Kent County Council - Educational Psychologist

Are you interested in developing your Community-based Educational Psychology practice and providing responsive, evidence based psychological interventions across early years settings, Family Hubs, schools and with children and families across Kent?

Kent Educational Psychology Service’s vision is to develop a Local Authority EP service where our identity as Local Authority EP’s is focused on community and relationships.

If you are an experienced Educational Psychologist, recently qualified or in your final year of Doctoral training and are passionate about making a meaningful difference for children and young people then we would like to hear from you.

Working alongside other partners in Education, Health and Social Care we provide schools with a Link Educational Psychologist who is part of a multi-agency Professional Resource Group. Together, they support a Community of Schools, offering systemic input across multiple levels.

The Service is strategically positioned within the Local Authority with our psychologists primarily delivering community focused services, receiving their own CPD, admin and supervision for 60% of their time because we recognise that early intervention is fundamental in addressing the crises in SEN and providing more accessible support to families and schools at an earlier stage.

As a Kent Educational Psychologist, you will join a service with an excellent reputation across the county.  Or work includes:

• Leading the multi-agency emotion-based school avoidance pathway
• Delivering training and supervising Emotional Literacy Support Assistants (ELSAs)
• Community focused work with links to Family Hubs and Social Care, exclusions support and the Youth Justice Teams
• Supporting the neurodevelopmental pathway around autism diagnoses and support in schools
• Facilitating School Based Reviews that lead to systemic change, collaborative working, and targeted interventions

We offer a rich CPD programme where you can develop further skills in Supervision, Video Interaction Guidance, Power Threat Meaning Framework, Dynamic assessment and so much more! We are integrating the offer of coaching and further leadership training support to provide ongoing professional development and EP’s have multiple opportunities to develop specialisms and leadership roles through supporting our many areas of work and our flourishing Trainee and Assistant EP programmes. We are developing our anti-racism strategy, aiming to embed anti-racist practice with psychologists encouraged to undertake regular reflective sessions relating to this issue.

Educational psychologists joining Kent EP Service are rewarded with a generous financial package that includes a “golden hello” of £2000 and an annual retention payment of £3000. There are also relocation expenses of up to £8000 payable for those moving to Kent. We offer flexible working arrangements supported by a laptop and smartphone, structured induction, highly regarded CPD opportunities, individual and peer group supervision and the support of an excellent dedicated administrative team.

We have opportunities available across Kent.  Work base locations can be discussed at interview.  If you would like to be part of a creative, innovative Service then we would welcome an application from you.

This post is considered by KCC to be a customer-facing position. The Council therefore has a statutory duty under Part 7 of the Immigration Act (2016) to ensure that post holders have a command of spoken English/Welsh sufficient for the effective performance of the job requirements. The appropriate standards are set out in the Job Description/Person Specification.

This post is subject to an Enhanced Disclosure Application to the Disclosure and Barring Service. Applicants must be professionally qualified and registered with the HCPC.

This is a rolling advert, and applications will be reviewed regularly. If your application is successfully shortlisted, we will be in touch to arrange an interview.

Contact Details - For an informal chat please contact Daniel Jones, Acting Principal Educational Psychologist, by Daniel.Jones@kent.gov.uk – or alternatively call us on: 03000 422698.