Clinical Psychologist - CAMHS in Poole

Are you an experienced and motivated Principal Clinical Psychologist looking to make a meaningful impact within a Core CAMHS team? In Dorset, we are transforming our Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services into a Family Mental Health model that embraces and adopts the THRIVE framework. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to service development and innovation, supporting a whole-family approach grounded in compassion, collaboration, and shared decision-making.

In this role, you will provide highly specialist psychological assessment and intervention to children and young people, alongside their families, within a multidisciplinary team. Working within the THRIVE framework, you will contribute to delivering evidence-based, person-centred care, ensuring that psychological formulation and thinking are embedded at the heart of service delivery.

You will offer a range of therapeutic interventions, alongside consultation, training and supervision to colleagues, working closely with partners across education, social care and the voluntary sector to support integrated care. You will receive regular clinical supervision from the Clinical Lead Psychologist, alongside access to ongoing training and development opportunities.

The Clinical Psychologist role is a permanent, full-time post of 37.50 hours per week. The service operates Monday to Friday between 9:00am and 5:00pm. We are flexible in how these hours are worked, and this can be discussed further at interview.

Main duties of the job

• To conduct thorough psychological assessments, formulating problems and delivering evidence-based programmes of care with children and families who are experiencing moderate to severe mental health difficulties.
• To regularly review and monitor outcome of assessment and effects of treatment in line with goal-based outcomes and the care programme approach.
• To plan and prioritise own workload whilst coordinating with colleagues in the CAMHS locality teams so service users do not wait longer than necessary for a planned intervention.
• To plan and chair multi-disciplinary/ multi-agency professional and family meetings (e.g. care planning/ discharge planning).
• To implement the participation agenda.
• To provide specialist psychology supervision, training and consultation to colleagues working across agencies, with the approval of the Team Leader.
• To contribute to recruitment and selection of less senior staff.

At Dorset HealthCare we're on a mission to empower people to make the most of their lives through our outstanding, joined-up healthcare services. We're a dynamic, forward-looking Trust, running 12 community hospitals, specialist inpatient facilities and a wide range of integrated community and mental health services for a population of almost 800,000 people.

We're all about building a workplace for the future, we believe in equal opportunities and we celebrate diversity. We're an inclusive workplace, where everyone is welcome, everyone can be authentic, and we are all encouraged to be the best version of ourselves.

As part of our vision to have a skilled, diverse and caring workforce, Dorset HealthCare offers support for people getting into work. We offer an employability service to support individuals with application writing, interview skills and other employment support.

Person Specification

• Knowledge, skills and training
• Essential: 2:1 honours degree in Psychology or better. Eligibility for Graduate Membership of BPS. Post-graduate doctorate in clinical psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996 or those in lateral transfer or with Statement of Equivalence) as accredited by the BPS or HPC. Specialist Supervisory training.
• Desirable: Extended skills and training specifically related to child and adolescent mental health.
• Job specific experience
• Essential: Training to work as a qualified clinical psychologist. Clinical experience with children and adolescents mental health.
• Desirable: Ability to undertake clinical audits, leadership experience, management experience.
• Information Technology
• Essential: Ability to use a computer and Internet for word processing, keeping electronic notes, spreadsheets, presentations, teaching and information seeking purposes.
• Personal Qualities/Attributes
• Essential: Must be capable of working on own initiative and acting independently. Need to tolerate working conditions which may be unpleasant and where there is some exposure to vandalism and aggressive incidents.
• Additional Requirements
• Essential: Ability to conduct complex risk assessments and develop appropriate strategies to minimise risk. Evidence of continuing professional development as required by the BPS and HPC and working to professional guidelines.

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. Applicants must have current UK professional registration.