Clinical/Counselling Child Psychologist or Psychotherapist

Joining #TeamNELFT means you'll become part of a welcoming and supportive working environment. We're CQC rated Good, and we want you to join us on the journey towards an Outstanding rating. NELFT has sites across North East London, Essex, Kent and Medway. We provide community and mental healthcare services to adults and children within these areas.

The Trust has award winning equality and diversity initiatives and staff health and wellbeing activities. We invest heavily in your development, because when you are valued and supported, we provide the best care to our patients. We are a Level 3 Disability Confident Leader, have been featured in the Working Families Top 10 Employers benchmark for three consecutive years, and we have achieved a Carers UK Level 1 Accreditation. Along with our staff networks and training opportunities, we work hard to embed a just and compassionate culture here at NELFT.

Job overview

The expectation of this post holder will be to support their team, department and organisation to achieve the Trust's Values in their day to day work.

The post-holder will provide clinical leadership and specialist treatment and assessment within their professional sphere of expertise in CYPMHS. They will be responsible for assessment, treatment and systematic outcome measurement and the extensive clinical supervision of junior clinicians throughout the CYPMHS team.

They will ensure that a high quality, timely, accessible and evidence-based service is available to all service users who need it throughout the CYPMHS team.

The post-holder will establish and maintain excellent working relationships with wider mental health and wellbeing services and ensure adherence to evidence based treatments by all clinical staff across the CYPMHS team.

The post-holder will be directly involved in delivering and supervising a range of therapeutic interventions, which may include parent work, group work, school observations of children, short term CYPMHS input and specialist psychological treatments. They will be responsible for all specialist psychological assessments and treatments within their professional sphere of expertise within CYPMHS.

Main duties of the job

1. To provide an efficient, effective, comprehensive and specialist psychological service for children and adolescents with emotional and mental health problems, their carers/parents and families.
2. To contribute to multi-disciplinary assessment and treatment of children and adolescents with emotional and mental health problems, their carers/parents and families.
3. To undertake a range of highly specialist clinical work, urgent assessment work, parenting support and specialist cases.
4. To provide extensive expert supervision and consultation on CYPMHS cases to other multi-disciplinary staff within CYPMHS, including junior medical staff.
5. To contribute to audit and research.
6. To actively engage in treatment and outcome monitoring, including the use of normed measures associated with CYP-IAPT.
7. To work in clinical practice, making use of supervision, within the overall framework CYPMHS and the Trust's policies and procedures.

1. The post-holder will provide clinical leadership within the sphere of their professional expertise.
2. To actively promote integrated health/care professional working internally and externally.
3. To facilitate the development of a positive and 'supportive' team culture by taking responsibility for dealing effectively with potential conflict.
4. To take an active interest in working parties and groups within the Trust to develop and improve on service delivery, protocols and guidelines.
5. To participate in the audit process, linking in with the clinical governance agenda.
6. To advise, encourage and share knowledge utilising the latest research and practice development, through literature and peer reviews.
7. They will ensure that a high quality, timely, accessible and evidence-based service is available to all service users who need it and who use it across CYPMHS.

1. To act as an autonomous professional fully registered with the appropriate professional or regulatory body (e.g. HCPC, BACP, UKCP, AFT).
2. To use an expert clinical understanding in assessing, jointly with colleagues in the multi-disciplinary team, children, adolescents and their families in order to formulate their strengths and difficulties and to determine the most appropriate treatment plan.
3. To work alongside other colleagues in CYPMHS and in the care pathway in order to provide an in-depth comprehensive assessment of the child's, young person's, and family's functioning where there is a constellation of high dysfunction and entrenched difficulties in the family. To clinically lead this process in the CYPMHS team.
4. To provide highly specialist therapeutic interventions with due regard to issues of cultural, racial and religious difference and sexual orientation.
5. To provide highly specialist clinical assessment of children and young people with severe, highly complex and persistent mental health problems.
6. To undertake specialist observations of children in school settings as part of wider assessments.
7. To provide expert therapeutic interventions (including parent/child work, group work, parent support input, psycho-education and brief individual work with children and young people) to children and young people with complex mental health difficulties including neurodevelopmental disorders such as autistic spectrum disorders, learning difficulties, ADHD; emotional difficulties, including depression and anxiety states; attachment disorders; conduct disorders, eating disorders; post-traumatic stress disorder; psychosomatic disorders; enuresis/encopresis, aggression, borderline states, self-harming, substance misuse and other behaviour potentially dangerous to the child/young person or others.
8. To undertake work with parents/carers/networks of referred children and young people.
9. To utilise theory, literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other members of CYPMHS.

1. To be computer literate and implement the Trust's IM&T Strategy.
2. To ensure accurate recording and updating of patients' records, including risk information, maintaining confidentiality at all times.
3. To ensure electronic outcome monitoring is completed for patients' treatment.
4. To complete mandatory on-line training associated with the post.
5. To take part, and assist, in the planning and administration relating to day to day running of the caseload.

1. To have a wide range of knowledge in specialist clinical approaches to communicating and managing patient care.
2. To be able to effectively communicate with colleagues, peers, senior managers and clinical leads within the Trust.
3. To be able to communicate complex patient related information facilitating positive outcomes and ensuring collaborative working.
4. To participate in the review and development of clinical policies and identify improvements to service provision.
5. To provide reports on children and young people for parents, referrers and for other outside agencies, including Social Services and Education Services which describe assessment outcomes in accessible terms and formulate care plans.
6. To participate in regular clinical discussions and reviews of cases in treatment with members of the multi-disciplinary team.
7. To present cases to network meetings with professional members of other agencies.
8. To provide psychological and clinical advice to other professionals working within the CYPMHS team.
9. To be responsible for continually monitoring and evaluating risk to/from children and young people in one's own caseload and during supervision/consultation discussions.

1. To contribute to the training experience of trainee therapists and students from other disciplines on placement, as appropriate.
2. To provide extensive and expert clinical supervision as required and extensively within the CYPMHS team.
3. To support new staff and their integration within the team.
4. To be responsible for contributing to the academic and clinical teaching programmes within CYPMHS.
5. To ensure own continued professional development to maintain the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the post holder's professional and service managers.
6. To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local NHS, Social Care and Education policies and issues of relevance to the patient group, particularly safeguarding policies and procedures and NICE guidelines.
7. To undertake mandatory training and workshops.
8. To receive regular clinical and service related supervision from an appropriate professional within NELFT.
9. To undertake a regular appraisal, developing a personal development plan that includes clinical competencies reflecting the mental health needs of the local population and related to Trust strategy.

• NVQ level 2 or equivalent standard of literacy and numeracy.
• Successful completion of a post-graduate training in psychological practice (e.g. art psychotherapist, psychologist, family therapist, child and adolescent psychotherapist).
• To be eligible for registration as a full member of the appropriate professional body (e.g. HCPC, BACP, UKCP, AFT, ACP).

• Extensive experience of working with difficult, disturbed or challenging children/young people requiring skilled and complex interventions.
• Extensive experience of working with children and adolescents with co-morbid difficulties and special needs (i.e. combination of organic and emotional deficits, such as autistic spectrum disorders and trauma).
• Extensive experience of working therapeutically with parents/carers/families of children and young people with complex mental health problems.
• Experience of using observation (e.g. In school contexts) to contribute to assessments of children.
• Experience of carrying out generic assessment with other colleagues in the multi-disciplinary team.
• Experience of specialist assessment carried out autonomously in order to determine the most appropriate treatment plan from a range of options for the child/young person.
• Extensive experience of providing specialist individual interventions with a wide variety of children and young people, from 3 to 19 years old- presenting problems at the most severe end of the spectrum.
• Experience of initiating, organising and planning inter-agency meetings aimed at setting in place a treatment package tailored to the individual needs of a child/young person.
• Experience of providing professional teaching and training for other professionals working with the client group within the service and within related agencies.
• Experience of providing clinical interventions in different cultural contexts.

• An awareness of NHS priorities.
• An awareness of NHS Plan, NSF and clinical governance priorities.
• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of short term and long term in clinical interventions in CAMHS/EWMHS.
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to children and adolescents and safeguarding procedures and policies.
• Knowledge of NHS, Social Care and Education structures, national policies and frameworks, evidence based practice including NICE guidelines.
• Knowledge of risk management and ability to monitor and assess risk and act accordingly to ensure safety.
• Knowledge of electronic record systems, e.g. Rio.
• Knowledge of research methodology and outcome research methodology and outcome research design and ability to critically interpret research findings.

• A long-standing and award-winning approach to equality and diversity with supportive networks for ethnic minority staff, staff with disabilities or long term/chronic conditions and LGBT staff.
• A commitment to supporting colleagues to achieve a work life balance, through flexible working opportunities and our efforts to support our working parents and carers. This has resulted in us being recognised as a 'Top 10 Family Friendly Employer' from the Working Families Charity.
• Proactive health and wellbeing support, including access to our employee assistance programme, staff psychological support, individual wellbeing conversations and a network of health and wellbeing ambassadors.
• Detailed information about our wellbeing and benefits offer can be found in this link.

• clinicalcounselling Psychologist or psychotherapist JD (PDF, 448.8KB)
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