Aspire Assistant Psychologist

Islington CAMHS

Band 4

0.6wte (3 days a week) for six months

The Aspire Assistant Psychologist programme is funded by the Health Education England to give an opportunity for psychology graduates who experience barriers to entering psychology professions and have not been able to gain relevant work experience due to coming from a disadvantaged background.

First or Upper Second degree in Psychology

The Aspire assistant psychologist programme is for psychology graduates who have not been able to gain relevant work experience due to coming from a disadvantaged background. You must meet all the following criteria. 1) You have never worked as assistant psychologist; 2) you are from a socially disadvantaged background (e.g. in relation to race, ethnicity, socio-economic background, being a care leaver).

Interest in working with people with mental health problems and/or other disabilities, experience of working with children and/or young people.

Whittington Health serves a richly diverse population and works hard to ensure that all our services are fair and equally accessible to everyone. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the way we look after our staff. We aim to employ a workforce which is as representative as possible of this population, so we are open to the value of differences in age, disability, gender, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, race, sexual orientation, and religion or belief. The Trust believes that as a public sector organisation we have an obligation to have recruitment, training, promotion and other formal employment policies and procedures that are sensitive to these differences. We think that by doing so, we are better able to treat our patients as well as being a better place to work.

Main duties will include the following. Due to the nature of Aspire Assistant psychologist role at an entry level, the duties may vary and depend on their level of development.

1) To be responsible for keeping screening/outcome measures database updated: sending out questionnaires as required, tracking completion, scoring and uploading data onto the Electronic Patient Records.

1) Depending on the development, the postholder may hold a small caseload and deliver evidence-based assessments interventions and complete administrative tasks as required such as outcoming appointments, record keeping on the EPR and completion of outcome measures and feedback tools.

2) To conduct observations of referred children and young people in school or other venues to support assessments.

3) To support initial assessment appointments or specific pieces of clinical work by joining clinicians and assisting with writing up notes, letters and outcome measures.

4) To undertake various tasks to assist service/teams’ work. This may include telephone calls to clients, liaison with other agencies, screening/intake work including signposting and giving advice, screening for neurodevelopmental issues.

5) Mentoring and co-ordinating the work of undergraduate placement students (one a year).

6) To support the services’ work to embed the meaningful use of outcome measures and feedback tools. The role may include taking the lead role on this in teams, working with the managers to plan and implement strategic use of outcome and feedback tools, learning about the measures and tools and offer training and support to clinical staff, devising a system to ensure collection of measures to meet the service’s KPI (Key Performance Targets), CAMHS scoring of measures, uploading of results, data collection, analysis and preparation of reports to contribute to the service’s audits/evaluation.

7) To support the development and maintenance of a directory of services in Islington and raise awareness of these services to the team, to help with signposting young people and families to appropriate support whilst waiting for appointments or after their treatment has ended.

8) Attending and contributing to the team’s Multidisciplinary case discussions, recording the outcome of clinical meetings onto the electronic notes.

9) To participate, undertake and/or lead on various projects, e.g. Quality Improvement, service user participation and co-production and work with managers and clinicians to address service priorities such as waiting time initiatives.

10) Seek and use advice and support from senior clinicians to ensure client safety and meet their needs. Attend clinical and line management supervision as required.

11) Attend mandatory training and any other training as required.