Specialist Practitioner Psychologist - Family Hubs - 0-5s team

Specialist Practitioner Psychologist - Family Hubs - 0-5s team

Are you passionate about early intervention and giving children the best start in life? We are looking to recruit a creative and enthusiastic Practitioner Psychologist to join our multi-disciplinary team dedicated to offering relationally-focused mental health support to children and their parents in the early years.

Our Tri-Borough Under 5's Pathway is a specialist team offering therapeutic support across Barnet, Enfield and Haringey to families during pregnancy or with children under five years old. The post holder will be part of a commissioned service for under-2 year olds working as part of LB Enfield Family Hubs programme, whilst also contributing to the wider under-5s offer.

You would be joining a new team with the creative scope to develop the pathway offer further. Interventions will be offered out of Family Hubs. The post would suit someone with an interest in giving consultation and the development of community partnership-working, the flexibility and relational skills to work within community settings, and a passion for supporting the mental wellbeing of young children and families.

Flexible working requests can be considered: note our policy of clinicians working a minimum contract of 3 days. If you might make such a request we welcome you to contact us before applying to discuss the required working days to ensure this is a potential fit.

Note that if there is a high level of interest in this post it may close before the stated deadline date.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will provide highly specialised assessment and formulation to parents/primary caregivers and their infants as well as deliver individualised evidence-based care packages where indicated including both group and individual therapeutic interventions as part of our 0-2 offer and also contribute to the wider Under 5s team.

The post holder will be able to demonstrate that they have a commitment to perinatal and parent-infant / infant mental health and relevant experience of working therapeutically with parents and babies. It is desirable that the post-holder can demonstrate training in parent-infant therapeutic work (e.g. parent-infant psychotherapy, video feedback interventions for assessment and intervention with parents and babies).

Job responsibilities

• To provide highly specialised assessment and formulation to parents and their infants and/or child under the age of 5.
• Evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.
• Competent in use of relevant screening and assessment tools.
• Formulate / offer / deliver and review psycho-social interventions (including 1:1 therapy and group programs).
• Deliver individualised evidence-based care packages where indicated.
• Assist in the continuing development of a high quality service that is underpinned by evidence-based practice, care pathways and NICE and DH guidance.
• Responsible for the initial assessment process, as well as observation and the ongoing comprehensive and specialist assessment, providing accurate and timely feedback.
• To provide parent-infant supervision where required and to support the growing knowledge and skills regarding infant mental health across the early years system.
• Assess service users' response to activities in accordance with agreed models of practice.
• To be competent in assessing risk to infant and parent when working with relational difficulty.

This is not an exhaustive list, please see the attached Job Description and Person Specification for more information on the role requirements and duties.

Person Specification Skills/Abilities

• Ability to relate clinical theory to clinical practice.
• Able to construct clear care plans differentiating appropriate intervention types from a range of options, based on analysis of information from assessment.
• Demonstrates the importance of gaining families' view of their strengths and needs and supporting them to be active in the goal-setting process.
• Able to organize, plan and prioritize your own workload. Demonstrates ability to generate appropriate strategies for caseload management.
• Ability to write reports using accessible language and demonstrating clinical reasoning.
• Understanding of evidence-based clinical practice and the ability to demonstrate how this influences good clinical practice.
• Confident and experienced in delivering training or providing consultation to other professionals.
• Experience of drawing upon attachment models and parent-infant relational models.

Qualifications/ Registrations

• Doctoral level training in Clinical, Educational or Counselling Psychology as accredited by the HCPC and BPS.
• Post qualification training in Infant Mental Health e.g. Parent Infant Psychotherapy, Video Interaction Approaches and Parent-Infant Group Approaches, Infant Observation Perinatal Clinical Psychologist Training.

Experience/ Knowledge

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of parent-infant dyads with severe and complex relational difficulties.
• Experience of working in a mental health setting, managing, and monitoring risk.
• Experience of working with nursery, school and parents and engaging them in interventions.
• Experience of formulating the difficulties within the parent-infant relationship based on a variety of assessments including observation of the dyad, where formulations integrate information from a range of sources.
• In-depth knowledge of child development and factors influencing the developing parent-infant relationship.
• Experience of working in or with community perinatal teams or midwife teams and understanding of maternal and paternal mental health.
• Experience of working therapeutically with children and families.
• Knowledge of NICE guidelines related to infant mental health and evidence of working in line with NICE recommendations.
• Experience of working with children/young people with social communication differences such as autism and ADHD.
• Resilience to working with infants in traumatic circumstances, and to offer containment to other team members impacted by the emotional impact of the work.

Personal Qualities

• A resilience to working with infants in traumatic circumstances, and to offer containment to other team members impacted by the emotional impact of the work.
• Proven ability to work as part of a team.
• Demonstrates empathy with clients, carers, and families often where barriers to understanding exist ensuring that effective communication is achieved to persuade and motivate participation in therapeutic activities.
• Ability to work and communicate highly sensitive, contentious information effectively in a highly emotive or hostile atmosphere, and to overcome barriers to acceptance/psychological resistance to potentially threatening information.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

£51,883 to £58,544 a year Per annum including HCAS.