Clinical Assessor (Counselling & Mental Health Support)

Job Description King’s College London Counselling and Mental Health Support Service is seeking to recruit a full-time Clinical Assessor on a fixed term contract (one year – maternity cover). The applicant will have specialist knowledge of issues related to student mental health, including the assessment and management of risk, mental health assessment and academic problems assessment (ie risk of dropping out of studies, not completing studies). You will also be triaging students who have completed their registrations with the Service onto three internal waiting lists; ranging in priority from high to low. This process consists of noting the reason for wanting counselling, exploring if there are any additional factors to consider (eg issues relating to race, identity, sexuality or culture; is the student in their final year or considering withdrawing) and considering this in conjunction with the student’s score on the ‘CORE-34’: a validated questionnaire consisting of 34 wellbeing and risk questions. Your role will also include allocating students, post-triage, to counsellors and Mental Health Advisors on the team. A full training will be provided, and you will join an existing team of triage and allocations specialists within the C&MHS team. You will have experience and current accreditation as a mental health nurse or a mental health social worker. This post may also be suitable for an assistant psychologist, with the graduate basis for membership of the BPS. You will work closely with the Counselling and Mental Health Support Service to ensure the appropriate referral of cases and an effective multi-disciplinary approach to all aspects of clinical work. Referrals and liaison with external services, where appropriate, will also be part of your post-assessment tasks. You will present more complex cases at the weekly team meetings and meet weekly with a supervisor (Counselling or Clinical Psychologist) or manager within the team to discuss your assessments. Where appropriate, you will provide students you have assessed with letters supporting Mitigating Circumstances Form requests eg for extensions. You will also write to the student’s GP with the assessment outcome if appropriate. There will be opportunities to offer one-session interventions (eg Cardiff or Dryden model) and other brief counselling input to students, and also to provide workshops in areas of expertise such as stress management, sleep problems etc. You will be expected to provide in-person appointments to students – with a minimum of 40% of your time spent on-campus. You may choose to work from home for up to 60% of the week and, should there be another lockdown, you may be required to work from home only. Please apply on the basis that you might be working from home some of the time and already have a secure, confidential home-working environment. You will be provided with all the necessary equipment, including laptop, separate mouse and keypad (optional). This post will be offered on an indefinite contract. This is a full-time post.

Key responsibilities

• Triage students from the registration list to the internal waiting lists.
• Allocate students post-triage.
• Provide confidential, fifty-minute, mental health assessments to students applying to the Counselling and Mental Health Support Service and a small number of extended, ninety-minute, single-session appointments.
• Identify any further support and liaise with internal and external services as needed to enable students to fully participate in university life.
• Support students with mitigating circumstances requests and write letters to GP’s or current NHS teams.

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post. Skills, Knowledge and Experience Essential criteria

• Professional qualification and current professional accreditation in the field of mental health nursing, mental health social work or psychology.

• Expert knowledge and skills of undertaking mental health and risk assessment and management, including standardized assessment protocols and relevant clinical outcome measures (such as CORE).

• Expert knowledge of the mental health issues and support needs of students and/or young adults.

• Knowledge of legislation relating to mental health.

• Strong advocate of diversity and inclusion and promoting access for people with mental health issues.

• Understanding of the issues that students face in Higher Education and the types of support/advice that students require beyond mental health support.

• Experience of managing a complex caseload of students presenting with a wide range of mental health difficulties.

• Experience of referring cases into NHS and voluntary sector bodies and working closely with such services on complex cases.

• Experience of balancing the need to share information appropriately to ensure the effective management of risk with the need for confidentiality and data protection legislation compliance.

• Qualification or training in counselling skills and/or a sound understanding of counselling/psychotherapy models and their impact.

• Excellent IT and administration skills, including administrative self-sufficiency (e.g. diary management, letter writing, etc.)

Desirable criteria

• Experience of working in a HE institution.

• Experience of delivering training, presentations and/or group-work.

• Knowledge/experience of providing online mental health support.

Further Information Your application should clearly set out how you meet the skills, knowledge and experience criteria listed, along with relevant examples. Candidates will be shortlisted based upon these criteria. Interviews will be held week commencing 6th March. It is expected that they will be conducted remotely.