Specialist Applied Psychologist CAMHS Crisis / Home Treatment Team

Job responsibilities

To provide psychological support and clinical supervision / consultation to CAMHS Crisis / Home Treatment team and relevant partner agencies regarding children and young people (CYP) that would benefit from a specialist psychological perspective on the CYPs needs and how to best support them.

To use their specialist psychological formulation skills and understanding of trauma-informed care, to support the CAMHS Crisis / Home Treatment Team to develop needs-led psychologically informed formulations and care plans.

To facilitate reflective supervision with their colleagues in the CAMHS Crisis / Home Treatment Team to support staff and team wellbeing.

To provide specialist psychological assessments and therapeutic interventions for children and young people presenting in a mental health crisis and/or needing home treatment or specialist support.

To hold a small clinical caseload, offering psychological support and interventions both individually to children and young people and dyadically to children and young people and their parents/carers referred to the team, based on thorough assessment and formulation.

To formulate psychological treatment plans that are specific to each child and family, based upon an analysis of complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes contributing to the presentation, and selectively drawing on appropriate conceptual and theoretical models.

To deliver evidence based psychological treatments, monitoring outcome and modifying and adapting interventions drawing on a range of theoretical options.

To contribute to complex decision making around the childs emotional wellbeing and mental health needs with parent agencies and services .

To work autonomously and collaboratively within the multidisciplinary team around the child, providing consultation, advice, guidance, support and teaching to other agencies/professionals such as local authority social workers and inpatient providers.

To facilitate multi-agency consultations and contribute to systemic thinking within complex networks supporting children and young people in a crisis and/or requiring high levels of support in relation to their mental health

To select and administer highly specialist psychological assessments including specialised psychometric assessment (including skilled manipulation of test material), neuropsychological assessments, self-report measures, as appropriate), structured observations, clinical interviews, and to interpret and integrate this highly complex data.

To provide written summaries and reports to the multidisciplinary team around the child following assessment and consultation.

Be responsible for ensuring clinical outcome data is routinely entered and appropriately collated.

To contribute to service development and service evaluation in the service.

To deputise for the Community CAMHS Lead Clinical Psychologist when needed..

To provide clinical and managerial supervision to less experienced staff.

To assess and monitor risk and draw up appropriate risk management plans. To provide general advice to other professionals on risk assessment and management.

To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans, and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of care.

To provide clinical supervision for doctoral trainees, assistant psychologists, less senior qualifies psychologists and other colleagues to develop skills in the area of professional post-qualification teaching, training and supervision of other staff in the delivery of psychological services.

To ensure the systematic provision of a high-quality psychology service, by providing strong, effective professional direction, ensuring the delivery of evidence based psychological interventions and practice.

To continue to demonstrate advanced psychological skills in practice and provide support and advice regarding service development / development and implementation of highly specialist psychological interventions and the delivery of the highest quality of care in collaboration with service users, carers, staff, managers and, other agencies across a number of teams/geographical areas.

Offer clinical leadership in respect of psychological aspects of the service, coordination and management, as agreed by the head of the speciality.

Please refer to full Job Description for further details duties and expectations.

Knowledge

Essential

• Knowledge of the legal framework regarding children with mental health.
• Specialist knowledge of assessment tools and therapeutic interventions relevant to client group and settings, and an ability to compare and contrast relative benefits underpinned by evidence based practice.
• Full understanding/application of relevant clinical practice/standards/audit within identified clinical area i.e. (NICE Guidelines on Self-Harm, Depression, Anxiety, Attachment Disorder, Complex PTSD, Eating Disorders, Psychosis or Schizophrenia).
• Demonstrate highly specialist and comprehensive knowledge of current safeguarding processes and practice, including CSE, Prevent and FGM.
• Extensive knowledge of issues related to equality, diversity and anti-discriminatory practice.
• Extensive knowledge of issues related to mental capacity, consent and confidentiality when working with children and young people.

Desirable

• Experience of working with forensic populations, or young people who display sexually harmful behaviour.
• Specialist advanced knowledge of the clinical and practice issues for Children and Young People with complex mental health needs.
• Evidence of policy implementation and development
• Broadly based knowledge of the theory and practice of advanced psychological therapies when working with children and young people with complex mental health needs.

Additional Criteria

Essential

• Effective inter-personal skills and experience in supervising, mentoring and teaching.
• Able to demonstrate effective communication skills with multidisciplinary colleagues.
• Good time management and organisational skills.
• Ability to work autonomously in a variety of clinical settings.
• Work within the culture of improving working lives of children and young people with mental health needs.
• Ability to lead/motivate staff to embrace change.
• Ability to demonstrate ethical values and attitudes within a culture of equality and diversity.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as stated by HCPC and as recommended by the BPS.

Desirable

• Able to demonstrate effective communication skills at all levels i.e. strategically and locally.
• Be able to demonstrate leadership/management skills at an advanced level.
• An interest in / experience of providing staff wellbeing support

Experience

Essential

• Demonstrate post-qualification experience working as an Applied Psychologist with children and families.
• Experience working with children in crisis / home treatment / with complex mental health needs.
• Experience of providing reflective supervision or specialist consultation/ training and advice within the service they work and/or partner agencies.
• Demonstrate post qualification experience of using a range of specialist psychology assessment skills which include:
• o Use of psychometric assessments of intelligence, memory, reading, social functioning; executive functioning.
• o Use of behavioural assessments.
• o Use of observational methods of assessment.
• o Assessment by interviewing.
• o Assessment by analysis of archive material.
• Experience of psychological assessment, formulation and treatment/intervention of children with a range of psychological needs of a complex nature in child and adolescent mental health.
• Expertise in maintaining multi-professional and multi-agency partnerships.
• Demonstrate expertise and extensive clinical experience of delivering psychological interventions within a clinical/therapeutic setting.
• Expertise in applying a trauma informed approach to working with children / young people with mental health needs.
• Demonstrate experience of providing supervision.
• Assessment of risk and management of risk factors.
• Experience of developing and delivering teaching/training to professionals and parents/carers
• Member of specialist interest group/network, regionally or nationally. Experience of audit or service evaluation

Desirable

• Member of specialist interest group/network, regionally or nationally.
• Experience of being involved in service development and contributing to policy planning.

Qualifications

Essential

• Post-graduate training (doctoral level equivalent) in clinical / counselling / forensic / educational / health psychology as accredited by the BPS.
• HCPC registration as a Practitioner Psychologist.
• Trained in clinical supervision and the supervision of doctoral trainees
• Additional specialist training related to working with children, young people and their families and carers.

Desirable

• Additional qualification in relevant therapeutic interventions / approaches e.g., IPT, CBT, IFS, PBS, family therapy or systemic practice, EMDR, DDP / Theraplay.
• Leadership teaching / qualification.
• Registered member of BPS.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).