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 kirriliesmout@developingminds.net.au 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.
Kirrilie - Director, Developing Minds Psychology (kirriliesmout@developingminds.net.au) (Updated 10/05/2024).
