Clinical/ Practitioner Psychologist in Paediatrics (Specialist Stream)inLondoninLondonPUBLISHED FRI 21 MAR 2025

We are looking for an enthusiastic and experienced Band 8A clinical psychologist or practitioner psychologist to join our thriving Paediatric Psychological Therapies Service at St Georges Hospital. If you are a Band 7 with paediatric psychology experience and feel ready to move to the next level, please also consider applying.

St Georges Hospital is one of London's largest children's hospitals, with one of only four paediatric trauma units in London. It also hosts the only paediatric intensive care unit in South West London. We are one of the top three centres for specialist paediatric surgery in London, and a centre of excellence in foetal medicine. Psychology plays a key role within children's services, embedded within MDTs to deliver high quality evidence based and family integrated care.

The Paediatric Psychological Therapies Service is a large, friendly and expanding team. We come from a wide variety of professional psychology backgrounds, including clinical psychologists, practitioner psychologists, family therapists, mental health practitioners, assistant psychologists, trainees and administrators. Our service provides psychological support to both inpatient and outpatients, covering a wide range of specialties. There are many opportunities for CPD and a chance to develop your clinical and leadership skills.

For an informal discussion please contact Dr Jeremy Oliver, Consultant Clinical Psychologist in Paediatrics on 02.

This is a direct patient-facing 0.8 FTE role providing specialist psychological care to children and young people under the care of specialist medical clinics (with a likely focus on gastroenterology). These children and young people often have a complex combination of physical health and mental health difficulties. Alongside direct clinical care, this role includes offering clinical supervision to other team members (e.g. Band 7, Trainee and Assistant Psychologists). There will also be scope to contribute to research and policy and toinnovate with regards to service development and delivery.

About us

Clinical:

1. To be responsible for providing a systematic and autonomous clinical service, within the specialist stream, in accordance with objectives agreed with clinical and professional managers.
2. To provide psychological assessments of patients referred to the paediatric psychology service based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of highly complex data from a variety of sources including psychological, psychometric and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with patients, family members and others involved in the patients care. This may, on occasion, involve school observation.
3. To assess and evaluate information from the child, family and significant others, such as the multi-disciplinary medical team and external agencies, relating to medical condition, developmental status and mental health and to incorporate this information into a clinical formulation.
4. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for children, parents/carers, families and groups, adjusting and refining psychological formulations, drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
5. To liaise with multi-disciplinary teams in a range of medical clinics, providing specialist psychological advice guidance to families and consultation to other professionals involved in the patients care.
6. To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.
7. To ensure that all members of the team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of patients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.
8. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual patients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
9. To have a good understanding of social services advocating for the childs best interests.
10. To act as psychological care coordinator, ensuring the provision of a treatment package appropriate for the patients needs, coordinating the work of others involved with care, taking lead responsibility for arranging regular professional meetings and psychological reviews as required, and ensuring all appropriate information is available and disseminated.
11. To communicate effectively in a skilled and sensitive manner (in both written and verbal form) with the patient, his/her family and all others involved in the network of care about difficult and highly distressing issues related to the childs physical and mental health status, and to monitor progress during the course of multidisciplinary interventions.
12. The post will require independent management of a caseload and provision of a psychology service with appropriate supervision and professional management, as per BPS and HCPC guidelines, and in line with the service thresholds and priorities set by the specialty lead clinician.
13. To provide cover for psychology colleagues as part of the duty/ on call service during working hours.
14. To attend case conferences, reviews and other meetings as appropriate.
15. To attend weekly referrals meetings, team meetings and relevant medical specialty meetings as required.
16. To ensure that reports and other correspondence are entered into the relevant notes and communicated to other professionals, parents and children, as appropriate.
17. To attain a thorough knowledge and understanding of common presenting medical conditions in order to provide a clinical psychology service, informed by the demands of the specific specialist paediatric service.
18. Contribute to thinking about how developments can be embedded into team protocols and clinical practice.

Teaching, training and supervision

1. To provide clinical supervision to assistant psychologists and psychology placement students.
2. To provide post-qualification training (CPD) to assistants and psychology placement students attached to the service with the agreement of the appropriate consultant psychologist.
3. To provide advice, consultation, training to other members of the multidisciplinary team for the provision of psychologically based interventions to help patients functioning.
4. To provide post-qualification external teaching and training to multi-professional audiences.
5. To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional pre- and post-graduate training and clinical supervision and keep a log of all continued professional development (CPD), according to HCPC requirements.
6. To gain experience and skills relevant to clinical psychology and/or the service (as agreed with the professional psychology manager) up to 12 days per year (pro rata)
7. To receive regular clinical supervision from a more senior clinical psychologist in accordance with good practice guidelines. Where appropriate, to receive additional consultancy from senior professional colleagues.

Management, policy and service development

1. To contribute to and support the implementation of new or revised policies that improves the quality of the service in agreement with the Lead Psychologist or Head of Service.
2. To exercise delegated responsibility for managing the psychological materials employed in the assessment and treatment of children, young people and their parents.
3. To take on responsibility as designated by the Lead Psychologist for on-going audit and service evaluation relevant to psychological service provision and amending policies as appropriate.
4. To contribute to the development of the pan-trust psychology service and attending meetings as appropriate.

Research and service evaluation

1. To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence- based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
2. To collaborate in project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues to help develop and improve services to clients and their families.