Senior Educational Psychologist

Cheshire East Council; Macclesfield; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a Senior Educational Psychologist to join their innovative and supportive team. This full-time role offers the opportunity to lead and manage a growing service, contribute to strategic developments, and work collaboratively with various stakeholders. The position emphasizes professional growth, with tailored CPD available, and a commitment to fostering a positive work-life balance. You will play a crucial role in ensuring the delivery of high-quality educational psychology services, making a significant impact on the lives of children and families in the community. If you are passionate about making a difference and advancing your career, this is the opportunity for you.

Benefits

Flexible working hours

Full reimbursement of HCPC fees

Career average pension scheme

Dedicated administrative support

Comprehensive induction programme

Agile work style

Occasional car user allowance

Long stay car parking permit

Qualifications

• Experience in educational psychology and leadership roles.
• Ability to supervise and support a team of psychologists.

Responsibilities

• Lead and manage the Educational Psychology Service.
• Contribute to strategic development and represent the service in meetings.
• Support the Principal Educational Psychologist in various assignments.

Skills

Leadership

Educational Psychology

Strategic Development

Collaboration with Stakeholders

Supervision of Staff

Psychological Assessment

Education

Doctorate in Educational Psychology

Relevant CPD

Job description

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Wishing for career advancement and maybe a change of scenery?

We warmly welcome applications for our Senior Educational Psychologist role.

This post is a full-time post (37hrs). However, a part time role could be considered.

Salary - Soulbury B 7 -10 (plus SPA)

Our super friendly, highly supportive, and immensely creative Cheshire East Educational Psychology Service is continuing to grow, thrive, and expand!

We wish to warmly welcome highly experienced and passionate colleagues, who are seeking to advance their careers and grow together with us.

Our Senior Educational Psychologist position will enable you to be an integral part of our leadership team, contributing strategically and operationally in a range of areas within a dynamic, innovative and relationally focussed service.

We are committed to investing in the development of all our team members. Relevant CPD, tailored to you, will be available to further support you in your role.

Cheshire East has a diverse, rural, and urban profile which is easily commutable from Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent, Derbyshire, Shropshire and parts of North Wales. To promote wellbeing, work-life balance and reduce travel, there are various office bases to utilise across the borough.

Highlights of the Senior Educational Psychologist role

You will ...

• Take a leadership and management role within our growing Educational Psychology and Specialist Teaching Service. This will involve you working directly for and with the Principal Educational Psychologist in support of our council and service transformation plan as a valued and supported member of our leadership team.
• A key part of your role will be to contribute to aspects of the strategic development and direction of the service. This will require you, at times, to represent our service in meetings with our partners and stakeholders.
• Forge supportive links with Education, Health, Social Care and voluntary organisations. On occasion, you may be asked to stand in for the PEP and represent the service locally and nationally.
• Contribute to the day-to-day management of the service, provide supervision to our superb team of psychologists, including trainee and assistant educational psychologists.
• Support the Principal Educational Psychologist with specific strategic assignments, including taking a lead in an area as defined by our service and council children's services' priorities.
• Ensure that our 0-25 statutory duties, EHCP's, tribunal and other SEND related activities, including consultation and involvement with complex cases, are undertaken efficiently and effectively, aligning with quality assurance.
• Stay up to date with new developments in appropriate fields and help to ensure that the service remains on the cutting edge of innovation and development. This will partially involve working with our existing team of specialists to develop innovative new approaches and directions which will benefit children and families within Cheshire East.
• Provide an educational psychology service for children and young people through families, schools, colleges and early years settings; implementing strategies and techniques that are grounded in psychology and educational theory and principles in order to promote inclusion and maximise the achievement of our children and young people, as well as to develop our community-based services for our families to access.
• Ensure that resources are fit for purpose and used to make a positive difference, to remove barriers, promote inclusion to meet the needs of our children, young people and their families within our community. Additionally, ensuring that our statutory obligations and wider council transformation plan is enacted.

You will have the opportunity to carry out a multitude of other amazing, incredible, exciting, and brilliant things in consultation with the PEP and make this job your own to suit your own strengths, interests and abilities.

A little about us here at Cheshire East Educational Psychology Service ...

We are passionate advocates of relational practice. This is our preferred way of being and this is threaded through all the connections we make and in the work that we do. We regard ourselves as absolutely blessed to have a super friendly, highly supportive, immensely talented and creative collection of psychologists. Our team are committed to and value their supervision, embrace professional development, and all have the opportunity to step up and lead on aspects of our co-constructed service transformation plan. Consequently, we are team striving together to make a positive difference to the lives of children, young people, their families and the Cheshire East community.

Our team deliver a range of evidence informed prevention and early intervention work. This aligns with our highly valued partly traded model of service delivery. This is balanced alongside our much-valued psychological contribution across the full range of statutory duties. We are very keen to engage in research to continue to evaluate our practice.

We invest in our staff, champion supervision and shared team learning through attendance at our Supervision Hub and Working Groups. Additionally, we hold regular team meetings and already have a developing CPD offer, alongside a social calendar for those who wish to get involved.

Our traded offer is wide ranging and can be viewed on our CHESS booking hub. We are piloting PATH to strengthen and deepen our Post 16 offer to those with an EHCP, which is yielding awesome feedback. We are keen to progress our co-production activities using a range of models to firmly hold children and young people at the centre and enable a joined up, accountable method to our graduated approach.

Our diverse working practices enable us to provide educational psychology involvement spanning individual, targeted, and strategic work with our partners, stakeholders, and commissioners. In addition to our traded and statutory duties, our more recent commissions include:

• A community based, Family Hub's offer. This includes Parent Drop-in's (pre-bookable), bespoke training that is reflective of each Family Hub's community needs (themes from recent intelligence includes: autism, developing attachments, emotional wellbeing, barriers to attendance, and parenting). We are further able to provide a year-round EP consultation offer for all EYS and Family Hub staff.
• The on-going development of a multi-disciplinary neurodiverse assessment pathway, with EP's collaborating and contributing to this, alongside our inclusive offer to promote neuro-affirming practices.
• We are widening our Consultation offer, diversifying how we assess and report, developing an ambitious training programme for our children and young people to enhance their engagement with education and promote dynamic ways of learning to impact on their academic achievement.
• We are committed to supporting emotional wellbeing and mental health. Our service is embracing iThrive and will be contributing to the delivery of this alongside supporting settings to integrate the full offer. Additionally, we are gradually able to provide some therapeutic practice to children and young people and where commissioned, education staff, utilising our additional training and qualifications, under professional supervision.
• Our services have recently been commissioned to broaden our offer to Virtual School and strengthen our involvement and support for children and young people who are cared for, provide consultation related to inform preparing for adulthood plans for care-leavers, and provide a service to children and young people who are adopted, and their families.

We can offer:

• Strong commitment to supervision to support you
• Bespoke CPD to support and develop you in your role
• Full reimbursement of your HCPC fees.
• A great flexitime system.
• Career average pension scheme.
• Dedicated administrative support.
• Comprehensive induction programme to settle you in.
• Your own laptop and excellent IT support.
• An agile work style that allows off-site working, including the opportunity to work from home.
• Occasional car user allowance and long stay car parking permit valid across the borough.
• A commitment to remain on Soulbury pay and conditions.

Where you believe that our service aligns with you, we warmly welcome your application.

Shortlisting and Interview

We aim to inform suitable candidates of an invite to interview within four working days of receiving your application. We therefore recommend that you submit your application without delay.

For an informal discussion about the above posts, please contact Principal Educational Psychologist Dr Alexandria Brightmore on [e-mail]

DBS & Safeguarding

Cheshire East Council is committed to safeguarding children and vulnerable adults across the Borough. As such, any cautions, convictions, reprimands or final warnings that are 'not protected' as defined by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) order 1975 (as amended in 2013) relating to the non-disclosure of spent convictions do not apply to this job. You must, therefore, disclose whether you have any previous convictions where prompted to do so within the application process.

Working at Cheshire East Council

Cheshire East has a diverse, rural and urban profile. The area is classed as significantly rural with more than half the population living in rural or rural market town areas. It is an amazing place to live, work, visit and invest. We are proud to be one of the biggest employers in the area. Our aim is to have a diverse workforce that understands and represents the communities they serve. Cheshire East is easily commutable from Greater Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent / Staffordshire.

If you would like to be part of our team, aspire to train as an educational psychologist, want to contribute to our continuing development and success, have the flexibility and drive to enable us to innovate with willingness to work as part of a supportive and multi-skilled team, we would like to hear from you for our current vacancy.

As an equal opportunities' employer, we welcome applicants from all backgrounds and want our workforce to reflect the diversity of our local communities so that we can all work for a brighter future - together.

Brighter Future

Employee Benefits at Cheshire East

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