Senior Educational Psychologist

ROYAL BOROUGH OF KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA

Senior Educational Psychologist RBKC609395

Job Summary:

Salary range: £62,502 – £71,445 per annum (Pending pay award)

Work location: London

Hours per week: 36

Contract type: Permanent

Vetting requirements: Enhanced DBS check

Closing date: 18th June 2023

Interview date: Week commencing 26th June 2023

About Us:

At Westminster City Council and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, we share a vision of delivering a great quality of life to our residents. As such, we have teamed up to provide a high-quality bi-borough service that benefits from shared resources, and delivers the best possible outcomes for those who are in need of our expertise. We are therefore looking for a committed, experienced and talented Senior Educational Psychologist to join our Senior Management Team.

This is an exciting chance to become a member of a lively, diverse and friendly team that will provide a stimulating and supportive environment in which to pursue your career goals. Furthermore, this is a great opportunity to find a good work-life balance, as while we are ideally looking for a full-time practitioner, we will also consider applications from those wanting to work part-time.

It is important to us that we are reflective of the communities that we serve, so we would particularly welcome applications from all. London is a multicultural city, and around half of the children and young people who attend our local schools come from families whose first language is not English.

The Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea Educational Psychology Consultation Service (WKC-EPCS) is a visionary educational psychology service. Based at Kensington Town Hall in Central London, we combine home working with school visits and we attend a variety of additional setting. Benefitting from the experience of nearly 30 Educational Psychologists, trainees and support staff, we celebrate the rich variety of experience, expertise and approaches that exist within our team, and we have a strong history of embedding practice within our Consultation or Practice Framework.

The Role:

As a member of our department within a specific area team, you will have the scope to work across the whole bi-borough area. Every day will present you with new challenges and opportunities, as you focus on improving the learning, achievement, social-emotional development and wider wellbeing of children and young people up to the age of 25. From supporting children with SEN whose parents have opted for home education, through to handling Independent Review Panels for permanently excluded pupils, you will strive to deliver positive outcomes for service users. You will also support our Traded Offer, in which you will help us meet our income generation targets through the buy-in of your time. We will encourage you to pursue applied research and development projects, so this is a unique opportunity to develop specialist approaches to identified areas of need.

The role will include taking on key projects and portfolios from other members of the Senior Management Team. These projects will be open to negotiation to fit around the skill set of the successful applicant and the needs of the service. Another significant part of the role will be the induction and supervision of EPs who are new to the profession as well as EPs in training and the line-management of EPs.

Working with families from a wide variety of cultures presents our team with the scope to develop creative and robust applied psychology skills. It is against this fascinating backdrop that you could find an exceptional opportunity to further develop your skills in this area and also supervise and line manage Professional Grade EPs so that they can better support children, young people, families, schools and communities. As a highly ambitious service, we have devised a progressive development plan for the coming year that includes enhancing our cultural competence, so there has never been a better time to join us.

As a team, we are focused on keeping pace with the needs of our local community. To make the most of your role, you will therefore be encouraged to further your skills and knowledge with the full support of our internal and external CPD opportunities, and you will also have the chance to join some specialist working groups such as ‘Developing Culturally Inclusive Practice’, and ‘Exploring & Understanding Gender’. You will be expected to lead working groups and explore and develop new areas for our service. We also have access to well-established educational psychology doctoral programmes and multi-agency partnerships, so we are confident that you will develop your operational management skills. We currently have colleagues who have been seconded to UCL and the Youth Offending Services, and with progressive training programmes such as the development of interventions based on Cognitive Behavioural Approaches and Video Interaction Guidance, there really is no saying where your career will take you.

Please refer to the Job Description for more information.

About You:

To be equal to this career-defining opportunity, you will be:

• Honours degree in psychology or equivalent which confers Graduate Basis for Registration (GBR) with the British Psychological Society (BPS).
• Post-graduate qualification in a recognised vocational course for the training of professional Educational Psychologists.
• Fully qualified and a Registered Member of the Health Care Profession Council (HCPC) and eligible for Chartered Status with the British Psychological Society (BPS).
• Successful experience in either a Professional Grade and/or a Senior EP post with operational management responsibilities for a minimum of 2 years.
• Can demonstrate professional growth and learning from experience as an EP.
• Committed to making a difference to the achievement and wellbeing of children and young people, plus their families and schools.
• Well-versed in evidence based or informed practice. As such, you will be both reflective and self-aware, with the capacity to evaluate the effectiveness of your work.
• Committed to always putting children, young people and their families first. It is vital that their opinions and wishes are always heard.
• Someone who relishes diversity. Specifically, you will be committed to providing opportunities for children and families from a range of communities and backgrounds.

Please apply online explaining how you meet the requirements set out in the person specification and job description. CV’s alone will not be considered for this role.

We reserve the right to extend or close this vacancy early without warning subject to the volume of suitable applicants.

Application process

Please do not upload any documents, including CVs/Covering Letters or supporting statements, as these documents will not be reviewed and could result in your application not being shortlisted.

You should describe how you meet the person specification requirements for the position you are applying for in Section G of the application form.

Additional information

We are committed to promoting equality and respecting diversity and welcome applications from all sections of the community.

We are a Disability Confident Employer – committed to ensuring that our recruitment and selection process is inclusive and accessible.

We engage our staff with a variety of learning types including face-to-face and virtual learning because we want to ensure our staff understand our values and behaviours, grow their skills and develop their careers.

This post is covered by the Fluency Duty, as outlined in the Code of Practice on the English language requirements for public sector workers.

We do not accept speculative CVs from any source.

Please note, we will primarily contact candidates by e-mail throughout the recruitment process, please monitor your email junk / spam folder as our system generated emails may be allocated to these folders by your email settings.

If you experience difficulties with the recruitment application process, please contact the recruitment team by email: