Clinical Assessor (Maternity Cover)

About us:

The Counselling and Mental Health Support Service is part of the Students & Education Directorate, a collection of wide-ranging professional services in place to support King’s students and their education. As a directorate we manage the student lifecycle from application to graduation and beyond, to ensure a coherent and seamless student experience and effective administrative processes.

The Counselling and Mental Health Support Service provides a highly specialised Counselling and Mental Health service to students who are often in distress and require sensitive, timely access to psychological and mental health support.

About the role:

The role requires Clinical Assessors to carry out psychosocial, mental health assessments to students who have self-referred to the Counselling Service. The role requires highly developed skills and experience in carrying out mental health assessments, identifying risk and implementing safety planning with students. The assessment is also used to assess the suitability of the students access to the Counselling Service which provides a short term, five session, solution focused service model. The role involves referring students to external support where appropriate, for example, crisis mental health services, GP, NHS specialist services, other community services external to King’s. The role also requires Clinical Assessors to become familiar with the internal Student Support Services available to students and refer students appropriately. 

The Clinical Assessor is involved in triaging students who have self-referred to the Counselling Service. The role also involves allocating students, post-triage, to counsellors and Mental Health Advisors in the team. Full training will be provided, and the Clinical Assessor will join an existing team of triage and allocations specialists within the Counselling and Mental Health Service team. 

This is a full-time post (35 hours/week) and you will be offered a maternity cover contract.

About you:

Essential criteria

• Demonstrated ability to carry out assessments with students, identifying risk; mental health history; therapeutic goals and suitability for students to access Counselling in a short term, five session, solution focused service delivery model.
• 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, safeguarding obligations and escalating risk where necessary.
• Demonstrated empathy for, and understanding of, the psychosocial issues and concerns experienced by students undertaking university level studies.
• Demonstrated high-level competence in providing therapeutic assessments that are trauma informed and culturally appropriate with individuals of diverse backgrounds and presenting concerns.
• Experience triaging client / patient referrals to a Counselling or Mental Health Service, identifying suitable referrals and processing those referrals through the service’s triaging and allocation system; identify referrals which are not suitable and communicate this to students with a clear referral pathway to internal and external services.  
• Possesses high-level communication (written and oral) and interpersonal skills, including liaison and influencing skills to work collaboratively, flexibly, and productively within and across teams to provide advice on student mental health issues and service to students; letter writing where required to support student’s applications for mitigating circumstances, and other letters as required on request – where suitable.
• Applicants must have a relevant academic professional qualification and current professional accreditation in the field of mental health nursing, mental health social work or psychology.

Desirable criteria

• Previous experience providing student mental health support in an HE setting

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