Specialist Clinical Psychologist/Systemic

A Vacancy at South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust.

A unique opportunity has arisen for an enthusiastic and innovative band 7 full-time clinician to work with young people in the borough of Merton who have historically been underrepresented in mainstream services. The role forms part of the CAMHS provision provided into Merton Youth Justice Service (YJS) & Contextual Safeguarding Team.

The postholder will be joining an established and well-regarded service in a role which will contribute to the development and delivery of services that support marginalized young people involved in or at risk of coming into contact with the Youth Justice System. The postholder will be supervised by the current YJS-CAMHS Psychologist/Team lead in Merton.

The role offers a balance of direct clinical work, specialist consultation, training delivery, service development and supervision and is embedded within Merton Youth Justice Service. Candidates can also access relevant training as per their development plan.

The service is informed by AMBIT (Adaptive Mentalization Based Integrative Treatment), trauma-informed, systemic and attachment-based principles. The service is also interested in working towards implementing community psychology and co-production concepts into its work. The team also takes a critical approach to addressing ethnic, racial, and social disproportionality within the Youth Justice System.

This role is a 12-months fixed term contract.

The team embraces an agile flexible working approach.

The postholder will be working within a multi-disciplinary context to deliver creative and adapted evidence-based care, including direct psychological assessment and treatment to young people and families. This would include cases where there are forensic risks and contextual harms such as child criminal exploitation. These are often complex and require engagement and support from several agencies which provides opportunities for creative multi-agency joint working.

The role requires advanced skills in psychological assessment and formulation, with an understanding of how to incorporate offending behaviour within a trauma and neurodiversity informed framework, as well as the ability to share this and recommendations with other professionals.

Alongside direct clinical work, there will be opportunities to provide consultancy and training to partner agencies such as Pupil Referral Units, the wider Youth Justice Service, Children’s Social Care and Police to embed psychological and trauma informed care. There will also be opportunities to contribute to wider service development and become involved in co-produced projects including a psychology-led team formulation pathway for complex cases within the Youth Justice service.

About our locations:

The postholder will primarily be based within Merton YJS, Merton Civic Centre. Merton CAMHS is based at Birches Close, Mitcham. There are parking and transport links available at each location.

Clinical Assessment and Intervention:

1. Conduct comprehensive psychological assessments for young people involved with the Youth Justice Service, considering mental health, neurodevelopmental, and systemic factors.
2. Deliver evidence-based interventions (e.g., CBT, DBT, Mentalization/MBT, trauma-informed approaches) to address difficulties relating to mental health and behavioural concerns, including harmful sexual behaviour, forensic risk, and trauma.
3. Utilize appropriate risk assessment tools (e.g., SAVRY and qualitative risk assessments) to assess and manage risk, supporting networks to develop appropriate management plans for young people and families.
4. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for relevant individual clients and to provide general advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management, as well as to other agencies concerned with Public Protection, such as Social Services, Probation, Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA).
5. To evaluate and make decisions around on delivering intervention options, taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, the family and the wider system.
6. To exercise responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
7. To contribute to and/or use evidence-based, integrated working tools and processes, to ensure young people and their parents/carers receive holistic and co-ordinated services in response to their mental health needs.
8. To monitor progress during the course of interventions, ensuring that all interventions are fully assessed, planned, implemented and evaluated in conjunction with CYP IAPT minimum dataset standards.
9. To maintain accurate and accessible health care records according to Trust policy and Information Governance requirements.
10. To demonstrate high level communication skills, both written and verbal, within all agencies.
11. To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies.
12. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care. This includes organizing professional network meetings where appropriate.

This advert closes on Thursday 13 Mar 2025.