Specialist CAMHS Practitioner - Learning Disabilities London, England
Job description
The post holder will provide a specialist service within CAMHS to young people with learning disabilities and their families. This is a community-based post, located within the Learning Disabilities Pathway in Brent CAMHS offering flexible, evidence-based episodes of care, assessments and treatments within a Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) framework, the main aim of which will be to enhance the quality of life of the children and their families, and reduce challenging behaviour. The post holder will directly contribute to the positive working environment within the multi-disciplinary team and will be required to deliver assessments and interventions in Brent. The post holder will also deliver training to other professionals and agencies as relevant.
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The post holder will provide specialist assessments and interventions to children and young people. This will involve undertaking direct assessment and intervention with the client and indirect assessment, monitoring and intervention with staff and/or carers. Intervention will include working across a variety of settings, including home, school and short break services and will involve working with the multi-disciplinary team. The post holder will work autonomously alongside clients, families, support workers and professionals to enable others to better understand and respond to behaviours that are challenging.
The post holder will require a high degree of professional autonomy and self-management and will be required to account for their professional practice through supervision, appraisal and audit.
The CAMHS LD team provides specialist mental health services for children with learning disabilities and their families. The team is based at Monks Park Health Centre, Wembley, London. The team consists of Psychologists and assistant psychologists, a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and Learning Disability Nurses. The team work closely with colleagues from the disabled children’s social care team, the specialist schools and colleges, the Child Development Centre and the Central and North West London Mental Health Trust adult LD Learning Disability at Kingsbury Centre. The team is co-located with other CAMHS teams and can access the wider range of disciplines represented in this service, e.g. child and adolescent psychotherapy, psychologists and systemic family therapy.
Brent CAMHS-LD team is set up to provide specialist assessment and consultation to children and young people with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities and their families and carers. In recent years this team has been expanded to increase the capacity of the service allowing for exciting new developments. In line with the Transforming Care agenda these developments are focussed on providing more intense support to those most at risk of restrictive practice. Our practitioners have undergone PBS training as part of a borough wide initiative to increase this approach.
The Trust will support flexible working hours where appropriate.
- To provide comprehensive specialist assessments, including risk assessment of children, young people and their families/carers referred with moderate, complex and severe mental health problems/ behaviours that challenge others using the PBS framework.
- To use a range of assessment techniques including observations, standard measures and questionnaires, direct work and interviews with parents and professionals in order to collate information required to complete a functional analysis assessment.
- To formulate and to be responsible for implementing in partnership with other agencies working with the child/young person a positive behaviour plan/ intervention.
- To communicate in a sensitive manner assessment outcomes/ PBS formulations and positive behaviour support plans.
- To co-ordinate and run psycho-educational and therapeutic groups using the PBS framework with support from the assistant psychologist/team lead.
- To evaluate the implementation and impact of the intervention.
- To write confidential behavioural support plans, reports for case conferences, and education that may have wide ranging implications for children, young people and their families.
- To be available to carry out urgent assessments. Assessments and interventions will be conducted in school settings, clinic settings, patients’ home and the community.
- To undertake other psychological and/or diagnostic assessments (i.e. Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-2, or cognitive assessments) and interventions if required and appropriate.
- To provide consultation and appropriate training to other professionals working with the children referred to the service in order to ensure implementation of behavioural support plans and PBS skills.
- To attend PBS training and to deliver relevant training to families and other agencies in order to support and ensure the implementation of PBS.
- To liaise with and where appropriate participate in joint work with other members of the Learning Disabilities Pathway in Brent CAMHS Learning Disabilities team.
- To act as care coordinator for an identified caseload and to be responsible for the coordination of assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation of therapeutic packages of care provided by the multidisciplinary team.
- To act as care coordinator in accordance with CPA guidelines within the CAMHS community setting.
- To ensure that the needs of the client group is paramount and be aware of and adhere to NICE Guidelines relating to Child Protection.
- To ensure acceptable levels of safety (regarding potential verbal and physical aggression from disturbed clients) for self and to advise other colleagues when necessary. To adhere to the “lone worker policy “and update training in breakaway techniques when necessary.
- To maintain accurate clinical records in accordance with service standards and to record and maintain patient data in local database systems (System 1) and the trust wide electronic database.
