Job overview

Is your passion working creatively with children and families? Looking for a role with flexible working opportunities? 

We are excited to offer an opportunity to join CAIST, our under 18’s Crisis Service as an Assistant Psychologist supporting young people and their families across Norfolk and Waveney.

The CAIST (Crisis, Assessment & Intensive Support Team) service is a vibrant and dynamic service that has 3 teams based across Norfolk & Waveney service, 7 days a week. The service is commissioned for 08:00-20:00 7 days per week.

The team offers community based intensive support to children & young people and their families. CAIST aim to establish trusting therapeutic relationships, to reduce risks when children and young people may be experiencing high levels of distress. We work hard to help children and young people avoid Tier 4 hospital admission, and when required, to expedite safe and effective discharge. We regularly work alongside other mental health services and social care teams, working collaboratively to support the needs of young people. 

We request that as part of your application you answer the following question in 500 words or less at the beginning of the supporting information section on your application form:

 “How may you need to differentiate your treatment offer for young people accessing our under 18s crisis service to meet their needs?”

**Please note that applications that do not follow these guidelines will not be considered for shortlisting**

Main duties of the job

Whilst experience in working with children and young people would make you perfectly suited to this role, we are really open to welcoming people from clinical backgrounds who have experience in other areas of mental health.  We understand that you will be able to bring with you a wealth of skills and experience to the team and would welcome new ways of thinking.

You will offer direct clinical work (individual brief interventions and intensive support) with children under 18 years that have presented in crisis, alongside their families and carers where appropriate. You will take a key role in coordinating, delivering and evaluating our DBT-A informed pathway. You will be a champion for Routine Outcome Measures (ROMs) and will support embedding the use of these in our daily clinical practice across the service.

You will also have a key role in service evaluation and associated data analysis, which will be supported and supervised by our Clinical Psychologist. There will be additional duties which will be considered and agreed with the Clinical Psychologist supervising you.

Weekly supervision for this post will be provided by a Clinical Psychologist within the team. We have good links with the University of East Anglia (UEA) Clinical Psychology Doctorate Programme with previous post holders having been accepted onto the clinical doctorate and regularly have Trainee Clinical Psychologists on placement.

Working for our organisation

The CAIST team has recently been recognised through our Quality and Safety Review Process as being  a responsive and collaborative service that has a positive, inclusive culture, with shared vision and objectives.  Feedback from young people and families, identified CAIST as an accessible and flexible service that prioritises service user collaboration and shared decision making. 

It is important to us that all staff share our values and core beliefs, and those of the NHS Constitution. We promote an environment of mutual respect, compassion, integrity and collaborative working. We are committed to diversity and inclusion and aim to attract and retain a candidate who is compassionate and committed to our trust values.