Assistant Psychologist

We are looking to recruit an Assistant Psychologist to be part of the psychology service to the Croft Regional Multi-Disciplinary Mental Health team working with children and their families.

The Croft is a tier 4 children’s unit offering day and inpatient mental health care to children aged 0 - 12 and their families. The unit works intensively with children and their families offering short (usually 6 - 8 week) admissions to assess children’s strengths and difficulties and identify effective approaches to interventions.

The unit admits children with highly complex and challenging mental health difficulties, including autism spectrum conditions, complex developmental trauma, eating disorders, conduct difficulties and attachment disorders. We also provide a service for assessing parenting capacity where parents have significant mental health difficulties.

Our client group includes children who express their distress through physical and verbal aggression, and parents often have their own experiences of high levels of mental distress as well. It is a key role of all staff at the unit to contain and work with these difficulties.

The main duties of the post are to collect, collate and analyse outcome data under direct supervision of the team’s Clinical Psychologist, working independently according to a plan agreed with the qualified psychologist and within the overall framework of the teams
policies and procedures.

Additionally, this role will also involve assistance in clinically related administration, assessment, conduct of audits, collection of statistics and development of audit and/or research projects, teaching and project work.

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 health, Forensic & Specialist mental health, Learning Disabilities, Primary Care & Liaison psychiatry, Substance misuse, Social care, Research & Development.

Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details of responsibilities
- To complete protocol-based data collection procedures with patients/referrers, to administer/collect self-report measures, rating scales, psychometric assessments, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with clients, family members and others involved in the patients care. To then support the analysis and reporting of this information.
- To work with other staff to assess inpatients, day patients or residents and review their care in preparation for multi-disciplinary reviews.
- To assist in the development of a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings where care takes place.
- To attend and contribute to appropriate multi-disciplinary meetings.