Overview of the role

• Usually 2 or more days per week (with 3 “after school hours” appointments - ie usually 3.30, 4.30 and 5.30 - scheduled somewhere across 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 diagnostic report writing services to families.
• If experienced/interested - there is opportunity to over time be involved in a small amount of project work (speaking/training/teaching/supervision/seminar/ online psych services/supervision of other clinicians) - depending on your 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 and a desire to support others and work in a team environment.

The benefits of working with us include:

• Extensive training and supervision in continuing to develop skills in providing 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, mentoring and supervision includes (initially fortnightly or monthly - depending on your needs) 1:1 focused supervision, case conceptualisation and skills training as well as 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. Bonus is that our supervisors are the kindest psychologists on the planet!* (missing peer reviewed reference :)) 
• 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 that our training/supervision schedule outlined above has been adjusted specifically for those who are newly graduated, and this - along with our large psychologist team providing extensive opportunities for peer support - means we have successfully supported more than 15 graduates/early careers psychs over the last decade to complete their clinical endorsement process. 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, a clinical systems manager as well as myself as director - to provide clinical support our psychologists as and when they need. 
• Extensive, friendly and efficient administration support - our much loved admin team take care of appointment bookings, reminder calls, rescheduling, payments taken, GP letters sent, outcome measures scored, ‘letters due/outstanding’ reports - and fetch the occasional cup of coffee depending on levels of desperation:). The receptionist team are supported by our senior admin staff who also are on call to support our clinicians. We know that paperwork and admin can be tricky and we are committed to helping clinicians feel organised and able to leave at the end of the day without worrying about it and continue to work on new systems to help this happen.
• Management support from the clinical executive team - our senior executive team are very good at staying on top of changes to funding models , laws related to legal and ethical issues and other developments related to mental health in children and young people in Australia (they do crazy things like sign up for email alerts to legislative changes) - and this means 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 had continued strong client demand for our services. Our leadership and admin exec team do community awareness work on a weekly basis. We also 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 NDIS, Better Access, Department of Child Protection, 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. We also have a special “parent distress 1:1 therapy program” and 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. Please note we are committed to ensuring our services are accessible and safe for young people (and their families) who identify as gender diverse, from diverse cultural backgrounds and who identify as neurodivergent. 
• 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 - we employ our team as employees not contractors. Please note although individual sessional fees may be lower as an employee compared to being a contractor in some organisations - it is important to instead compare predicted annual income between these roles - as 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 also work as a clinicians 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) and still be able to work reasonable hours. This means our clinicians see around 4.5-4.8 clients per full day (based on annual averages of attended appointments). We also look at a range of other ways to ensure work stress is low (for instance, we conduct bi-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 bright (all with windows), comfortable and purpose designed for kids and teens, with space to keep your own materials if you want to add them to ours. Both clinics have easy access to parking, and far more importantly, good coffee shops.
• For many years we had 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 salary - we ensure this occurs by an annual salary benchmarking process comparing actual salaries to other government/ and other private practice 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. Our salary package also includes 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) and there is paid attendance at team meetings, and for reading staff and practice emails. 
   
• 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 Picnic Day gatherings to meet family/friends.

If you would like more information about Developing Minds, you can go to: www.developingminds.net.au

If you have any questions or would like to register your interest for a position, feel free to confidentially email me – [email protected]. 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.