This role is part of exciting new developments across North Central London aimed at enhancing the existing mental health crisis services for young people with autism and/or LD and their families, with the aim of avoiding unnecessary admissions to mental health inpatient units and reducing the length of hospital stays. As part of this, a Specialist LD/A Practitioner is being recruited for each of the 5 NCL boroughs – Camden, Islington, Barnet, Enfield and Haringey.
This post will be based in Islington within the Islington CAMHS Adolescent Assessment + Outreach Team, who work with CYP with acute, complex and chronic mental health difficulties. The post holder will also interface with local sector inpatient units, acute paediatric wards and Emergency Departments, Home Treatment Teams, LD/ASD Keyworker services and CAMHS neurodevelopmental pathways. All with the aim of enhancing the local community support offer, improving complex discharge planning, and reducing the length of inpatient stays for CYP with a diagnosis of autism and/or LD.
This post will be case holding, offering direct clinical interventions to a small clinical caseload, working individually with young people and their families where there is diagnosed autism and/or a learning disability; providing specialist, adjusted, support and interventions, which may include Positive Behaviour Support (PBS)-based interventions. The post will also offer advocacy and support for CYP and families in navigating local systems and processes, e.g., CETRs, and accessing autism-informed social prescribing and other appropriate local resources and services. The role will involve indirect work such as consultation to residential units, upskilling other CAMHS clinicians in PBS and adjusting treatments for CYP with neurodiversity, training networks around management of behaviours that challenge.
The post holder will be a registered and highly specialist Learning Disability Nurse (RNLD), Mental Health Nurse (RMN), Clinical/Counselling Psychologist, Occupational Therapist (OT), Speech and Language Therapist, or Clinical Social Worker (SW). They will have extensive post-qualification clinical and therapeutic skills and experience in providing both direct and system support to children and young people with learning disabilities and/or autism who have significant mental health needs.
Whittington Health serves a richly diverse population and works hard to ensure that all our services are fair and equally accessible to everyone. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the way we look after our staff. We aim to employ a workforce which is as representative as possible of this population, so we are open to the value of differences in age, disability, gender, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, race, sexual orientation, and religion or belief. The Trust believes that as a public sector organisation we have an obligation to have recruitment, training, promotion and other formal employment policies and procedures that are sensitive to these differences. We think that by doing so, we are better able to treat our patients as well as being a better place to work.
For further details / informal visits contact: Name: Dami Barnor Job title: Joint manager AAOT, LD/Autism Keyworker Service Email address:
[email protected] Telephone number: 020 3316 1824
