Job Description
Job Description
We have a vacancy for an Assistant Psychologist within the company on a full-time or nearly full time basis (we have funding for a full-time role, but if you prefer to work around a postgraduate qualification or other commitments, we have the option to employ someone for 25 hours or more, with pay and leave calculated on a pro-rata basis).
The role will primarily involve providing psychometric assessments of young people and to support the wider service related to children in care. There may also be opportunities to get involved in our assessments of families for the family courts, and our consultations to local authorities and placement providers. Approximately two days per week of the work will be on site with local authorities - mostly in Haringey, but also Hammersmith and Fulham. The rest of the time the work will be home-based, but involves travelling to various locations across southern England a few times per month. You may be involved in gathering information, setting up meetings, administering psychometric assessments and contributing to reports and letters.
The post involves a combination of:
- administering psychometric assessments
- gathering background information from files
- collecting questionnaire data from schools and foster/residential carers
- gathering outcome data and using an online outcome measurement tool
- acting as a champion for the outcome measurement protocol within services
- distributing, collecting and scoring surveys
- data entry and statistical analysis
- providing summary reports from outcome data/questionnaires
- writing up reports to a template provided
- making structured observations of children
- gathering third party observational data
- general administrative tasks (arranging meetings, responding to telephone and email enquiries, keeping track of materials, etc)
- other such tasks as the business requires
You'll be part of a small local team, spread across the UK, and will get supervision from a qualified CP, as well as joining online consultations facilitated by them. There may be opportunities to sit in on training events, and to contribute to research and publications.
The nature of the role means that we require a psychology graduate with GBC (at a 2:1 or better, or with a completed post-graduate qualification), who has a driving license and access to a vehicle (or can propose suitable adaptation if they have a disability that prevents this), who is diligent and meticulous about collecting and writing up information. Experience administering psychometric assessments would be advantageous but is not essential, as full training will be provided. You need to be organised and proactive, able to set up meetings and communicate in a professional manner, including writing up reports to a high standard. Fluency with computer and internet applications is also necessary. We want you to share our mission to improve the lives of young people who have experienced adversity (and we would see lived experience of adversity or care experience as a strength). You need to have the kind of personality and resilience required to be part of a team that makes a difference for some of the most complex children in the country.
We like to give you the opportunity to show us what you are capable of, and we see our staff as our most valuable resource. We provide supervision according to BPS recommendations, and plenty of opportunities for personal development. Supervision will be provided by a qualified clinical psychologist. We have a commitment to training and development, and a good track record of past assistants gaining places on clinical training (though I suspect this is as much about who I select as the experiences we provide).
Salary is based on a full time rate of £23,302 per annum (we are proud to be a living wage employer), but will be paid pro rata if you opt to take a lower number of hours.
- How to apply -
If you want to apply for this position then please send a CV (no longer than 2 pages) and a brief covering letter/expression of interest (no more than 600 words) through this website explaining how you are suited to the position. We only consider applications that include the covering letter. You must also include the telephone/email contact details for two references.
Please apply as soon as possible. We expect to close applications at midnight on Sunday 17th June, but may close earlier if we have sufficient applicants of suitable calibre. We hope to interview on Wednesday 28th June.
Background information:
BERRI is an award-winning clinical psychology company that has particular expertise about children and families, particularly when it comes to attachment, parenting and recovery from adversity. Our main specialist area is around attachment, trauma and maltreatment and how this evidence base can inform the care of children who do not live in their family of origin. We therefore provide training for adoptive, foster and residential carers, as well as health, social care and legal professionals.
The company is small but growing rapidly. Our mission is to improve outcomes for children with complex needs. Our aim is to change the way that children's psychological needs are looked at in the UK (and then around the world), by identifying both mental health symptoms and needs that are outside the traditional medical model and encompass behaviour, relationships, development, risk and a broad range of indicators of wellbeing. Through identifying needs better, and tracking how they change over time we want to improve the quality of placements and services for children, starting with those who are in the Care system. We hope to achieve this ambitious goal by training carers, implementing a new set of standards for care providers, and through structured needs assessments and regular use of outcome measures (BERRI). We then hope to spread this methodology to other groups of children with complex needs, such as those at the edge of care, or in specialist educational provision, poor school attenders or those who have experienced adversity. We hope to see our system used in every local authority, placement provider, school and charity that provides children's services to inform the way that psychological needs are identified and addressed.
Why start with children who are in Care? Children in Care are a particularly vulnerable group of children and young people because their needs are complex and they have experienced multiple adversities that put them at greater risk of negative outcomes. Local Authorities are spending £9 billion on children's social care, including £3 billion on placements every year, but there is little evidence about what works to improve life chances and reduce risks because very little data is being collected. We want to change this, and to ensure that the systems around children are psychologically minded and informed by the latest evidence.
The training, pathway and standards we implement are about ensuring that strategies carers use are evidence-based, individualised to the background and needs of each child, evolve as the child’s needs change, and are based on a thorough psychological assessment and a multi-faceted formulation of the child’s needs. We believe that having advice from a clinical psychologist to inform the care of all Children in and on the edge of Care (and other children with complex needs) will both reduce stigma and improve outcomes, whilst helping carers to feel better equipped to meet the children’s needs. We have developed a training program and care pathway as one means to implement these standards for placements.
We have also developed a set of online tools for commissioners and placement providers to use to identify and track the needs of children in their care. The tools are known by the acronym ‘BERRI’ because they explore Behaviour, Emotional well-being, Risk to self and others, Relationships and Indicators of conditions that need to be understood to care effectively for the child. We want every young person with complex needs to have a service that meets their needs in an effective and evidence-based way. We have therefore developed tools that allow us to gain a more holistic picture of children’s needs, to track how this changes over time and to target particular concerns and monitor the effectiveness of interventions to address them.
Our data suggests that we can help to ensure that children's psychological needs are effectively identified and addressed. Our pilots have shown we can reduce children's needs significantly using the pathway and tools we provide, and save costs to the public purse whilst we do so. Our services gain exceptional feedback from carers and professionals, but we hold ourselves to tough standards of evidence, and gather data about our effectiveness every step of the way.
Job Types: Full-time, Part-time
Part-time hours: 37.5 per week
Salary: From £23,302.00 per year
Benefits:
Schedule:
COVID-19 considerations:
This role involves direct contact in social care settings. When required we would expect you to use appropriate precautions including wearing a mask and sanitising equipment
Application question(s):
- Do you have a 2:1 or 1st in a completed psychology degree or a completed MSc qualification that makes you eligible for graduate basis for chartership with the BPS (you don't need to be a member, just for your degree to confer GBC)?
Education:
Licence/Certification:
- Driving Licence (required)
Work Location: In person
Application deadline: 17/06/2023
Reference ID: AP-P1
Expected start date: 01/08/2023
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