Pre School Autism Services Principal Psychologist

8b Principal Psychologist for Pre School Autism Services

An exciting and unique opportunity has arisen for an experienced, committed and enthusiastic Principal Clinical Psychologist to be part of our All-Age Neurodevelopmental (ND) Service within Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust (CWPT). Working predominantly with pre-school children and their families/carers, the post-holder will be responsible, along with the Consultant Psychologist and Senior Leadership Team, for the governance of clinical psychology input into the pre-school ND pathways across Coventry and Warwickshire

Serving the population of Coventry and Warwickshire, the ND Service offers diagnostic assessment for autism and ADHD for children, young people and adults along with post diagnosis intervention. We are a multi-disciplinary team well-regarded within the Coventry and Warwickshire region and have repeatedly been nominated and received both individual and team Trust recognition for our services. The service is committed to innovative ways of working across partner and outside services and agencies. Informed by national strategy/policy and with the support of Experts by Experience we strive for best practice solutions to the pressures for assessment and support for this client group. Additional funding into the ND service means we can offer this new post specifically for our pre-school pathways.

The service received an overall rating of Good by the CQC and an Outstanding for care and compassion of which we are rightly proud. We have also been recognised both locally and nationally by receiving awards for the services we provide.

Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust provides a full range of expanding physical, mental health and learning disability services to children, young adults, adults and older adults over many sites across Coventry, Warwickshire and Solihull.

Services are provided to a population of over one million people living in Coventry and Warwickshire and also a wider geographical area in some of our specialist services, we see on average around 5,000 patients every day.

We are seeking an Applied/Practitioner Psychologist with extensive experience of assessment and intervention for individuals with autism. Ideally the post-holder will have experience of working with pre-school children and have additional post-qualification training in diagnostic interviews for Autism (e.g. ADOS, ADI-R, DISCO, 3Di). As our pathways are multi-disciplinary/multi-agency a large part of the role will be working alongside colleagues such as Community Paediatrics, Speech and Language Therapists, Educational Psychologists and our Neurodevelopmental Practitioners. They will demonstrate confidence in supporting supervisees and colleagues in their clinical decision-making, particularly in difficult cases or where there may be external disagreement about diagnostic decisions.

The post-holder will join a large and well-established group of psychologists within the all-age ND service and be part of the clinical leadership team which includes other Principal Psychologists. The ND Service has been recently embedded within CWPT’s Learning Disability and Autism Directorate and as such we sit within a large group of specialist MDT services, many of which have strong psychology leadership. We also maintain very strong cross-directorate relationships with mental health services for children, child health and education services.

Other aspects of this role include leading on service development, representation of the service at external meetings and ability to produce and deliver high-quality presentations. The post-holder will be organised, able to work to deadlines, to demonstrate the ability to work autonomously but also with direction and have excellent communication skills including with neuro-diverse individuals. The role will involve working across different localities and within the Trust’s agile working policy. Extensive experience of the supervision of Clinical Psychology Trainees/Assistant Psychologists and/or qualified psychologists is also essential.