The Neurodevelopmental CAMHS team in Cambridge is looking for an experienced and motivated Clinical/Counselling Psychologist or Systemic Family Therapist to join our team. We work with children and young people with moderate to severe mental health conditions with comorbid ASD, LD and ADHD, providing comprehensive assessment and intervention.

The ideal candidate will have extensive experience working with children, young people and their families in a mental health/neurodevelopmental setting and will display effective communication skills to excel in a clinical leadership role. The role involves supporting and supervising junior staff and providing evidence-based assessment and treatment for complex cases. The post-holder will need to work within our passionate multi-disciplinary team and have interest in service improvement and development.

If you're interested to come and join our dedicated and friendly team please do apply! We'd be happy to discuss informally - please contact Lee Revelles on 01223 465100.

Main duties of the job

The post-holder's job purpose is to contribute to the systematic provision of a high-quality specialist psychological/therapeutic service to young people and their families of the Neurodevelopmental Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), across all sectors of care. To carry out, supervise and support work provided by other clinical members of the team who provide psychologically based care and treatment.

The post-holder will work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of the therapeutic practice within CAMHS services.

To utilise skills for audit, policy and service development and research. To propose and implement policy changes within the area serviced by the CAMHS Neurodevelopmental Team.

The post holder is part of the CAMHS service line and is able to access peer supervision and support through this directorate. They will receive supervision, professional support and guidance from the lead psychologist within the CAMHS Team. For family therapists, supervision relevant to the discipline will also be provided. Day to day, they will be based within the multi-disciplinary CAMHS South Neurodevelopmental team.

About us

Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust is a health & social care organisation dedicated to providing high quality care with compassion to improve the health & wellbeing of the people we care for, as well as supporting & empowering them to lead a fulfilling life.

Our clinical teams deliver many NHS services not only via inpatient and primary care setting but also with the community. These services include Children, Adult & Older Peoples mental & physical health, Forensic & Specialist mental health, Learning Disabilities, Primary Care & Liaison psychiatry, Substance misuse, Social care, Research & Development.

To achieve our goal, we look to recruit high calibre candidates that share our vision & values. As an equal opportunities employer, we encourage applications from all sectors of the community, particularly from under-represented groups including disabled people & members of our ethnic minorities & LGBTQ+ communities.

Job description Job responsibilities

Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details of responsibilities

Working with the Neurodevelopmental Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service:

1. Working with parents/carers, young people and other family members and other team members to provide specialist psychological/systemic/psychotherapy assessments based on appropriate use, interpretation and integration of highly complex psychological data from a variety of sources including self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with clients, family members and others involved in the clients care.

2. To develop psychological/systemic/psychotherapeutic formulations of presenting problems or situations that integrate information from assessments within a coherent framework that draws upon psychological/psychoanalytic/systemic theory and evidence and which incorporates interpersonal, societal, cultural and biological factors.

3. To assist the CAMHS team in communicating difficult, complex and sensitive information, which is both developmentally appropriate and psychologically informed to young people and families.

4. To be responsible for implementing a range of evidence based therapeutic interventions for users of the CAMHS service in synthesis, adjusting and refining formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses. The interventions provided will be dependent on the post-holders trained discipline.

5. To evaluate and make decisions about therapeutic treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.

6. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.

7. To provide specialist advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.

8. To ensure that all members of the treating team have access to a psychologically/systemically based framework for understanding and care of clients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of research and theory.

9. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management in line with hospital and inter-agency policies and procedures.

10. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.

11. To plan and prioritise workload, exercising autonomous professional responsibility of the assessment and treatment of clients.

12. Provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of therapeutic care by all members of the multi-disciplinary team.

13. To ensure that clients are appropriately consulted about the relevant aspects of their care and are empowered to express their views in a responsive environment.

14. To work in partnership with other disciplines and to maintain links with statutory and non-statutory and primary care agencies as appropriate.

15. To attend and contribute to appropriate multi-disciplinary and psychology meetings.

16. To offer a systemic, reflective and psychological/systemic perspective within the team around our understanding of families as well as team and organisational dynamics.

17. To participate in the weekday and weekend daytime on-call CAMHS rota.

Person Specification Education / Qualifications Essential

• Successful completion of post graduate psychoanalytic child and adolescent psychotherapy training which is approved and monitored by the Association of Child Psychotherapists OR Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical or counselling psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics, and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology, or a BPS Statement of Equivalence OR

Desirable

• Practising Psychotherapist who is a fully qualified registered member of the relevant accrediting body e.g. UKCP, ACP, BPC or BACP OR Accredited or eligible for accreditation in the above by relevant UK governing body, i.e., HCPC OR Accredited with UKCP as a Systemic Family Psychotherapist

Experience Essential

• Experience of specialist psychological/systemic assessment, formulation, and treatment of clients across a range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care, or in-patient settings.
• Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' care and treatment.
• Experience of working in a multi-disciplinary setting.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision

Desirable

• Experience of working as a qualified practitioner.
• Experience of working within a community/perinatal mental health team and experience of working with infants and families.
• Experience of representing a psychological or systemic perspective within the context of multi-disciplinary care.
• Experience of working within a multicultural framework.
• Experience of working alongside Children's Social Care or with at risk families
• Have a lived experience of mental health challenges.

Knowledge & Skills Essential

• Excellent knowledge of infant mental health, developmental psychology, attachment and mental health.
• Good understanding of other professionals' theoretical perspectives of this client group.
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and setting, and its implication for both clinical practice and professional management.
• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological/psychotherapeutic/systemic assessment, intervention, and management, frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration requiring the use of highly developed analytic skills.
• Skills in individual and group work and programme planning including those modalities used within perinatal and parent-infant mental health settings.
• Excellent communication skills, able to communicate effectively, verbally and in writing complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information including contentious and highly distressing information to service users, their families' carers, and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.

Desirable

• High level of knowledge of working with perinatal and parent-infant mental health.
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g., personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc.)
• Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex multivariate data analysis as practiced within clinical health psychology.

Personal Qualities Essential

• Interpersonally calm and able to defuse difficult, volatile situations.
• Able to tolerate ambiguity and to take decisions in situations of incomplete information.
• Able to contain and work with high levels of distress from clients and families
• Recognise people's right to privacy and dignity, treating every person with respect.
• Willingness to embrace integrated model and new ways of working.
• Willingness to be flexible in approach and attitude

Physical Requirements Essential

• Ability to travel.

Any attachments will be accessible after you click to apply.

310-CYPF-5126957