Psychologist, Darby Cl

Job summary

Be U Swindon is a children and young peoples emotional wellbeing service delivering early intervention, prevention, and targeted mental health support across Swindon. The service works with young people and families to promote resilience, improve emotional wellbeing, and prevent escalation to higher-tier mental health services.

Main duties of the job

The postholder will provide strong clinical oversight and leadership across the service, ensuring the safe, effective, and high-quality delivery of all elements of the Be U Swindon model. This includes overseeing the Single Point of Access (SPA) to ensure robust triage, risk management, and appropriate referral allocation, as well as maintaining the clinical quality and governance of all interventions to ensure they are evidence-informed and outcome-focused. You will offer leadership and guidance to the Haven Service, supporting the delivery of low-intensity interventions and urgent care, while ensuring consistent clinical decision-making across the service, particularly in relation to risk, safeguarding, and escalation pathways. The role also involves supporting staff through case consultation, supervision, and reflective practice to uphold high standards of care, promoting consistency and alignment across all service pathways, and ensuring all activity operates within established clinical governance frameworks, including safeguarding, data quality, and outcome monitoring.

About us

ABL is an exciting fast-paced, growing community health organisation. As an experienced, CQC registered, provider of community health services, we are passionate about delivering evidence based, innovative, effective, and relevant health care services in partnership with individuals, communities and stakeholders.

Job description

Job responsibilities

The service holds theSingle Point of Access (SPA)for all children and young people (CYP) mental health referrals within Swindon, ensuring all referrals are screened, triaged, and directed to the most appropriate support in a timely and safe manner.

Be U Swindon delivers ablended, stepped-care model, including low-intensity psychoeducational interventions, counselling provision, and Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) operating within education settings. The service works collaboratively with schools, primary care, and wider partners to provide an integrated system of care.

Service Model

The Be U Swindon model ensures children and young people can access the right level of support based on need, through:

• Single Point of Access (SPA):Centralised referral management, including screening, triage, risk identification, and onward allocation
• Pre-Assessment and Triage:Initial contact to establish suitability, goals, and identify safeguarding or risk
• Low-Intensity Interventions:Psychoeducational support aligned to the 5 Ways to Wellbeing
• Haven Delivery:Time-limited, goal-focused guided self-help interventions and urgent care support
• Counselling Provision:Targeted therapeutic support delivered by qualified practitioners
• Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs):Early intervention support within schools, including direct work, consultation, and whole-school approaches
• Outcome Monitoring:Routine tracking of progress to ensure effective, measurable delivery
• Safeguarding:Robust identification, management, and escalation of risk in line with local procedures
• Partnership Working:Integrated working with education, health, and community services

Role Responsibility Clinical Oversight

The postholder will provideclinical oversight and leadership across the service, ensuring safe, effective, and high-quality delivery across all elements of the Be U Swindon model.

This includes:

• Providingclinical oversight of the Single Point of Access (SPA), ensuring robust triage, risk management, and appropriate allocation of referrals
• Overseeing theclinical quality and governance of all interventions, ensuring interventions are safe, evidence-informed, and outcome-focused
• Providing leadership, guidance, and clinical oversightto our Haven Servicedelivering low-intensity interventions and urgent care support
• Ensuringconsistent clinical decision-making, particularly in relation to risk, safeguarding, and escalation pathways
• Supporting staff withcase consultation, supervision, and reflective practiceto maintain high standards of care
• Promotingcoherence and consistencyacross the service model, ensuring alignment between SPA, Haven, and all intervention pathways
• Ensuring all aspects of the service operate withinclinical governance frameworks, including safeguarding, data quality, and outcome monitoring

Overall Aim

To ensure the delivery of asafe, effective, and integrated CYP mental health service, where all referrals are appropriately triaged and managed, and children and young people receive theright support at the right time, supported by strong clinical oversight and leadership.

Key Responsibilities Grounded in Safety, Driven by Excellence:

As the Clinical/Forensic/Counselling Psychologist within the Be U Swindon leadership team, you will play a vital role in safeguarding client wellbeing, driving service quality, and embedding clinical best practices throughout our operations. This is a varied and rewarding role with a strong focus on clinical leadership, collaboration, and service development. Your core responsibilities will include:

Provideclinical leadership and oversightacross the Be U Swindon service, ensuring safe, effective, and consistent delivery of care across theall elements of the service.

Oversee theclinical governance of the SPA, ensuring robust screening, triage, and risk assessment processes are in place, with appropriate and timely allocation of CYP referrals to the correct level of intervention

Case Load: To manage own caseload delivering a high quality targeted emotional support to a small specialised caseload. Ensure assessment is provided in a range of settings suitable to meet the needs of the clients

Clinical Reporting: Provide supervision and quality assurance for any clinical contacts, ensuring robust reporting systems and high-quality care records.

Assessment, formulation&Intervention Planning: Supervise the development of tailored assessment, formulation and intervention plans, including both client-specific and service-wide outcome measures. When necessary, carry out complex assessments or interventions directly.

Clinical Supervision: Deliver robust clinical supervision, encompassing both written work and direct practice, to the clinical team across the service.

Training&Development: Identify training needs and deliver bespoke clinical training to the team and wider system partners. Work alongside operational leadership to maintain and evolve the services training matrix.

MDT Leadership: Contribute actively to divisional MDTs, ensuring collaborative, multi-agency working.

Clinician Development: Promote CPD and skills growth among your supervisees, recommending internal or external training opportunities as appropriate.

Integrated Working: Liaise with internal and external stakeholders to coordinate assessments and interventions. Prioritise clear, ethical communication while navigating consent, capacity, and safeguarding frameworks.

Consent&Capacity: Champion high standards around consent and capacity practices, supporting both policy development and case-level application.

Outcome Measurement: Oversee the consistent collection, analysis, and reporting of routine outcome measures, ensuring our interventions are both impactful and measurable.

Collaborative Culture: Work with operational managers to integrate therapeutic thinking into daily practice, blending clinical insight with service delivery expertise. Undertake delegated responsibilities as agreed with the Head of service.

Risk Management: Contribute to the creation and ongoing refinement of clinical risk assessments, ensuring a proactive approach to client safety.

Innovation&Service Improvement: Stay abreast of emerging models and innovations in complex case management, championing their integration into both services.

Effective Communication: Maintain clear, respectful, and timely communication with clients, colleagues, and partner agencies. Proactively manage follow-up actions.

Service Evaluation: Lead or support service improvement initiatives, with a focus on systems and approaches that drive better outcomes.

Legislative Knowledge: Maintain a strong understanding of relevant legislation and its implications for practice and client rights.

Governance Engagement: Contribute to Performance Review Boards and other divisional forums …