Clinical Nurse Specialist | South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust

South West London and St Georges Mental Health Trust; City Of London; On-site; GBP 32,000 - 42,000; Full time

Job summary

A healthcare trust in the United Kingdom is seeking a committed CAMHS Clinical Nurse Specialist to work with children and young people facing complex mental health challenges. The role involves providing assessments and risk management as part of a multi-disciplinary team, offering evidence-based interventions, and collaborating closely with various services. Candidates must be registered mental health nurses with experience in child-focused settings. The position fosters professional development within a supportive environment.

Benefits

Flexible working

Career development opportunities

Positive work environment

Qualifications

• Registered mental health nurse with NMC registration.
• Experience in child and adolescent mental health settings.
• Ability to relate to diverse communities.

Responsibilities

• Provide mental health assessments and risk management for young people.
• Collaborate with multi-disciplinary teams and external services.
• Deliver group work interventions focused on skills training.

Skills

Experience with children and young people

Multi-disciplinary teamwork

Risk management and safeguarding

Delivering evidence-based interventions

Ability to manage a high-risk caseload

Education

Registered Mental Health Nurse qualified with the NMC

Job description

We are looking for a committed CAMHS Clinical Nurse Specialist who is passionate about working with children and young people with complex presentations, is seeking to expand their therapeutic skills and is looking for ongoing professional development opportunities within a specialist CAMHS setting.

Kingston CAMHS is an established Tier 3/Getting More Help service that supports children, young people, and their families with moderate to severe mental health difficulties. Our MDT service is made up of disciplines including psychiatry, psychology, family therapy, CBT therapists and child psychotherapy.

The service offers assessments and time‑limited evidence‑based interventions for children and young people presenting with moderate to severe mental health conditions, including formulation and diagnosis where appropriate, as well as recommendations and sign‑posting to our other services provided by partner organisations and services.

We have a range of Child and Adolescent Mental Health services within the Trust including Mental Health in Schools Teams, an Adolescent Outreach Team and 12‑bed adolescent inpatient unit (Aquarius ward), learning disabilities and youth offending CAMHS services, and a DBT service as well as Specialist and National services including All‑Age Eating Disorders day and inpatient services, Deaf CAMHS services in London, Kent and Cambridge including Corner House inpatient unit based at Springfield Hospital.

The role will be to provide a flexible, timely response to young people and their families who require Mental Health assessments, and /or robust risk management. The postholder will have a caseload within the Multi‑disciplinary Tier 3 CAMHS Service at Kingston CAMHS T3.

The children and young people will be known to Kingston CAMHS or may be referred by GP, schools or social workers. The role will be embedded in a multi‑disciplinary team and facilitate joint working with team consultants and therapists from the tier 3 teams, Children’s emergency care team (CEC’s), A&E, T3 Duty, waitlist support and case management with young people deemed at risk.

Qualifications

• Qualification as Registered Mental Health Nurse registered with the NMC.
• Experience of working with children and young people in a variety of settings.
• Experience of work within a multi‑disciplinary team.
• The ability to relate and provide accessible services to a diverse community.
• The ability to efficiently manage a high‑risk caseload.
• Knowledge and skills in risk management and safeguarding.
• The ability to deliver a range of evidence‑based interventions.
• An interest in further professional development opportunities to increase skill set, such as DBT training.

We are Proud to Belong at South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust.

We have expert services, a rich history and a clear commitment to providing the best quality care for those with mental ill‑health. The Care Quality Commission already rates our services as ‘good’ – we aspire to be ‘outstanding’.

This is a great time to join us. We are transforming the way we care for our communities to support our mission of Making Life Better Together. We have built two brand new mental health facilities at Springfield University Hospital, which are amongst the best in the world. More developments are planned across our sites and services.

We are inclusive and diverse and strive to be actively anti‑racist. We want to attract people from all backgrounds and experiences to enrich the work we do together. We are proud to co‑produce and involve our local communities in all that we do.

We offer flexible working, career development and a variety of benefits to enable a positive, welcoming environment in which our people and their careers can thrive.

Location: Tolworth Hospital, Surbiton

To create the very best environment to care for our patients, this site’s layout will be transformed in 2026 to add a number of wards to the existing three. Tolworth has a canteen and is near shops, the A3, Tolworth station, and is a bus ride from Surbiton station, with fast connections to Clapham Junction and London Waterloo.

Clinical Responsibilities

• Provide specialist advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals who are contributing directly to the assessment, formulation and treatment plan of young people.
• Work in close liaison with other children’s services including health, social care services, education, and the voluntary sector.
• Formulate assessment and implement plans for the treatment and/or management of a child or adolescent’s self‑harm mental health needs, using frameworks which take account of an analysis of a complex range of information from multiple sources, and uses methods of intervention based upon evidence of effectiveness across the full range of care settings.
• Manage meetings that routinely involve parents/carers and other professionals, where viewpoints can be different and in conflict.
• Frequently manage complex and emotionally charged meetings with children and families where clients may be hostile, antagonistic or have high expressed emotion.
• Be responsible for managing and prioritising own workload of children and adolescents involving self‑harm.
• Provide appropriate therapeutic interventions as part of a multi‑disciplinary assessment and treatment plan.
• Co‑facilitate a range of group work interventions focusing on life skills training, motivational and creative activities, systemic, psychological, and psychotherapeutic interventions for individual children, carers, families and groups.
• Make appropriate formulations that may need to consider risk such as sexual abuse, drawing upon a wide experience and knowledge base, maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses, and adjusting and changing treatment options.
• Be responsible for recording clinical work and communicating, both orally and in writing, in a skilled and constructive manner highly complex or distressing information, for example regarding young person’s physical and developmental status.
• Share assessment and treatment plans, using sensitive and age‑appropriate language, being mindful that the information may be unwelcome.
• Be mindful of the needs of children, young people and families from a wide range of racial, cultural, sexual religious and social backgrounds, and develop with colleagues innovative ways of meeting these needs.

Professional Responsibilities

• Ensure Trust standards of recording and information governance are maintained.
• Provide consultation and training in relation to self‑harm to a range of colleagues and professional groups as appropriate.

Teaching, Training and Supervision

• Receive regular supervision.
• Undertake mandatory and statutory training, supervision and annual appraisal as required by Trust policy.
• Contribute and commit to undertaking an annual Development Review/appraisal.
• Undertake personal development as identified in the Personal Development Plan (PDP).

Other Responsibilities

• Contribute to the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the post holder’s professional and service manager(s).
• Maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry and recording, report writing and the responsible exercise of professional self‑governance in accordance with professional codes of practice and Trust policies and procedures.
• Maintain up‑to‑date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies, and issues in relation to both the specific client group and mental health. For this post these specifically include:
  1. Current Mental Health Legislation
  2. The Children’s Act (1989)
  3. Trust, London Borough of and pan‑London child protection procedures.
  4. Local and national developments in SWLStG CAMHS
  5. Risk Assessment and Management
  6. Clinical Governance
  7. Local and national developments in line with “Every Child Matters”
  8. Joint working practices between voluntary and statutory sector

This advert closes on Monday 5 Jan 2026.