giving them the tools to make the changes.
  • Focus on delivering excellence at every level to improve our performance and ensure consistently high-quality care across all our services.
  • Ensure that research, quality improvement, and technology lead the way and are embedded in our services.
  • Take a trauma informed approach to everything we do

We proactively welcome diversity in our workforce and pride ourselves on being an inclusive employer.  We aim to recruit from our local communities and provide opportunities to all including apprenticeships, veterans, care leavers and more.

The North London Way to deliver: Better Mental Health, Better Lives, Better Communities.

Our trust website is:  https://www.northlondonmentalhealth.nhs.uk/ 

As a values‑driven Trust, we recruit through our values. Our selection processes focus on behaviours, attitudes, and examples that reflect our organisational values and commitment to compassionate, high‑quality care.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a set of technology that can perform various tasks that typically required human intelligence. Your application is your opportunity to demonstrate to us how you meet the requirements of the role.

We recognise that AI tools can support accessibility, equity and confidence for applicants. However, it’s important that examples and responses genuinely reflect your own experience and abilities, as these will be explored further during the selection process. AI must not be used to provide misleading or false information during any stage of the application journey.

Further guidance can be found in the NLPSS Applicant Toolkit  https://royalfree.pagetiger.com/cuuomnr/1.

North London NHS Foundation Trust is committed to fair and transparent recruitment and requires applicants to provide accurate information, as misleading details may affect their application or employment and may be verified in line with the Fraud Act 2006. For further information please visit https://royalfree.pagetiger.com/cuuomnr/1.

 

Job overview

Are you passionate about early intervention and giving children the best start in life? We are looking to recruit a creative and enthusiastic Practitioner Psychologist to join our multi-disciplinary team dedicated to offering relationally- focused mental health support to children and their parents in the early years. 

 

Our Tri-Borough Under 5’s Pathway is a specialist team offering therapeutic support across Barnet, Enfield and Haringey to families during pregnancy or with children under five years old   The post holder will be part of a commissioned service for under-2 year olds working as part of LB Enfield Family Hubs programme, whilst also contributing to the wider under-5s offer. 

 

You would be joining a new team with the creative scope to develop the pathway offer further.  Interventions will be offered out of Family Hubs.  The post would suit someone with an interest in giving consultation and the development of community partnership-working, the flexibility and relational skills to work within community settings and a passion for supporting the mental well-being of young children and families.

 

Flexible working requests can be considered: note our policy of clinicians working a minimum contract of 4 days.  If you might make such a request we welcome you to contact us before applying to discuss the required working days to ensure this is a potential fit.

 

Note that if there is a high level of interest in this post it may close before the stated deadline date.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will provide highly specialised assessment and formulation to parents/primary caregivers and their infants as well as deliver individualised evidence-based care packages where indicated including both group and individual therapeutic interventions as part of our 0-2 offer and also contribute to the wider Under 5s team.

 

The post holder will be able to demonstrate that they have a commitment to perinatal and parent-infant / infant mental health and relevant experience of working therapeutically with parents and babies. It is desirable that the post-holder can demonstrate training in parent-infant therapeutic work (e.g. parent-infant psychotherapy, video feedback interventions for assessment and intervention with parents and babies).

Working for our organisation

North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT) is committed to improving mental health care across North London to deliver excellent services to our local people.

Our Five-Year Strategy:

1. We will provide consistently high-quality care closer to home

2. With our partners in North London and each borough we will ensure equity of outcome for all

3. We will offer great places to work, providing staff with supportive environment to deliver outstanding care

4. We will be more effective as an organisation by pioneering research, quality improvement and technology

Why NLFT?

·   We develop and retain our staff through leadership behaviours and managers programme and many more opportunities

·   We promote flexible working and support staff with a range of health and wellbeing initiatives

·   NHS Discounts, generous annual leave and NHS pension scheme

·   Excellent internal staff network  

The postholder will be aligned with our Values:

·   We Are Kind

·   We Are Respectful

·   We Work Together

·   We Keep Things Simple

·   We Empower

·   We Are Proudly Diverse 

In order to meet the needs of the Trust you may be required from time to time to work at different locations to your normal place of work. This may mean that you are required to work at any location that fall under Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey or Islington. The Trust reserves the right to require staff to work at such other places or locations as it considers reasonable and necessary on a temporary or permanent basis.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

  • To provide highly specialised assessment and formulation to parents and their infants and/or child under the age of 5.
  • Evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.
  • Competent in use of relevant screening and assessment tools
  • Formulate / offer / deliver and review psycho-social interventions (including 1:1 therapy and group programs)
  • Deliver individualised evidence-based care packages where indicated
  • Assist in the continuing development of a high quality service that is underpinned by evidence based practice, care pathways and NICE and DH guidance
  • Responsible for the initial assessment process, as well as observation and the ongoing comprehensive and specialist assessment,  providing accurate and timely feedback.
  • To provide parent infant supervision where required and to support the growing knowledge and skills regarding infant mental health across the early years system.
  • Assess service users’ response to activities in accordance with agreed models of practice
  • To be competent in assessing risk to infant and parent when working with relational difficulty

This is not an exhaustive list, please see the attached Job Description and Person Specification for more information on the role requirements and duties.

Person specification

Skills/Abilities

Essential criteria
  • Ability to relate clinical theory to clinical practice
  • Able to construct clear care plans differentiating appropriate intervention types from a range of options, based on analysis of information from assessment
  • Demonstrates the importance of gaining families’ view of their strengths and needs and supporting them to be active in the goal setting process.
  • Able to organize, plan and prioritize your own workload. Demonstrates ability to generate appropriate strategies for caseload management.
  • Ability to write reports using accessible language and demonstrating clinical reasoning.
Desirable criteria
  • Understanding of evidence-based clinical practice and the ability to demonstrate how this influences good clinical practice.
  • Confident and experienced in delivering training or providing consultation to other professionals
  • Experience of drawing upon attachment models and parent-infant relational models.

Qualifications/ Registrations

Essential criteria
  • Doctoral level training in Clinical, Educational or Counselling Psychology as accredited by the HCPC and BPS
Desirable criteria
  • Post qualification training in Infant Mental Health e.g. Parent Infant Psychotherapy, Video Interaction Approaches and Parent-Infant Group Approaches, Infant Observation Perinatal Clinical Psychologist Training

Experience/ Knowledge

Essential criteria
  • Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of parent infant dyads with severe and complex relational difficulties.
  • Experience of working in a mental health setting, managing, and monitoring risk
  • Experience of working with nursery, school and parents and engaging them in interventions
  • Experience of formulating the difficulties within the parent infant relationship based on a variety of assessments including observation of the dyad, where formulations integrate information from range of sources.
  • In depth knowledge of child development and factors influencing the developing parent infant relationship
  • Experience of working in or with community perinatal teams or midwife teams and understanding of maternal and paternal mental health
  • Experience of working therapeutically with children and families
Desirable criteria
  • Knowledge of NICE guidelines related to infant mental health and evidence of working in line with NICE recommendations.
  • Experience of working with children/ young people with social communication differences such as autism and ADHD
  • Resilience to working with infants in traumatic circumstances, and to offer containment to other team members impacted by the emotional impact of the work.

Personal Qualities

Essential criteria
  • A resilience to working with infants in traumatic circumstances, and to offer containment to other team members impacted by the emotional impact of the work
  • Proven ability to work as part of a team.
  • Demonstrates empathy with clients, carers, and families often where barriers to understanding exist ensuring that effective communication is achieved to persuade and motivate participation in therapeutic activities
Desirable criteria
  • Ability to work and communicate highly sensitive, contentious information effectively in a highly emotive or hostile atmosphere, and to overcome barriers to acceptance/psychological resistance to potentially threatening information

Personal Qualities

Essential criteria
  • Ability to work flexibly at different bases within the borough and occasionally outside of the borough
  • Flexible approach and openness to innovation

Employer certification / accreditation badges

NHS Pastoral Care Quality AwardVeteran AwareApprenticeships logoNo smoking policyPositive about disabled peopleJob share policyAge positiveImproving working livesCare quality commission - GoodArmed Forces Covenant Gold AwardMindful employer.  Being positive about mental health.Disability confident employerCare Leaver CovenantStonewall equality policy. Equality and justice for lesbians, gay men, bisexual and trans people.Step into healthAccredited Living Wage Employer

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Documents to download

Apply online now

Further details / informal visits contact

Name
Janis Griffiths
Job title
Service Lead, CAMHS Integrated Services
Email address
[email protected]
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