Clinical Lead

Kent And Medway Mental Health Nhs Trust; Maidstone; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 75,000; Full time

Job summary

Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust is seeking a Senior Clinical Lead (Band 8b) to provide expert clinical leadership, assessment, and evidence-based interventions for children and young people in mental health crisis. Based at Maidstone TV Studios, you will work with the Integrated Team Manager and Strategic Clinical Lead to ensure NICE-concordant care and robust supervision.

The post requires a doctoral qualification in clinical psychology (or equivalent for psychotherapists), extensive

Qualifications

• Eligible for registration with NMC/HCPC/BABCP/UKCP
• Extensive experience delivering interventions for children and young people in mental health crisis
• Experience leading inter-agency meetings and planning treatment packages
• Full UK driving licence and access to a car for business use

Responsibilities

• Provide clinical lead responsibilities for the service and supervise the team
• Oversee caseloads of assessments and interventions, sharing expertise with the team
• Work with complex presentations in children and young people and their networks
• Attend organisational meetings and contribute to evidence-based interventions delivery
• Provide regular clinical supervision and support trainees when required

Skills

Clinical leadership

Clinical supervision

Inter-agency collaboration

CYP CAMHS experience

Education

Doctoral qualification in psychology

Tools

UK driving licence

Job description

Job summary

As Senior Clinical Lead (Band 8b) within the CREST team, you will provide expert clinical leadership, assessment, and evidence-based interventions for children and young people in mental health crisis.

Working with the Integrated Team Manager and Strategic Clinical Lead, you will ensure high-quality, NICE-concordant care, deliver robust clinical supervision, and lead high-risk cases to prevent hospital admissions and support timely acute discharge. Based at Maidstone TV Studios, you will foster strong multi-agency partnerships across Kent and Medway.

The successful candidate will hold a doctoral qualification in clinical or counselling psychology, or equivalent for psychotherapists, have significant experience of working within mental health services (ideally children and young people's services), and have membership with relevant organisation such as NMC, HCPC, BABCP, BPC or UKCP.

This position will involve travelling between different trust sites. Therefore, the post holder must hold a full, valid, UK driving licence and have access to a car/vehicle to use for business purposes (unless you have a disability as defined by the Equality Act 2010).

Main duties of the job

• You will have clinical lead responsibilities for the service, and work in collaboration with the team manager to run a safe and effective service. In the team managers absence you will deputise as the most senior member of the team.


• Oversee caseload of assessments, individual and group interventions; and share your clinical expertise with the team to build their knowledge and skills.


• You will be able to work confidently with complex mental health presentations experienced by children and young people, and be able to work with the personal and professional network that is important to that young person.


• There is an expectation that you will attend organisational meetings to represent the local team, contributing to the delivery of evidence based interventions and identifying training needs of the clinical team.


• You will offer regular clinical supervision to the team; and may be asked to support the development of trainees in other areas where they require clinical supervision that is within your own professional competence.

About us

We are Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust. We care for the mental health and wellbeing of people across Kent and Medway.

Our teams support children, young people and adults with a wide range of mental health needs. We also provide specialist services, including all-age eating disorder services and neurodevelopmental assessments for children and young people, such as autism and ADHD.

Because we work across the whole county and across hospital and community settings, we can make care more joined up and easier to access for the people we serve.

Our vision is simple: we are here to help communities not just live with mental illness, but live well. It's why we're passionate about working with communities to make mental health care better for everyone. Everything we do is guided by our values: caring, inclusive, curious and confident.

Join us if you share our passion for better mental health care and want to be part of a team that's working well together.

We are serious about diversity and inclusion, and we are working hard to build this into our DNA. We warmly welcome applications for any of our roles from people from diverse backgrounds, and we are proactively encouraging applications from under-represented communities for our more senior roles, like this one.

Person Specification

Essential Qualifications and Registrations

• To be eligible for registration as a full member of the appropriate professional body (e.g. NMC, HCPC, BABCP, UKCP).

Essential Experience

• Extensive experience delivering skilled, evidence-based interventions for children and young people presenting with complex emotional, behavioural, and mental health needs, including those experiencing acute distress or crisis.


• Experience of initiating, organising and planning inter-agency meetings aimed at setting in place a treatment package tailored to the individual


• Extensive experience of clinical supervision of post-graduate qualified psychological practitioners.

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.

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website.

Employer contact details

For questions about the job, contact:

Operational Team Manager, Ian Markin

Email: [e-mail]

Phone: [phone]

Closing date

09 November 2026

Reference number

380-CED042-A

Working pattern

Full-time

Contract

Permanent