CAMHS Practitioner

This varied role will enable you to further develop your skills in structured assessment, psychological formulation, group and individual interventions, staff training and evaluation and system development.

We are looking ideally for someone with experience of working in a mental health setting with complex and severe mental illness, who can take a creative and flexible approach to their work and adapt to the busy, and often unpredictable and demanding working environment.

You will be closely supervised by a qualified psychologist. We strongly belief in supporting the development of our staff.

Main duties of the job

This post will have two main areas of focus. Firstly, you will work closely with the psychological therapies service where we we adopt a holistic multidisciplinary approach to formulate and implement evidence-based treatment programmes.

Within this, you will be reviewing referrals and allocating to best available interventions and you will be co-facilitating group interventions.

The second part of the role focuses on integrated working with our local community mental health team (CMHT). This will often be as part of the multidisciplinary disciplinary team discussions, supporting care for service users presenting with a range of mental health difficulties, and contributing to a safe, therapeutic and effective team milieu.

You will also offer consultation and training sessions to the CMHT where appropriate.

The post holder for this role will work flexibly both within the pathway, managing referrals and triages, offering low intensity group interventions in tier 1 as well as reaching out to our short term CMHTs, where they will provide integrated care through MDT involvement, consultation and training.

You will need to be able to work with teams, and with people whose behaviour can present as significantly challenging at times.

The post is based at 151 Blackfriars road, but there is an expectation that the postholder will travel to other sites as needed.

Working for our organisation

The second largest inner London Borough with an official population of around 350,000. The local population has needs related to a high level of social deprivation such as unemployment, poor social housing and child poverty.

There are also pockets of greater affluence. There are high levels of morbidity, and levels and complexity of mental health problems are above the national average

Lambeth CCG and Lambeth Council want people of Lambeth to have a fully integrated and coordinated mental health system which focuses on people's strengths and supports their whole health and wellbeing.

They have commissioned SLAM NHS as part of the Lambeth Living Well Network (LWN) Alliance to lead, co-ordinate and, in large part, deliver support and services for those experiencing mental health issues in Lambeth.

The Trust : The South London and Maudsley (SLaM) NHS Foundation Trust is part of King's Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre (AHSC) and committed to innovation, effective interventions and improved service user outcomes.

It provides mental health services to the people of Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham and Croydon, and some more specialist services to people from across the UK.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

To provide a psychology service, as part of the Secondary Care Psychological Therapies pathway, to users of secondary care community mental health services in Lambeth, and, where appropriate, their families and caregivers.

This includes referral processing and screening, assessment, treatment planning and implementation, and monitoring of outcomes, according to relevant guidance and the evidence base.

• To co-facilitate psychoeducational skills groups based on CBT and DBT, under the close clinical and professional training and supervision of a practitioner psychologist.


• To work as part of a Community Mental Health Team, attending some team meetings and functioning as a liaison point for the Lambeth Secondary Care Psychological Therapies Pathway.


The CMHT is the Short Term Support service, a primary care facing CMHT, and Focused Support Team.

To assist in clinically related administration, conduct of audits, collection of statistics, development of audit and / or research projects, teaching and project work under the close clinical and professional training and supervision of a practitioner psychologist.

In particular to support the development and evaluation of a system for patient pathway tracking with the aim to increase quality of recording of communications, monitoring of clinical note keeping and easy of tracking steps of care.

• To work as at appropriate levels of independence, following clinical guidelines and the policies and procedures of the service, supported by the clinical / professional supervisor or manager as required.


• Provide a range of clinical perspectives and interventions, including a CBT or DBT based psychological therapy.


• To work flexibly across a range of community, primary and secondary care settings.


• To contribute to enabling other staff, service users and carers from diverse backgrounds to flourish by working to create a psychologically safe environment.


• To work as an autonomous professional within BPS and HCPC guidelines and codes of conduct, and guided by the policies and procedures of the service, taking responsibility for own work including treatment and discharge decisions with support of clinical supervisor.
  
  1st class or 2 : 1 (Hons) in Psychology (or other relevant degree) scores 2; 1st class or 2.1 (hons) in an unrelated subject scores 1, no degree level qualification scores 0. (2), MSc or PhD in mental health related topic scores 2; Other PG training in Mental health scores 1, no PG training in MH scores 0 (2), Paid or unpaid work carrying out assessments and group interventions scores 2, other paid or unpaid work with people with people with complex MH problems scores 1, no such experience scores 0 (2)


• Post-graduate experience of conducting research projects or audits.


• Experience that supports working with, and addressing issues of, diversity within local communities. This may have been gained through work, research, volunteering and / or lived experience.


Desirable criteria

• Experience developing and evaluating group interventions


• Experience using ePJS


Knowledge / Skills,
• Skills in relevant psychological assessment and interventions that enable working as a pre-qualified practitioner under close clinical supervision.


• Well-developed verbal and written communication skills including communicating complex, information to clients, families and colleagues.


• Well-developed IT skills including entry and analysis of research data.


Desirable criteria

Consultation skills to work with the multi-professional team or other professional groups within own service,
• Ability to work effectively within a multi-disciplinary team, participating in effective team functioning and holding team roles.


• Ability to identify and follow relevant clinical governance procedures.


• Ability to communicate complex, sensitive or contentious information to people who may have impediments to understanding.