Assistant Psychologist

Job description

Job responsibilities

Amber Lodge is based at the Becton Centre for Children and Young People and consists of a day unit team, outreach team, and educational provision. This service works with children between the ages of 5 11 years old who present with complex mental health issues. The Psychological services team on Amber Lodge consists of a Principal Clinical Psychologist, a Child Psychotherapist and a Music Therapist. The team also consists of a Consultant Psychiatrist, Nurses, Occupational Therapist, Support Workers, and Teachers, as well as trainees and students (including DClinPsy trainees). Clinical Psychology on Amber works within the MDT in a trauma informed way providing consultation and supervision, and leading assessments, formulation, and adapted individual therapeutic interventions, as well as working with parents/carers and external professionals. Neurodevelopmental assessment is also be provided on Amber Lodge.

Our Forensic CAMHS team works into Sheffield CAMHS services and the Regional Forensic CAMHS hub for Yorkshire and Humber regions. We work with children up to the age of 18 suffering from mental health and/or neurodevelopmental difficulties who are committing crime or at risk of committing crime. We are a multi-disciplinary team who work in a trauma informed way and offer professional multi-agency consultations for those working with such children, advising on levels of forensic risk and how such risks could be minimised or managed. In a small number of cases (around 10% of referrals) we work directly with the young person for specialist assessment and/or treatment. Referral reasons can include presentations of violence, harmful sexual behaviour, animal cruelty and/or fire setting.

In both roles the Assistant psychologist will support the team/s to gather information to aid clinical understanding of the child. The Assistant Psychologist will contribute to service evaluation and quality improvement processes. Both roles offer excellent opportunities for developing psychological formulation skills, particularly around high levels of complexity, and working with multiple agencies. Given the clinical population/s which both teams serve the role of the Assistant Psychologist/s may involve working with information that can be of a highly distressing nature.

Sheffield CAMHS also has myriad specialist teams and there would be opportunity to link up and share knowledge with other assistant psychologists across the service.

Please see Job Description and Personal Specification for full details.

Inclusive Recruitment & Selection

We are committed to being an inclusive employer and accurate data capture is an important part of that to ensure we are supportive and representative. Our aim is to ensure that all applicants can see themselves in the available categories on our application form, but we recognise that some of our data capture fields are not inclusive. We have flagged this with our system provider to ask for change.

We offer encouragement and active support to applicants with additional needs, including those from ethnic minorities, with disabilities and members of the LGBTQ+ community. If you wish to adjust any aspect of the recruitment process or wish to find out more about our recruitment & selection processes, please get in touch with our Recruitment Manager: Catherine.Gilbert7@nhs.net

We are continually reviewing our recruitment & selection process to support the long-term aim of Sheffield Childrens being a champion of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion. If you have any ideas for improvement, please get in touch with Catherine Gilbert at Catherine.Gilbert7@nhs.net

Trust Values

The Trust is committed to providing great quality patient care and keep children, young people and families at the heart of what we do by following our CARE values:

• Compassion leading by kindness and showing empathy, understanding and respect
• Accountability striving to do the right thing and owning responsibility
• Respect value differences, tackling inequality and fostering a culture of inclusion
• Excellence delivering a high-quality standard of care

Person Specification

Experience

Essential

• Some previous relevant work experience - paid or voluntary work - preferably in the health or social care setting.
• Evidence of ability to use own initiative in effective, timely completion of projects where significant blocks of work are undertaken without close supervision.

Desirable

• Experience of working with children and families.
• Experience of work with patients or clients in health or social care.
• Experience of involving service users in service development or evaluation.
• Experience as assistant psychologist or audit officer

Qualifications and Training

Essential

• An upper second class honours degree or higher in psychology.
• Entitlement to graduate membership of the British Psychological Society.

Desirable

• Further post graduate training in relevant areas of child development or professional psychology

Knowledge and Skills

Essential

• High level communication skills (written and verbal) including an ability to communicate and work in settings in which the atmosphere may be highly emotive - with both patients and professional staff.
• Well-developed ICT skills for communication, databases, dataanalysis and presentation
• Degree level competencies in quantitative & qualitative data analysis and presentation especially SPSS, Access, Excel and Web-based skills.
• Evidence of a high standard of report writing
• An ability to apply existing psychological knowledge to a children's psychological service.

Desirable

• Ability to communicate sensitive information to patients, carers and colleagues including in situations where there are significant barriers of understanding or hostility to acceptance and where empathy and reassurance are required.
• An understanding of the needs and difficulties of children with psychological problems and their families

Personal Attributes

Essential

• Well-developed time-management skills & self-organising skills: a demonstrated ability to work independently, reliably and consistently with work agreed and managed at regular intervals
• An ability to interact effectively with staff from all disciplines.
• An ability to interact with children and their carers and families who use our services.

Desirable

• An interest in working with children with psychological problems and their families.

Other

Essential

• Ability to accept and use supervision appropriately and effectively.
• Ability to achieve good balance in using initiative and receiving direction

Desirable

• A desire to explore a career in Professional Psychology

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.

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

Employer details

Employer name

Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust

Address

Beighton Community CAMHS

Sevenairs Road

Sheffield

S20 1NZ

Employer's website

https://www.sheffieldchildrens.nhs.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)