Educational Psychologist

Our super friendly, highly supportive, and immensely creative Cheshire East Educational Psychology Service is continuing to thrive and expand!

We are seeking EP's who are committed to applying their breadth of knowledge and skills in psychology and education. In return, we will provide a balanced workload, opportunities to develop in areas of particular interest, with appropriate CPD and offer a capped amount of statutory casework.

We warmly welcome applications from qualified EPs and those in training who are due to qualify in 2025.

Salary: Soulbury Scale A 5-10 plus SPA (salary banding under review)

Cheshire East has a diverse, rural, and urban profile which is easily commutable from Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent, Derbyshire, Shropshire, and parts of North Wales. To promote wellbeing and work-life balance and reduce travel, there are various bases to utilise across the borough.

Organisation: Cheshire East Council

Location: Macclesfield

Job Category: Education

Grade: Soulbury EP SCP 5 - 10

Salary Min: £50,627 per annum

Salary Max: £63,836 per annum

Hours per week: 37

Weeks per year: 52.143

Employment Type: Permanent

Closing Date: 17/11/2024

Ref No: E2743

Cheshire East is an amazing place to live and work. As one of the largest employers in the borough, we are able to offer you a wide range of challenging and rewarding career opportunities.

If you want to be part of our award-winning council and contribute to our ongoing success, have the flexibility and drive to enable us to innovate, are committed to working as part of a team and striving to deliver exceptional service wherever you can, we would especially like to hear from you.

As an equal opportunities employer, we welcome applicants from all backgrounds and want our workforce to reflect the diversity of our local communities so that we can all work for a brighter future - together.

A little about us here at Cheshire East Educational Psychology Service …

We are passionate advocates of relational practice. This is our preferred way of being and this is threaded through all the connections we make and in the work that we do. We regard ourselves as absolutely blessed to have a super friendly, highly supportive, immensely talented and creative collection of psychologists. Our team are committed to and value their supervision, embrace professional development, and all have the opportunity to step up and lead on aspects of our co-constructed service transformation plan.

Our team deliver a range of evidence informed prevention and early intervention work. This aligns with our highly valued partly traded model of service delivery. This is balanced alongside our much-valued psychological contribution across the full range of statutory duties. We are very keen to engage in research to continue to evaluate our practice.

We invest in our staff, champion supervision and shared team learning through attendance at our Supervision Hub and Working Groups. Additionally, we hold regular team meetings and already have a developing CPD, alongside a social calendar for those who wish to get involved.

Our traded offer is wide ranging and can be viewed on our CHESS booking hub. We are piloting PATH to strengthen and deepen our Post 16 offer to those with an EHCP, which is yielding awesome feedback. We are keen to progress our co-production activities using a range of models to firmly hold children and young people at the centre and enable a joined up, accountable method to our graduated approach.

Our diverse working practices enable us to provide educational psychology involvement spanning individual, targeted, and strategic work with our partners, stakeholders, and commissioners. In addition to our traded and statutory duties, our more recent commissions include:

• A community based, Family Hub’s offer. This includes Parent Drop-in’s (pre-bookable), bespoke training that is reflective of each Family Hub’s community needs (themes from recent intelligence includes: autism, developing attachments, emotional wellbeing, barriers to attendance, and parenting). We are further able to provide a year-round EP consultation offer for all EYS and Family Hub staff.
• The on-going development of a multi-disciplinary neurodiverse assessment pathway, with EP’s collaborating and contributing to this, alongside our inclusive offer to promote neuro-affirming practices.
• We are widening our Consultation offer, diversifying how we assess and report, developing an ambitious training programme for our children and young people to enhance their engagement with education and promote dynamic ways of learning to impact on their academic achievement.
• We are committed to supporting emotional wellbeing and mental health. Our service is embracing iThrive and will be contributing to the delivery of this alongside supporting settings to integrate the full offer. Additionally, we are gradually able to provide some therapeutic practice to children and young people and where commissioned, education staff, utilising our additional training and qualifications, under professional supervision.
• Our services have recently been commissioned to broaden our offer to Virtual School and strengthen our involvement and support for children and young people who are cared for, provide consultation related to inform preparing for adulthood plans for care-leavers, and provide a service to children and young people who are adopted, and their families.

Therefore, we are seeking to further expand our services!

Please do consider applying if you:

• Are a HCPC registered Educational Psychologist or are in Year 3 of training and due to complete your doctorate in September 2025.
• Can work as part of a super supportive team, sharing your knowledge and skills, and are keen to develop resources and deliver training with colleagues in the EP service, wider SEND teams and across Children’s Services to improve your own and others’ practice and skills.
• Can utilise your skills and knowledge to bring about positive change for Cheshire East children, young people, their families, and the wider community.
• Are creative, enthusiastic, and passionate about the role that applied psychology can play in your daily work.
• Advocate for a Consultation method of service delivery and the use of person-centred methods of problem-solving and supporting change.
• Are mindful of social justice, committed to early identification and prevention support, overcoming barriers, promoting social and educational inclusion, and improving the lives and wellbeing of all children, young people, and their families.
• Embody relational practice and committed to contributing to a felt sense of belonging and inclusion for all.

We can offer:

• An agile work style that allows off-site working, including the opportunity to work from home.
• A great flexitime system.
• Career average pension scheme.
• Full reimbursement of your HCPC fees.
• Dedicated administrative support.
• Strong commitment to supervision and CPD.
• A schedule of individual and peer supervision.
• Comprehensive induction programme to settle you in.
• Your own laptop and excellent IT support.
• Occasional car user allowance and long stay car parking permit valid across the borough.
• A commitment to remain on Soulbury pay and conditions.

For an informal discussion, please contact Dr Alexandria Brightmore, Principal Educational Psychologist - email: alexandria.brightmore@cheshireeast.gov.uk

Where you believe that our service aligns with you, please don’t delay!

Submit your application and we will aim to interview you within three working days of its receipt, up until the closer deadline.

Cheshire East Council is committed to safeguarding children and vulnerable adults across the Borough. As such, any cautions, convictions, reprimands or final warnings that are ‘not protected’ as defined by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) order 1975 (as amended in 2013) relating to the non-disclosure of spent convictions do not apply to this job. You must therefore, disclose whether you have any previous convictions where prompted to do so within the application process.

Please ensure you check the email account (including junk/spam boxes) from which you apply regularly as we will use this to contact you regarding your application.

If you have not heard from us within 4 weeks of the closing date then it is likely that you have not been shortlisted on this occasion, however please do not be discouraged from applying again.

For any technical enquiries please email sourcingteam@ecwip.co.uk

Please quote job reference number in all correspondence.