Job description
We are looking for highly motivated individuals to join our team as Trainee Youth Intensive Psychological Practitioners. This is an exciting new role being piloted by Health Education England and NHS England to support the transformation of children and young people’s inpatient and intensive community mental health services.
This is a fully salaried position, your training will also be fully funded by the NHS, and you will be eligible for a full-time qualified position when you pass the course.
You will be trained to work with children, young people and their families. You will support young people when they’re severely mentally unwell – requiring inpatient hospital admission or receiving care as a family intensively at home. With a dynamic multi-disciplinary mental health team of health and social care professionals, you will create psychological formulations and plan care and deliver psychologically informed interventions under supervision.
You will work to ensure young people receive the right care in the right place – helping to avoid unnecessary inpatient care or helping to reduce the length of admissions that young people need and supporting them at home.
During the one-year postgraduate certificate training, you will develop knowledge and practice skills and, work under supervision to develop psychological formulations and employ psychologically informed interventions in line with the university's expectations.
This role supports young people with the most complex mental health needs and candidates should have some awareness, learning and experience of services for people with mental health problems. You will need to have flexibility, adaptability and an enthusiasm for working with these young people, together with the personal confidence and strong ability to help young people who may have experienced trauma and have more severe and complex needs.
As part of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, you will be based in one of three services which make up the inpatient and intensive community mental health services. You will have the opportunity to work across the inpatient and intensive community services for the South London Partnership (including South West London and St George’s NHS trust).
We are committed to developing a team that is fully representative of the communities that we serve, and especially welcome applications from individuals with protected characteristics that are currently under-represented in our workforce.
The Trainee Youth Intensive Psychological Practitioner will:
- attend all elements of the training programme of study and progress successfully through assessments of competence and attainment
- work in and gain experience in a children and young people’s intensive community mental health service (i.e., an intensive home treatment team) and inpatient mental health service
- develop and practice psychologically-informed formulations and interventions under supervision, working directly with young people as part of the community home treatment teams and within inpatient care
- support collaborative care planning, working alongside other members of the multi-disciplinary team
- work closely alongside a team of mental health professionals to deliver psychologically informed interventions - for example: behavioural activation and graded exposure, problem-solving, recognising and managing emotions and, e.g., improving sleep.
- Be eligible for Graduate Basis for Chartered membership (GBC) of the British Psychological Society and demonstrate the ability to work at post-graduate certificate level
- Have experience of people using services in psychological, mental health and/or social care settings, including as someone with lived experience or supporting a family member or, in voluntary or paid work in a community, clinical, voluntary sector or clinical-academic setting
- Have experience of work interacting with members of the public.
- Demonstrate the ability to establish and maintain empathic, supportive relationships with people in significant distress, including the personal confidence and ability to help young people who may have experienced trauma and have more severe and complex needs
- Demonstrate potential to work as an effective, respectful member of a multi-disciplinary team.
Further information about the role can be found on theHealth Careers websiteand watch aTrainee Youth Intensive Psychological Practitioner film.You can also hear fromNHS England’s National Psychological Advisor about the Youth Intensive Psychological Practitioner role.
Please note that YIPP posts are being advertised across the South London Partnership – with posts based at South London and Maudsley and posts based at South West London and St George’s.