About the role:

Are you a Clinical/Counselling Psychologist, Occupational Therapist, or Nurse with a keen interest in neurodiversity, and a willingness and desire to progress in your career? If so , we want to hear from you. Our autism diagnostic service providing assessment and pre-and post-diagnostic support to adults across Hillingdon, Harrow and Brent is seeking a new team member to cover maternity leave for a year. This is an opportunity to help us shape and develop the future of the team and to work as part of a growing and developing service.

The successful applicant may have contact with patients or service users. As an NHS Trust we strongly encourage and support vaccination as this remains the best way to protect yourself, your family, your colleagues and of course patients and service users when working on our healthcare settings.

Main duties of the job

As a practitioner psychologist, nurse or Allied Health Professional within the Autism team, you will be responsible for contributing to multi-disciplinary autism assessment and pre and post-diagnostic support. We will enable you to develop expertise in assessments and interventions, alongside drawing on your skills and knowledge of autism to contribute to assessment and pre-and post-diagnostic support. There will be opportunities for you to develop a specialist area of practice aligned to service needs and your interests.

Our ideal candidate has experience of working with autistic people and is enthusiastic about working to improve services for autistic adults in Brent, Harrow and Hillingdon. We can also offer training in diagnostic tools if you do not already have this, and access to clinical and professional supervision to enable you to develop your clinical skills to work with autistic people.

About us

About the Trust:

CNWL is a major provider of Community and Mental health services across the South East of England. We employ approximately 7,500 staff who provides more than 300 different health and social care services across 150 sites and a number of other community settings.

Our Vision:

The trust vision is Wellbeing for life. We work in partnership with all who use our services to improve health and wellbeing, and this is not different within our ASD programme with work to embed peer support and co development as the cornerstone of the service we develop. We are implementing a scheme to ensure that we are offering work opportunities to those form our non-diverse communities.

What we offer:

We offer a flexible working programme and believe that we need to support you both at work and at home to deliver the best health care we can. We will support you to develop your skills, and invest in you, you will have an opportunity to access specialist training, supervision and mentorship that will help you progress in your career.

About our team:

You will be joining a new and evolving team that already has highly skilled and experienced staff who can provided a safe and supportive place for you to develop and to support the service users we work with. This is an AHP led service with a senior management team made up of skilled and experience OTs, SLT's and Psychologist.

Job description

Job responsibilities

Job Summary

• To work as a qualified band 7 practitioner psychologist/Allied Health Professional/Nurse within the multidisciplinary Autism Diagnostic Service
• To be an autonomous practitioner assessing service users, defining needs in relation to and carrying out autism assessments, and maintaining clinical records.
• To be practice guided and supported by senior staff within the clinical area when necessary
• To be responsible for own continuous professional development build on previous experience enabling further development of clinical, administrative and leadership competencies.
• To supervise and support more junior colleagues.
• To be involved in service audit projects.
• To attend relevant departmental meetings and in-service training opportunities.

Role Responsibilities:

Working relationships and communication requirements of your job

• To provide specialised and comprehensive Autism assessment for service users who may have needs including complex physical, psychological and sensory impairment, potentially presenting with distress, mental health issues and/or behaviours that challenge.
• To work flexibly as needed to support the multi-disciplinary team.
• To educate and advise service users, their families and carers, and staff teams about the persons difficulties and needs, and work collaboratively to develop suitable management plans.
• To be an active member of the multidisciplinary team working collaboratively with other members of the team and recognising the skills and expertise of others.
• To be proactive in personal professional development.
• To provide support and supervision to more junior colleagues, assistants and students.
• To accept clinical responsibility for a designated caseload of patients and to organise this effectively and efficiently with regard to clinical priorities and use of time.
• To maintain clinical records as an autonomous practitioner.
• The job description and person specification are an outline of the tasks, responsibilities and outcomes required of the role. The job holder will carry out any other duties as may reasonably be required by their line manager.
• The job description and person specification may be reviewed on an on-going basis in accordance with the changing needs of the Service and the Organisation.

Person Specification

Training & Qualifications

Essential

• A professional qualification in Clinical/Counselling Psychology/Occupational Therapy/Speech and Language Therapy/Nursing
• Registration to practice in the UK with the HCPC/NMC in accordance with professional background

Desirable

• Further qualifications relevant to autism assessment
• Training in Sensory Integration techniques

Knowledge & Skills

Essential

• Highly developed interpersonal skills enabling therapeutic alliances to be developed & maintained with service users who have multiple & complex needs
• Basic word processing and IT skills
• Ability to work autonomously, on own initiative and under pressure to meet deadlines & to make and action decisions independently within agreed time frames
• Skills in producing timely, accurate and informative reports and notes
• Excellent organisational skills to manage the demands of the role, including prioritisation of workload, delegation skills
• Highly developed written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to regularly identify and undertake appropriate learning and development opportunities as part of ongoing CPD
• Ability to ensure the application of risk assessment and risk management strategies which facilitates a service user's management
• Knowledge and application of national policies and procedures (relevant to the client group)
• Knowledge of safeguarding policies and procedures
• Knowledge of working cross-culturally

Desirable

• Skills in developing and delivering training
• Skills in supervising more junior members of staff

Experience

Essential

• Experience of working with autistic people
• Experience of working in a multi-professional team.
• Experience of working within a multi-agency environment.
• Experience of working in a multi-cultural context
• Experience of participating in audit / research projects

Desirable

• Experience of autism assessment using standardised tools, i.e. ADI/ADOS
• Experience of offering post-diagnostic support to autistic adults
• Experience of teaching/training others

General

Essential

• Commitment to treating service users with respect and dignity at all times.
• Excellent interpersonal skills - including observation, motivating, listening, empathy and counselling skills
• Ability to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions in the context of best available evidence

Employer details

Employer name

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust

Address

Kingswood Centre

134 Honeypot Lane

London

NW9 9QY

Any attachments will be accessible after you click to apply.

333-J-LD-0271