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We have an opportunity
for a registered or clinical psychologist interested in working with children
and teens to join our team of 23 child/adolescent psychologists at either our
Aberfoyle Park clinic (located about 30 minutes south of the CBD in Adelaide,
South Australia) or Wayville clinic (behind Greenhill Road).
This position is for for 2 to 3.5 days (depending on the clinic) although we
may sometimes be able to accommodate a initial period of a half day for a few
months while someone builds up to the role.
Please note our team of psychs work a variety of numbers of days with us - some
work with us part time (while working for government, non-government or
other/their own (adult orientated) private practices part time - or spend other
parts of their week home/family commitments) while others work with us full
time.
If you are interested in a position with us, please feel free to confidentially
email Kirrilie at [email protected] to let us know of your
interest and questions and we can let you know how we proceed (see bottom of
this page for information about application process but it starts with an
informal catch up to talk about what you are looking for).
In the meantime, for an overview about working with us, please read on.
Overview of the role
- Usually 2 or more days per week (with 3 “after
school hour appointments” (OR Sat morn) appointments at some
point during the week. Although 2 days a week is usually our minimum
working time, as above we can accommodate a gradual “building up to” this
minimum level (and after school appts) in some cases for those finishing
study/other roles or for those who want to “try” the role to see if it
fits) - including offering evening/Sat morn appointments for a while to
work around other positions if needed.
- The bulk of this time will be 1:1 therapy work
with children and teens from 4 to 18 years old (and their families). We
don’t provide cognitive or other formal assessments or report writing
services to families.
- If experienced/interested - there is opportunity
to eventually be involved in a small amount of project work
(speaking/training/teaching/supervision/seminar/ online psych
services/supervision of other clinicians) - depending on skill set and
experience.
Essential criteria
- This role is for a registered or clinical
psychologist (however if you are a provisional psychologist who
has 6 months or less before completing your qualifications, please contact
us as we may have other employment opportunities available for you,
including the ability to use your paid employment as your final placement)
- unfortunately due to our funding models we cannot employ counsellors or
other mental health professionals at this time.
- We are looking for a psychologist with a keen
interest in learning or providing work with children, adolescents and
parents/caregivers
- We employ psychologists who have a strong focus on
evidence based practice, high level of commitment to professional
development and improvement, exceptional written and verbal communication
skills and a desire to support others and work in a team environment.
The benefits of working with us include:
- Extensive training and supervision in learning (or continuing to learn) to provide
effective therapy with children, young people and their families - from
our (Psychology/AHPRA board approved) supervisor team who have 10-25 years
of experience working specifically with families. This training and
supervision includes (initially fortnightly and then monthly - or more, if
you are a registrar) 1:1 focused supervision, case
conceptualisation and skills training as well as peer group supervision
for registrars, peer mentoring, (catered) quarterly case discussion
lunches, attend our fortnightly zoom “Basics and Beyond” training program for
working with children/teens/families, quarterly in house professional
development training evenings with 23 other child psychologists, and
bimonthly “Working with Kids and Teens” email updates from the team.
Please note the Developing Minds team of senior psychologists teach the
University of SA Child Interventions Course, supervise within the Uni SA
clinic program and have extensive knowledge and experience in teaching,
supervising and providing clinical care in a range of approaches (eg CBT,
DBT, systems based approaches, ACT). We have a strong focus on
improvement, all of our psychologists complete video session reviews,
biannual case audits, written case conceptualisations and receive feedback
on their outcomes with clients.
- Early career/newly graduated psychologists please
note - there is a common perception that
“private practice” environments are not suitable for early career/new
grads. Please note however that our training/supervision schedule outlined
above is adjusted specifically for those who are newly graduated, and this
along with our large psychologist team providing extensive opportunities
for peer support - ensures that our environment is a great environment for
early career/new graduates. As a result, we have supported more than 15
graduates/early careers psychs over the last decade to complete their
clinical endorsement process and feel confident in working with families.
We believe a split between Dev Minds and government/non government work
may be ideal for many new grads (and we may also be able to support you to
become aware of SA government based positions part time if desired - for
example if you are coming from interstate).
- Debriefing opportunities, and friendly
interactions on a daily basis from an
extremely friendly and caring team of 23 psychologists (and 10 admin and
executive staff), provision of a peer mentor (in addition to supervision
above) for the first few months of working with us. We want people to make
‘work friends’ here - hang out in the lunch room with us, share memes
occasionally on our 'chat line’ and hear our (probably objectively very)
corny jokes!
- Ongoing support: Daily rostered "on call" senior
psychologists employed to be available for crisis support about clinical
or professional practice issues throughout the day and into the evening.
As a larger practice we are fortunate to be able to have two team leaders,
2 clinical supervisors and clinical systems manager as well as myself as
director - to support our psychologists as and when they need. A more
caring group of supervisors you could not find.
- Extensive, friendly and efficient administration
support and cloud based admin systems
mean that our psychologists have all their appointment bookings, reminder
calls, rescheduling, payments taken, GP letters sent, outcome measures
scored, reports provided of which letters are due and when - and even cups
of coffee sometimes made, depending on levels of desperation:) by both our
team of amazing receptionists and extraordinarily capable admin executive
team. We are committed to helping clinicians feel organised and on top of
“paperwork”.
- Management support from the clinical executive
team - our executive team help you
stay compliant with any changes in funding models , laws related to legal
and ethical issues and other developments related to mental health in
children and young people in Australia - meaning you are supported to
practice at an exceptionally high professional standard (which of course
reduces any risks of safety concerns for clients and APHRA complaints for
professionals).
- Job Security/Client fill rates: As a result of strong community and school based
programs, education and services we have provided as a practice over the
last 22 years, we have strong client demand (between 4- 6 months waiting
lists) for our services. Our leadership and admin exec team do weekly
community awareness work and have extensive systems to ensure clinicians
have appropriate fill rates (particularly important in the last 6 months
with somewhat reduced demand for some practices in Australia) on a daily
basis. In addition, Developing Minds are funded by a variety of funding
models (including primary health networks, NDIS, Better Access, Department
of Child Protection, School based funding and other private funding) which
we believe is helpful in the context of often fluctuating government
approaches to mental health funding.
- Work variety and opportunity to work with diverse
range of families: As a result
of not being restricted to only using Better Access funding, our
psychologists have the opportunity to work with a variety of child and
adolescent and parent client groups including those from differing
socio-economic backgrounds - up to 50% of our client families are able to
access "gap free" services, and our funding models also allow us
to have up to 18 (rather than 10) fully funded sessions a year ,
“parent-only sessions”and be involved in some multi-D meetings with
teachers/other professionals. Please note, for experienced clinicians,
there are opportunities to have an “area of interest” and to take a
portion of clients particularly in this area/providing training and
supervision in this area.
- Professional indemnity insurance paid in full for you, and a yearly professional
development allowance to spend on any workshops or training you like
which would support your work with kids and teens (and often attend
professional development with the rest of the team). Paid attendance at
team meetings, and for reading staff emails etc.
- Access to our library: hundreds of print, email, video, animations,
book and therapy-material resources to use in sessions with children and
families, as well as our templates for GP letters and NDIS reports and our
bimonthly "Working with kids/teens research" email sent to all
clinicians with a summary of upcoming PD opportunities, resources ideas to
use in sessions, clinical practice guides and other clinical resources,
quarterly team PD meetings, (catered) peer supervision lunches.
- Work as an employee not contractor - although individual sessional fees may be lower
as an employee compared to being a contractor in some organisations, it is
important to compare annual predicted income and as an employee, often
this is just as high (or higher) as some contractor arrangements -
depending on the number of clients you are able to see as a contractor
(while also trying to bring in clients and do admin). The benefits of our
employment model include the fact tax is calculated and removed for you,
fortnightly payruns (ie not based on you invoicing us or clients paying
bills), all workcover, superannuation, parenting leave and long service
leave entitlements also apply - and your admin, referral generation and
filling of appointments is done for you. As a regular casual, you also
have the flexibility to be unavailable for work for up to 10 weeks a year
and “block out” time for family/other interests/personal commitments.
After 12 months of regular work you will have the option to transfer - if
you choose - to permanent part time employee status and therefore receive
paid sick/annual leave. Please note, we use the Australian Governments
"Paid Parental Leave Scheme" to administer maternity/paternity
leave payments.
- Autonomy, ability to contribute to the direction
of the practice and sense of being valued: All of our psychologists contribute to our ongoing
policy development by providing feedback monthly to the executive team
about professional practice and clinical governance issues, and they help
determine our policies and procedures. We believe our clinicians are
essential in helping us determine what works in the practice and so we
have a variety of systems to communicate and seek feedback from them. All
of our leadership team are also working as a clinician too (there’s
nothing like coming up with a policy and then realising when you use it
yourself that it needs tweaking!)
- Providing work-life balance and reducing work
stress is important to us. We want clinicians to have enough time to prepare/write notes by (on
average) seeing 4.5-4.8 clients per full day (based on annual averages of
attended appointments) and to have the flexibility to work in ways and
times which suit them. We conduct annual values/work satisfaction
assessments to continue to monitor and ensure work satisfaction remains as
high as possible for our team.
- Pleasant Working environment - our rooms are newly furnished, bright, comfortable
and purpose designed for kids and teens, with space to keep your own
materials if you want to add them to ours. Our Aberfoyle Park office is
set in a “leafy”, large and pleasant shopping complex with all offices
having large windows and walking access to shops and coffee shops. Our
Wayville offices are similar, ie set in leafy street with on street
parking, again newly furnished and also with good coffee shops nearby (can
you sense a coffee theme here?).
- We have achieved National Standards for Mental
Health Services accreditation (one of only a very small number of
private practices in SA having achieved this accreditation) and therefore
have high standards of clinical governance. We were also awarded first
prize in the 2018 Australian Paediatric Allied Health Practice Excellence awards
(criteria assessed was Collaboration within the Allied Health community;
Impact and innovation over the last 12 months; Client centred, evidence
based service delivery; Leadership and/or integrity; and Quality, safety
and ethics in their practice). Our online program Calm Kid Central has
also won two Primary Health Network Innovation awards (in SA and
Victoria).
- Data Driven: We are committed to outcome measurement, efficacy of therapy,
clinical skill improvement and evidence based practice: we measure and
analyse outcomes for each client with a custom built, electronic pre and
post health outcome, client satisfaction collection system. On an annual
basis we look at our clinic data outcomes and therapeutic alliance
measures and provide feedback to clinicians about their own individual
data.
- Our clinical psychologists earn a competitive
and generous salary - we ensure this by an annual salary benchmarking
process comparing actual salaries to other
government/non-government/private salaries, we do not “bulk bill” (we have
alternative “gap free” funding for families without financial capacity to
pay) and we use an increasing scale of compensation over years worked at
the practice to provide a sense of career progression.
We care about social justice, have an environmental care policy and the
practice donates $5 from every new client to Save the Children,
As well as caring deeply about young
people and their families - we also care for each other. We catch up a
few times a year entirely outside work for drinks/dinners and/or Developing
Minds “kids day” gatherings (ie dinners, the Zoo, Bounce, roller skating,
bowling!!). ()Well, we did prior to Covid. Hopefully this resumes soon)
Of
course, this is not a perfect organisation, mistakes and oversights happen (and
I take full responsibility for these) and there will always be many aspects of
our workplace which need improvement and addressing (and I like to talk about
some of the hard bits about working here whenever a psych comes to talk with us
about what we do - transparency matters!) However, we are keen to continue to
improve and are open to feedback from our team about how to keep making this a
better workplace for our team and a better service for the families we work
with.
Here are a few (older) photos of some
of our team. If you would like more information about Developing Minds, you can
go to:
Our
website: www.developingminds.net.au or our Facebook
page (https://www.facebook.com/developingminds.net.au)
If you have any questions or would
like to register your interest for a position, feel free to confidentially
email me. You are welcome to also email any of our clinicians directly if you
would rather do this to ask any questions about working here from their
perspective.
How do we go about working with a psychologist?
Our approach to employing psychologists - we meet confidentially with any
interested psychs for an initial no-pressure chat about how we work and to see
if our organisation is a good fit for the psychologist. If the psychologist is
interested in progressing with their application to work with us, they complete
a written application and proceed to interview with our team leaders. Sometimes
these interviews are competitive (ie more than one person applying fo the
position) and sometimes they are simply ‘against standards’ (ie only one person
applying for the position, who we are interviewing to see if they are a good
fit - which of course you will be doing for us too). We close applications when
we have our maximum staffing. For information purposes, for the past 5 years,
we have had an opening for a position approximately once every year.
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