Educational Psychologist/ Clinical Psychologist / Systemic Psychotherapist

Hackney Education provides a range of services to support the education of children, young people and adults in our inner London borough. Hackney is one of the UK’s highest performing local authorities, serving one of London’s best places to live and work. Within our diverse borough we serve a wide range of children and young people. We have a particular focus on supporting less advantaged families: Hackney figures in the 10% most deprived boroughs in England on a number of measures.

Hackney Education’s key priority is to improve the life chances of every child, young person and learner: making Hackney the most forward looking education system in the UK, where schools, settings and partners provide an exciting environment which ensures inclusion and success for everyone. We see our borough as being one of the best places in the country for young people to grow, learn, develop and achieve –and one of the best places for colleagues to work and thrive in our education system.

Job title Educational Psychologist/ Clinical Psychologist / Systemic Psychotherapist

Salary PO8, £60,261 to £61,347 pro-rata

Terms and Conditions Part time (0.5 FTE, 18 hours), Fixed term/Secondment (1 years)

• Are you a qualified Clinical or Educational Psychologist who is passionate about using your knowledge to make a real difference to the lives of young people in Hackney & the City of London?
• Are you keen to work on an innovative fixed term pilot working across CAMHS, and Education and Early Help to offer a thoughtful and joined up approach to provide early preventative support to working with children and young people who are starting to present as absent from school and to provide specialist psychological input to enable to rest of the system to support them?
• Are you committed to working across-agency and system-wide to engage young people and communities from all backgrounds?
• Do you have strong partnership working and engagement skills and existing knowledge and experience of working with Children and Families and within Education?
• Are interested in working in an advisory role with outreach capacity and in schools and with wider system partners to create whole system change to improve the mental health and wellbeing of young people?
• Are you interested in applying specialist knowledge of Emotional School Based Avoidance and neurodevelopmental pathways to casework?
• Are you keen to use your expertise to advise on the training needs and content of training for staff working directly with these Children and Families across the Early Help system?
• Are you a critical, whole systems thinker who would be capable of drawing out recommendations from learning to feed into a borough wide strategy?

This is an exciting opportunity to play an integral role in a new pilot piece of work that aims to provide early support to children who are beginning to present as absent from school and plan and deliver interventions to children and young people at an early stage to prevent rising need (e.g. Emotional Based School Avoidance becoming entrenched).

The postholder will support the strategic vision and direction to a borough wide response to prevent persistently absent pupils, through learning about improving and embedding support at an early stage.

This work is being developed in partnership between Health including the CAMHS Alliance, Hackney Education and the role will sit within Hackney Education but work across the system, working with parents and school staff, Early Help teams as well as children and young people.

The job holder will work half of their time in the School Attendance Support Team and half of their time within CAMHS/ EPS, with the aim of:

• Gaining clearer understanding of the support needs of these children and families
• Providing effective joint working between agencies in Education, Early Help and Health
• Planning and delivering interventions (to prevent escalating and rising needs) tailored to each child on a case-by-case basis 
• Identifying how to strengthen the support across the system (e.g. training and development of the Early Help system to support these cases) for children and families and embed learning from the pilot work 
• Feeding in learning and insights from the pilot into the development of a strategy to support children and young people around attendance
• Supporting the rapid return to school for the young person alongside good support from staff within the school environment

The funding for this post is fixed term and has come from Northeast London ICB Place Based Partnership.

If you have any questions about the role, please contact Nicky Pailing (Nicky.Pailing@hackney.gov.uk).

Interested?

To apply, please visit our website via the button below.

Closing date 22:59, Wednesday, 27th March 2024

Interviews TBC

Hackney Education is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. We expect all staff to share this commitment. As this role involves regulated activity, the successful applicant will be required to undertake an enhanced DBS check and additional pre-employment checks in line with Keeping Children Safe in Education statutory guidance.

This post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and the amendments to the Exceptions Order 1975, 2013 and 2020.

We are also working towards our vision, which is to be a place for everyone; where residents and staff can be proud; a place that celebrates diversity and where everyone can feel valued, included and involved. In order to achieve this, we look for people who are: Proud; Ambitious; Pioneering; Open; Proactive; Inclusive.

Hackney Council works to eradicate discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy and maternity, age and marital status. We also recognise that people can be disadvantaged by their social and economic circumstances, so we will also work to eliminate discrimination and disadvantage caused by social class. We also welcome those interested in flexible working. We particularly welcome applications from disabled people and people from a black and global majority background as these groups are currently underrepresented in our workforce.