Senior Clinical Psychologist

Job overview

To join the Multi Agency Psychological Support (MAPS) Service - which is located in the local authority (London Borough of Hillingdon) and is part of an existing NHS service. The MAPS service comprises of a team of psychologists, providing a service for children, young people and young adults who are in/leaving care and/or adopted or have special guardianship orders, or who are children in need of protection, children in need, or vulnerable children referred to the stronger families service. We work closely with our Hillingdon CAMHS service.

Main duties of the job

A key part of this role will be to lead on psychological support for the ‘Staying Close’ project. Staying Close aims to provide stable accommodation and comprehensive support to care-experienced young people, aged 18+, who are leaving residential or supported living placements. This will be delivered in partnership with a range of agencies and organisations, including health, education, and employment providers.

To offer advice and consultation on clients’ psychological care to colleagues from all disciplines including; social care colleagues; staying close team, and individuals external to CAMHS/ Social care working autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures.

To provide specialist clinical psychology input to children and young people and their foster carers, special guardians, adoptive parents and their families, young adults referred to staying close project.

To provide specialist psychological and systemic assessment and therapy including specialist assessments for neurodevelopmental concerns where appropriate (e.g. ASD and ADHD).

To support psychological/ systemic assessment and therapy provided by other professionals and to offer supervision as agreed per job plan.

Responsible for liaising with staying close team (education, employment, nursing) and adult mental health services, and to regularly attend relevant team meetings.

Working for our organisation

The Multi Agency Psychological Support (MAPS) Service – Is a service which is located in the local authority (London Borough of Hillingdon) and is part of an existing NHS service. The MAPS service is a well-established team of psychologists, and provides a service for children, young people and young adults who are in/leaving care and/or adopted or have special guardianship orders, or who are children in need of protection, children in need, or children referred to stronger families service. We work closely with our Hillingdon CAMHS service based at Minet Clinic, Uxbridge. The CAMHS team is well established and is staffed by a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians.

Hillingdon CAMHS consists of five main sub-teams: Emotional Disorders Team; Neurodevelopmental Team; Enhanced Treatment Team; Learning Disabilities (LD-CAMHS), and; Multi-Agency Psychology Service (MAPS; for children looked after and children in need). The post holder may be required to travel to other parts of the catchment area including working within the community (e.g. schools) and / or wider network outside trust where necessary, The service operates Monday to Friday 09.00 to 17:00 with some flexibility to work extended hours to meet service need.

To find out more about working in CAMHS please for one of our CAMHS video.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The post holder will join an established Looked After Children and Early Intervention Service, and the innovative Staying Close project that works alongside an MDT CAMHS Team / AMH Services and undertake the following responsibilities:

To provide specialist psychological and/or systemic assessments and interventions whilst interpreting and integrating complex data from a variety of sources including psychological and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with clients, family members, foster carers and others involved in the client’s care, including frontline workers in health, education, social services and the voluntary

To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of children and young people with mental health difficulties, including those children who are looked after and adopted, or are children in need, children in need of protection, young adults leaving care, or vulnerable children who are part of the stronger families teams. These plans will be based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care

To work to prevent placement breakdown, and far more effective rehabilitation of children and young people back into their families where appropriate.

To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological and systemic interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional

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

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

To collaborate with colleagues in devising appropriate psychological and systemic interventions for children, young adults, families and

To provide specialist psychological/ systemic advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals who comprise of the team around the child/young adults contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment

To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically and or systemic based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client

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

To act as care coordinator, where appropriate, taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans including clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved the network of

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

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