Senior Clinical/Counselling Psychologist - CAMHS

This job is brought to you by Jobs/Redefined, the UK's leading over-50s age inclusive jobs board.

About Us

EPUT provides community health, mental health and learning disability services to support more than 3.2 million people living across Bedfordshire, Essex and Suffolk. Also:

• We are among the largest employers in the in the East of England region, with more than 10,000 staff working across more than 200 sites.
• We run the COVID-19 vaccination programme across mid and south Essex and Suffolk and north east Essex.

EPUT was formed on 1 April 2017 following the merger of North Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (NEP) and South Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (SEPT). A new leadership team was established at the Trust in 2020.
Our vision and values

Our Vision

"To be the leading health and wellbeing service in the provision of mental health and community care".

Our Purpose

"We care for people every day. What we do together, matters".

Our Values

• We Care
• We Learn
• We Empower

Our strategic objectives

• We will deliver safe, high quality integrated care services.
• We will enable each other to be the best that we can.
• We will work together with our partners to make our services better.
• We will help our communities to thrive.

Our services

• Mental Health Services
• Community Health Services
• Learning Disabilities Services
• Social Care

Find out more about the services we offer in our service directory.

Job overview

Become part of a vibrant team of experienced clinicians and innovators in service improvement, recently winning a national award for their DBT skills groups and Positive Behaviour Support Plans.

Working in an Inpatient Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) can be an incredibly rewarding and challenging career path.

As a Clinical Psychologist at EPUT, you will work with children and adolescents who are experiencing a wide range of mental health challenges, including emotion dysregulation, trauma, and psychosis. You provide assessment, formulation, and treatment in a collaborative setting with other mental health professionals, including psychiatrists, social workers, family therapists, art psychotherapists and nurses.

These Services offer short-term admission to young people with complex mental health needs. Both Poplar Ward and The St. Aubyn Centre are trauma, DBT and systemic informed services that work with young people and carers in collaborative ways to effect change. You will be joining a team that has a strong ethos of evidence-based practice and implements DBT, systemic and ASD/trauma-informed models across the service.

Main duties of the job

This post is suitable for:

• Experienced Clinical/Counselling/Forensic Psychologists who will be appointed to an 8a position.
• Newly qualified Clinical/Counselling/Forensic Psychologist who will take on responsibilities based on ability and experience and be appointed to a band 7 position. A preceptorship plan will be put in place to support the post holder working toward band 8a.

Main Duties for this role include:

• Conduct comprehensive psychological assessments of children and adolescents to determine their mental health needs.
• Develop and implement individualised treatment plans tailored to each client's needs and challenges.
• Work autonomously and collaboratively with clinicians in the multi-disciplinary team and with external professional networks.
• Educate families and caregivers about their child's mental health condition and provide support and guidance.

Offer bespoke training packages and reflective practice spaces to inpatient colleagues

Working for our organisation

We offer a CPD package of up to £6,000, calculated pro rata, to be used in the first three years of employment following successful completion of the probationary period and linked to the appraisal process as agreed with your line manager.

We welcome you for who you are and what you do and encourage you to bring your authentic self to work every day. We welcome applications from all backgrounds as we highly value the talents of people with different views and experiences as together, we can do our best work, support one another and care for our patients.

Starting at EPUT is just the beginning, and we want you to thrive and grow. We seek motivated staff who share our Trust values of We Care, We Learn, and We Empower. In return, we offer a range of benefits, including flexible working, seasonal ticket loans, long annual leave entitlement, a cycle-to-work scheme, excellent training, personal and professional development opportunities and one of the best pension schemes in the country with generous employer contributions.

Join us, and you'll do your life's best work - and make a difference to others.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Alongside the clinical roles outlined in the advert, the post also has a range of supervisory, consultation, teaching/ training, auditing/research and staff support roles dependent on interest and experience.

Such as:

• To assess patient systems where there are highly complex problems. Using advanced skills of analysis and interpretation, make appropriate formulations and interventions. This may include working with families under highly emotive conditions, e.g. family breakdown, sexual abuse, self-harm.
• Provide generic and specialist psychology assessments and devise highly specialised programmes of care and services to improve outcomes for young people and their families
• Formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of Young People's mental health problems and practice within the context of evidence-based approaches and the overall therapeutic approach/philosophy of the service.
• To be responsible for providing expert specialist psychological consultation, support and advice to professionals both within and external to the unit. This will include liaison and working with professional networks involved with complex issues such as child protection, self-harm, violence and trauma.
• Provide mental health advice and support for staff as required.
• Lead therapy groups and promote understanding of group dynamics using a psychological perspective.
• Organise and lead psychology teaching and training in the Unit in line with service and training needs.
• Collaborate with other multidisciplinary professionals across the system to ensure comprehensive care for each patient.
• Provide professional and clinical supervision and training placements to psychology trainees, including preparing placement reports in line with training organisation, HCPC and BPS codes of ethics and good practice.
• To exercise full responsibility and autonomy for one's own professional practice, working within professional ethics and Trust policies

Person specification

Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Doctoral or equivalent level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.
• Knowledge of legislation, and its implications in relation to the client group and mental health.
• Well-developed knowledge of theory and practice of highly specialised psychological therapies and assessment methodologies.

Desirable criteria

• Formal training in supervision of psychological therapists (band 8a only)
• Well-developed 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.).

Education / Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Doctoral level training in clinical psychology, including two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology as accredited by the appropriate professional accreditation body.
• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.
• HCPC (and/or UKCP) registered, and eligible for registration with a professional clinical body (BPS).
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the HPCP and UKCP/BPS by completion of CPD log demonstrating a minimum of 40 hours per year

!Important Professional References

Make sure that as a part of your application you have professional references with business contract information covering your last three year employment history. We are unable to accept personal or character references.

As a newly appointed employee you are responsible for incurring the cost of your initial DBS check relevant to your post, the amount will be deducted from your first salary with the Trust.

Applications for Job Share are positively welcomed.

Equal Opportunities Employer

Our Trust is an Equal Opportunities Employer. We particularly welcome applications from people with experience of using mental health services. We also hold the Disability two tick symbol and have made the pledge to commit to employing more people with learning disabilities, we encourage people with a disability to apply. If you require this application form in another format i.e. Braille or audio tape etc, please contact the Recruitment Department on 01375 364513 or email epunft.recruitment.adverts@nhs.net and we can arrange for this to be dispatched to you.

The Trust has the right to expire vacancies prior to the closing date if they so wish. The Trust makes every attempt to contact all applicants and we strongly advise that you check the email account which is registered with NHS Jobs regularly, we would advise however due to the high number of applications we receive that if you have not heard from us within three weeks of the closing date your application has been unsuccessful on this occasion.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults, and expect all staff to undertake this commitment. Applicants will be subject to robust safer recruitment processes.

Covid Vaccination

Although Covid vaccinations are no longer a mandatory requirement within the NHS we continue to encourage and support the vaccination uptake as this remains the best line of defence against Covid19. The safety of our staff and patients is a top priority for us at EPUT.

If you would like to book a Covid vaccination or would like more information please contact us by emailing epunft.cv19hr@nhs.net.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Documents to download

• Job Description (PDF, 832.3KB)
• Person Specification (PDF, 472.4KB)
• EPUT Pledge - Step into Health (PDF, 211.0KB)
• Candidate Privacy Policy (PDF, 336.6KB)
• Right to Work Information (PDF, 293.6KB)
• Employer Recognition Scheme - Gold Award (PDF, 27.7KB)
• Trust Vision and Values (PDF, 168.9KB)
• Values of the NHS Pension (PDF, 151.3KB)