Whittington Hospital NHS Trust

Assistant Psychologist

This job is now closed

Job summary

ASSISTANT PSYCHOLOGIST Band 4

Islington CAMHS

Full-time, permanent contract

4.0wte posts

Please note we will only consider applications from the candidates who meet the following essential criteria:

First or Upper Second degree in Psychology
Minimum one year's experience in one or more of the following areas: experience of working with people with mental health problems and/or other disabilities, experience of working with children and/or young people, experience of working in a research related role in the field of mental health/psychology.

We have exciting opportunities for a psychology graduate who has relevant experience and interest in working with children, young people and families who have mental health or emotional wellbeing difficulties. We have vacancies for full-time band 4 assistant psychologists, these posts will be based across the service in the following teams. You are welcome to mention your preference in the application form.

Social Emotional Mental Health team 0.5 WTE.

Adolescent Assessment + Outreach Team 1.0 WTE.

School Wellbeing Service 0.4 WTE.

Schools and iTIPS Team/YJS 1.0 WTE.

The youth Justice service

Children Looked After (CLA) 0.1 WTE

Growing Together Team and the Parent and Baby Psychology Service 1.0 WTE

Main duties of the job

The post holder will have many opportunities for direct clinical work, and will join the senior clinicians in the team's, supporting them in assessing, planning, and providing care and treatment to individual cases and their families. The candidate will be an active member of the MDT, supporting the whole team approach in the assessment and management of clinical caseloads. There will be opportunities for 1:1 interventions, family, and group work; using a range of therapeutic models including CBT, DBT and Mentalisation. The post holder will also be involved in outcome monitoring and service evaluation.

About us

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 Trustbelieves 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.

Date posted

01 December 2023

Pay scheme

Agenda for change

Band

Band 4

Salary

£30,279 to £33,116 a year per annum including HCAS

Contract

Permanent

Working pattern

Full-time

Reference number

220-WHT-1754

Job locations

Islington CAMHS

580 Holloway Road

London

N7 6LB

Job description

Job responsibilities

The candidate will need to be highly motivated, organised, resilient and have excellent computer skills.

You will be required to work flexibly, independently, and responsively within a changing environment.

We offer a stimulating and highly supportive working environment.

We encourage applications from all sections of the community and are committed to equal opportunities

Main duties will include the following for all posts. Roles however may vary across teams.

1) To be responsible for keeping screening/outcome measures database updated: sending out questionnaires as required, tracking completion, scoring and uploading data onto the Electronic Patient Records.

2) To hold a small caseload and deliver evidence-based assessments interventions and complete administrative tasks as required such as outcoming appointments, record keeping on the EPR and completion of outcome measures and feedback tools.

3) To conduct observations of referred children and young people in school or other venues to support assessments.

4) To support initial assessment appointments or specific pieces of clinical work by joining clinicians and assisting with writing up notes, letters and outcome measures.

5) To undertake various tasks to assist service/teams work. This may include telephone calls to clients, liaison with other agencies, screening/intake work including signposting and giving advice, screening for neurodevelopmental issues.

6) Mentoring and co-ordinating the work of undergraduate placement students (one a year).

7) To support the services work to embed the meaningful use of outcome measures and feedback tools. The role may include taking the lead role on this in teams, working with the managers to plan and implement strategic use of outcome and feedback tools, learning about the measures and tools and offer training and support to clinical staff, devising a system to ensure collection of measures to meet the services KPI (Key Performance Targets), CAMHS scoring of measures, uploading of results, data collection, analysis and preparation of reports to contribute to the services audits/evaluation.

8) To support the development and maintenance of a directory of services in Islington and raise awareness of these services to the team, to help with signposting young people and families to appropriate support whilst waiting for appointments or after their treatment has ended.

9) Attending and contributing to the teams Multidisciplinary case discussions, recording the outcome of clinical meetings onto the electronic notes.

10) To participate, undertake and/or lead on various projects, e.g. Quality Improvement, service user participation and co-production and work with managers and clinicians to address service priorities such as waiting time initiatives.

11) Seek and use advice and support from senior clinicians to ensure client safety and meet their needs. Attend clinical and line management supervision as required.

12) Attend mandatory training and any other training as required.

General

To work flexibly to meet the core aims of service delivery to clients.

To maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry and recording, report writing and professional self-governance in accordance with service and trust policies and procedures.

To attend Community CAMHS team and discipline specific meetings as may be agreed with Professional Lead and Line Manager.

To carry out any other duties commensurate with the grade and role, as directed by managers. . The roles and duties may change to meet the service needs.

All other terms and conditions to be consistent with current job description.

Revalidation and Registration

It is the responsibility of all staff registered with a professional body to:

Act within the Professional Bodies Code of Practice
Maintain their own work profile to ensure revalidation standards are met, and assist junior registered staff in achieving revalidation.
Contribute and participate in the development of colleagues professional practice across the trust through leading ward and/or department projects, and supporting training.
Ensure optimum use is made of working time.