MHST Practitioner Psychologist

Maudsley Learning; London; On-site; GBP 54,000 - 61,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking dedicated psychologists to join their Mental Health Support Team in schools. This role focuses on enhancing mental health support for children and young people, particularly those with special educational needs. You will engage in evidence-based practices, conduct psychological assessments, and collaborate with educational staff to foster a supportive environment. This position offers an exciting opportunity to make a significant impact on the mental well-being of young individuals in the community, contributing to a transformative journey in mental health care. If you are passionate about mental health and education, this role is perfect for you.

Qualifications

• Post-graduate qualification in Educational Psychology or Clinical/Counselling Psychology.
• Experience working in educational settings and providing psychological assessments.

Responsibilities

• Support children and young people with SEMH needs in schools.
• Conduct psychological assessments and deliver evidence-based interventions.

Skills

Psychological Assessment

Communication Skills

Planning and Scheduling Activities

Evidence-Based Practice

Cultural Competence

Education

Post-graduate qualification in Educational Psychology

Training on evidence-based therapeutic approaches

Tools

Assessment Tools

Job description

Main area Mental health Support Team (MHST) in Schools Grade NHS AfC: Band 7 Contract Permanent: Full-time hours would also be considered Hours

• Full time
• Part time

37.5 hours per week (part-time hours (18.75p/w) also considered) Job ref 334-CLI-6875997

Site Kaleidoscope Centre Town Lewisham Salary £54,320 - £60,981 per annum inclusive of HCAs Salary period Yearly Closing 06/02/2025 23:59

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust has a rich history, well-established community links and an international reputation. We deliver specialist services in the London boroughs of Croydon, Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark, Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich, Wandsworth and Richmond.

We are committed to providing high quality and specialist care to our service users and we are recognised for the care and treatment we provide. The Care Quality Commission already rates our services as ‘good’.

We launched our five-year strategy, Aiming High; Changing Lives in 2021 together with Our Care Improvement System as our quality management system methodology to make a positive impact on patient care, outcomes and staff experience. By joining SLaM, all staff will get the opportunity to be part of this exciting improvement journey supported with learning and development to harness everyone’s potential as change makers.

The trust recognises the unique and valuable contribution that people with lived experience of mental illness can bring to a role. We therefore welcome applications from people with lived experience and consider them as an asset to the Trust.

Our Values

We take pride in providing specialist care to our service users where our Trust values and our promise to be caring, kind, polite, prompt, honest, listen and do what I say I’m going to do is at the heart of everything we do. When you join us, you’ll be part of something special.

As a Trust we are happy to talk about flexible working.

Job overview

Lewisham CAMHS Mental Health Support Team (MSHT) is a new early intervention service designed to help meet the mental health needs of children and young people (CYP) in educational settings. The Lewisham MHST is due to expand with a fourth team in January 2025. The successful candidate will be based in two of these teams comprising of Education Wellbeing Practitioners (EWPs), Senior Wellbeing Practitioners, CAMHS practitioners and Team leaders who coordinate this work.

Main duties of the job

We are looking for educational psychologists or clinical/counselling psychologists with HCPC registration and experience working with schools. Your main duties will involve:

• Supporting mild to moderate SEMH needs and approaches to supporting improved outcomes, including for children and young people with an additional SEND.
• Developing and delivering evidence-based practice and guidance around the Whole School Approach to mental health and wellbeing.
• Conducting psychological assessments, including through consultation, and appropriate selection of assessment tools, interpreting and integrating complex data that require analysis, interpretation and comparison, drawn from several sources.
• Communicating skilfully and sensitively complex and sensitive information with children and young people, families/carers, school staff, other agencies and colleagues, overcoming barriers to communication including sensory and emotional difficulties, cultural differences and hostility to or rejection of information.
• Planning and scheduling a range of activities with schools, families and children and young people, including consultation, intervention and workshops.
• Enabling children, young people and families/carers to share their views and for these views to shape planned support.

Working for our organisation

We aspire to bring education, health and families together, working collaboratively to support the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people based on their own life experiences and the uniqueness of their school community, whether they are thriving, coping or would benefit from getting help.

Our service is underpinned by principles from the MHST Manual (NHS England, 2019) and Children and Young People - Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (CYP-IAPT):

• Value and facilitate authentic participation of young people, parents, carers and communities at all levels of the service.
• Provide evidence-based practice and are flexible and adaptive to changes in evidence.
• Are committed to raising awareness of mental health issues in children and young people and are active in decreasing stigma around mental ill-health.
• Demonstrate accountability by adopting the rigorous monitoring of the clinical outcomes of the service.
• Actively work to improve access and engagement with services.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

KR 1 Clinical and Client Care

• Enhancing accessibility to mental health services for children and young people in Lewisham schools.
• Providing high-quality consultation to school staff, parents, other professionals and where appropriate children and young people, focused on mental health and wellbeing.
• Identifying and addressing systemic barriers to change related to mental health and wellbeing in schools.
• Providing assessments, formulations and interventions for children, young people and families in the MHST.
• Providing training and coaching to school staff to support children and young people with a range of mental health needs, including developing their whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing.
• Supporting and empowering children, young people and families to make informed choices about intervention.
• Supporting children and young people experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties and their families in the self-management of presenting difficulties.
• Working in partnership with families to provide culturally appropriate psychological interventions.
• Assessing and monitoring risk and drawing up appropriate risk management plans.
• Using routine outcome measures.
• Developing and helping deliver workshops, groups and other psychologically informed activities for children, young people and families in schools.

KR 2 Contributing to team or service clinical functioning

• Contributing to the effective working of the team or service and to a psychologically informed framework for the service.
• Contributing to the team or service’s delivery of accessible and acceptable services to diverse local communities.
• Being proactive in challenging discrimination and supporting the development of culturally competent services.
• Advising other members of the service on both specialist psychological care and universal approaches for all children and young people.
• Advising other members of the service on working systemically in an education context.
• Utilising theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
• Working in partnership with schools and colleges to develop and deliver activities related to their whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing.
• Contributing to enabling other staff, service users and carers from diverse backgrounds to flourish by working to create a psychologically safe environment.
• Liaising with referrers, educational psychologists and other professionals to contribute to support plans for children and young people.
• Liaising with multi-agency teams to support schools in developing and delivering their whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing.

KR 3 Policy and service development

• Implementing policies and procedures in own area of work, and proposing improvements or beneficial changes.
• Contributing to service development through undertaking and participating in appropriate projects related to the MHST Team.
• Contributing to the consultation and engagement of children, young people, families and school communities in planning and delivering services which meet the needs of local communities.
• Contributing to service evaluation appropriately.
• Supporting cross agency initiatives to improve outcomes for children and young people with SEND.

KR 4 Care or management of resources

• Taking care of, and using carefully, the Trust’s equipment and physical resources.
• Ensuring that the post-holder has sufficient resources by estimating future needs and requesting or ordering supplies as needed.

KR 5 Management and supervision

• Being responsible for supervision of junior colleagues if required, under supervision from a more senior psychologist.
• Acting as care co-ordinator taking responsibility for the oversight of cases within the MHST, when required.
• Contributing to group supervision within the MHST.
• Supporting EWPs and other MHST team members in the assessment and formulation of cases.
• Supporting EWPs and other MHST team members in the assessment and formulation of whole class and whole school themes.
• Contributing to the training of the MHST team.
• Managing relationships with stakeholders, including school senior mental health leads, head teachers, educational psychologists outside of the MHST and other agencies.

KR 6 Teaching and Training

• Undertaking teaching and training within the MHST.
• Developing and delivering training for schools, universal and targeted services.
• Contributing to the development of the knowledge and skills base within the MHST service by maintaining an active awareness of current developments and by implementing knowledge gained in training to practice.
• Disseminating research and service evaluation findings through presentations and published articles.

KR 7 Record-keeping and Information Governance

• Ensuring that all information generated by own work is recorded as required by Trust policies and local procedures.
• Maintaining the highest standards of clinical record keeping and report writing, according to professional and Trust guidelines, including electronic data entry.

KR 8 Research and development

• Undertaking regular complex service evaluation, audits or research relevant to service needs.

Person specification

Qualifications

• Post-graduate qualification in Educational Psychology or Clinical / Counselling Psychology that has been accepted by the HCPC for purposes of professional registration.
• Training on evidence based therapeutic approaches for SEMH.

Experience

• Experience of working in education settings.
• Experience of providing psychological assessment and planning and/or delivering interventions, including through high-quality consultation, for children, young people and families with a range of psychological needs of a mild to moderate nature.
• Experience of contributing to system wide change, such as Whole School or College Approaches, through developing and delivering activities for school staff, parents/carers, children and young people e.g. training, workshops and/or whole class activities.
• Experience that supports working with diversity within local communities. This may have been gained through work, research, volunteering and/or lived experience.
• Experience of developing and carrying out research projects and service development or quality improvement projects.
• Experience of working with schools to identify and address systemic issues relating to SEMH.

Knowledge

• Knowledge of a range of mild to moderate SEMH needs and approaches to supporting improved outcomes, including for children and young people with an additional SEND.
• Knowledge of recent evidence and guidance around the whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing.
• Knowledge of psychological assessment, including through consultation, and appropriate selection of assessment tools, interpreting and integrating complex data that require analysis, interpretation and comparison, drawn from several sources.
• Knowledge of delivering psychological consultation, assessment, formulation and planning and/or delivering intervention across cultural and other differences.
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to SEND and mental health, child and adult protection, and equalities.

Skills

• Communicating skilfully and sensitively, complex and sensitive information with children and young people, families/carers, school staff, other agencies and colleagues overcoming barriers to communication including sensory, and emotional difficulties, cultural differences and hostility to or rejection of information.
• Planning and scheduling a range of activities with schools, families and children and young people, including consultation, intervention and workshops.
• Being skilled in the administration of a range of psychological assessments e.g. dynamic, play-based and psychometric assessments, including those that require complex manipulation of test materials.
• Planning allocation of tasks to assistant psychologists and/or more junior colleagues.

The Trust is committed to providing services which embrace diversity and promote equality of opportunity. We are a Disability Confident Employer, we welcome applicants from all sections of the community and people of all protected characteristics. We provide reasonable adjustments for candidates with a disability and are committed to treating people fairly with compassion, respect and dignity and in promoting equality and human rights. We aim to put this commitment into practice by:

• Embedding our commitment to tackling inequality, eliminating discrimination and harassment; promoting equality of opportunity and fostering good relations in our everyday practice.
• Ensuring that all our services and all staff understand and support our commitment.
• Believing that people who use our services, their carers and our staff, should be treated with compassion, respect and dignity.

Please note:

• All applications for this post will need to be made online.
• Read and understand the Job Description and Personal Specification attached to the role. Your Statement in Support should reflect the requirements specified as your application will be judged against these criteria.
• The closing date listed is a guide only and that the vacancy may close earlier should sufficient number of applicants have been received. We advise that you submit your application as early as possible.
• Once you have submitted your application you agree to your application being transferred to a 3rd party e-recruitment system. All subsequent information regarding your application will be generated from apps.trac.jobs.
• Should you not have heard from us within three weeks from the closing date, your application has not been successful.
• Priority consideration for applications may be given to at-risk NHS employees.
• Should you be successful and appointed, you authorise South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust to confirm your previous NHS service via an Inter Authority Transfer (IAT) process.
• We are a smoke-free Trust.

SLaM is a Stonewall Diversity Champion; Stonewall is the largest Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans (LGBT) rights charity in Europe.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

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.

Name: Zoe McLeod Job title: Clinical Service Lead Lewisham North Email address: [e-mail] Telephone number: 07860704651 Additional information

Name: David Linford Job title: Clinical Service Lead Lewisham South Email address: [e-mail] Telephone number: 07970 760 794