Job summary
- Main area
- Senior Paediatric Clinical or Counselling Psychologist
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 8a
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time
- Part time
- Job share
- Job ref
- 220-WHT-2071-A
- Employer
- Whittington Health NHS Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Whittington Hospital
- Town
- London
- Salary
- £58,698 - £65,095 pro rata per annum inclusive of HCAS
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 07/05/2024 23:59
Employer heading
Senior Paediatric Clinical or Counselling Psychologist
NHS AfC: Band 8a
Covid-19 Vaccination
Getting vaccinated, and getting a booster, remains the best defence against COVID-19.
We encourage and support staff to get COVID-19 vaccine and a booster dose as and when they are eligible.
Please note in order to progress your application, your data will be processed by our 3rd party recruitment providers – North London Partners Shared Service, who conduct recruitment activities on behalf of Whittington Health NHS Trust.
For our current apprenticeship vacancies, please go to https://www.gov.uk/apply-apprenticeship and use Keyword ‘Whittington’
By applying for this role, you accept in the event you are successful that your personal data may be transferred from the Trust to another NHS organisation where your employment transfers within the NHS. This is in accordance with the streamlining programme which is aimed at saving you time and improving efficiencies within the NHS when your employment transfers.
Job overview
This is an exciting opportunity for an enthusiastic and skilled clinical or counselling psychologist to work within a specialist multi-disciplinary paediatric mental health team (PMHT) to meet the mental health needs of children, young people and families who present to the Whittington Hospital.
The post holder will provide psychology input across all of the paediatric outpatient clinics as well as the neonatal intensive care unit, special care baby unit, A and E and inpatient paediatric ward.
They will support the team manager in the ongoing development of the PMHT, with management tasks, analysis of patient outcomes, quality improvement projects and co-production work.
The post holder will offer supervision and line management (as required/ appropriate) and also offer consultation to multidisciplinary colleagues both in structured meetings and ad-hoc when required.
Main duties of the job
The post holder will be expected to offer psychological input to children and young people presenting with acute mental health needs and in significant distress in A and E and rapidly assess, formulate, create safety plans and care plans for hospital staff and liaise with the network to ensure that the network has an improved understanding of their risk presentation and how to mitigate it and that they get their mental health and wider holistic needs met in a timely way. This will often involve close work with our Out of Hours and Crisis teams.
In NICU and SCBU, the post holder will be expected to assess parents’ needs and make onward referrals to perinatal mental health teams, where appropriate. They will also undertake attachment-based assessments and offer psychoeducation to parents and have the opportunity to work with babies and their parents/ carers to develop positive attachment relationships and support them in their journey towards discharge. They will work alongside a specialist neonatal MDT.
Working for our organisation
Whittington Health serves a richly diverse population and works hard to ensure that all our services are fair and equally accessible to everyone. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the way we look after our staff. We aim to employ a workforce which is as representative as possible of this population, so we are open to the value of differences in age, disability, gender, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, race, sexual orientation, and religion or belief. The Trust believes that as a public sector organisation we have an obligation to have recruitment, training, promotion and other formal employment policies and procedures that are sensitive to these differences. We think that by doing so, we are better able to treat our patients as well as being a better place to work.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
MAIN DUTIES
Team Leadership
- To assist the team manager in ensuring that we deliver a high quality trauma-informed service for PMHT, and are achieving effective operational performance in accordance with the objectives of the children, young people and families we serve, the paediatricians who refer them and the CAMHS / Children and Young Peoples Integrated Care Service Unit (CYP ICSU)
- To ensure that services are developed and provided by the service that are of the highest standard in terms of fair access, equality of opportunity and that uphold anti-discriminatory practice
- To provide professional/ clinical supervision and line management to PMHT staff, as required by the Team Manager
- To ensure (supported by the team manager and clinical lead) that practice within the team is evidence based, person centred, meets relevant standards, is appropriate, timely, effective, safe and follows agreed professional practice
- To support the management of referrals into the service, ensuring that work which is accepted into the service meets with the eligibility criteria and that other referrals are re-directed to other appropriate agencies
- To provide work as an effective team member, supporting colleagues, and offering guidance where needed from the discipline of psychology. Supporting the wider MDT in the same way.
- To establish and maintain effective working relationships with colleagues, children and young people, parents and other key stakeholders
- To attend regular meetings, training, reflective practice and team building with the goal of promoting a working environment that is transparent, safe, honest, supportive and solution focussed and support others to do so also
- To ensure the appropriate and accurate use of the Whittington client information data base systems.
- To contribute to the ongoing development of Service-User participation and ensuring the voices of young people and parents/carers are involved in the development and shaping of the PMHT.
- To support other Team Management duties as required.
Clinical
- To rapidly engage children, young people and families in assessments of psychological need and access, interpret and integrate complex data from a variety of sources to robustly analyse risk and formulate plans (including risk management plans) to reduce the distress of children, young people and families and increase their safety.
- Communicate these plans effectively to a range of professionals and liaise with networks to ensure that children, young people and families get their needs met.
- Provide short term, immediate advice to other professions on how to meet individuals needs, reduce distress and increase safety. Communicate and advocate for any identified longer term needs to be met, thinking creatively about overcoming barriers to access where these exist.
- Ensuring (alongside the team manager and lead clinician) that the team only accepts referrals that meet the eligibility criteria and that other referrals are re-directed to other appropriate agencies
- Understand the wide provision in The NCL boroughs and use this information for accurate signposting of children, young people and families
- Evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account highly complex individual formulations co-created with children, young people and their families, and taking into account the reason for referral, the goals of the patient, their treatment journey to date and evidence-based practice guidelines.
- Provide specialist expertise, advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to children and young people’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan
- Contribute directly and indirectly to a framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all children, young people and families seen by PMHT.
- Be well practiced in using psychological measures and risk assessment tools. Be able to undertake cognitive and neurodevelopmental assessments.
- Communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of children, young people and families under your care.
Person specification
Education / Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Post-graduate/ doctoral level qualification in Clinical or Counselling Psychology
- Membership of HCPC
Desirable criteria
- Qualification in CBT
Skills & Abilities
Essential criteria
- Skills in facilitating client’s participation in use of routine outcome measures.
- Skills in effective communication, orally and in writing, of complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS,
- Skills in assessment of risk, in relation to mental health and safeguarding issues
- Experience of supporting other professionals in mental health risk management
- Skills in working across agencies in relation to risk and to managing issues of confidentiality and information sharing.
- Ability to maintain appropriate clinical records and in use of electronic recording systems
- Ability to supervise other clinicians, assistants and trainees in their work
- Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management for a paediatric population
- Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
- The ability to maintain a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems.
Knowledge & Experience
Essential criteria
- Post qualification experience working in a CAMHS setting.
- Knowledge and experience of the theory and practice of specialised psychological approaches for specific problems encountered in paediatric mental health and neonatal care (e.g. traumatic reactions, bereavement, adherence difficulties, preparation for medical treatment).
- Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group (eg with regard to child protection and consent to treatment)
- Experience delivering clinical work in paediatric setting,
- 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
- Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts
- Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by your professional body
Desirable criteria
- Experience working with bereaved parents
- Experience of working with families of children with chronic conditions
- Experience of working in an intensive care setting as a psychologist
- Knowledge of a number of medical conditions and the impact of their treatment on quality of life
- Experience offering consultation and support to other professionals in a paediatric context
- Formal training in supervision of other psychologists
Employer certification / accreditation badges
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
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Carlotta Raby
- Job title
- Clinical Psychologist, PMHT manager
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 07917 921606
- Additional information
Anna Picciotto
Associate Director, CAMHS and Mental Health
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