Wandsworth child mental health trainee post ties service delivery to UCL training
Richmond and Wandsworth Councils are recruiting a Clinical Practitioner (CYP Mental Health) for a fixed-term, full-time training post focused on the ASC/LD modality within child and adolescent psychological therapy. The role sits inside the ACCESS Child & Youth Mental Health Team, where the appointed trainee will divide time between clinical work and academic training while supporting children, young people, and families with moderate to severe mental health presentations.
The position is structured as a 12-month post at £47,730 per year, with the training pathway beginning on Monday 18 January 2027. It is not a standard service appointment. The role is built around a workforce pipeline in which the employee is also an enrolled student with UCL and Anna Freud, combining service-based clinical exposure with formal postgraduate teaching. On completion, trainees receive a UCL Postgraduate Diploma.
A workforce model built around unmet child mental health demand
The post is part of the NHS England-funded Children and Young People Psychological Training Programmes, previously known as CYP-IAPT Recruit to Train. The funding model is designed to expand the child mental health workforce and reduce pressure on specialist pathways by supporting trainees in posts that link service delivery with education. In practical terms, that means the service gains a clinician in training while the trainee develops the skills needed to work across developmental stages, family systems, and culturally diverse settings.
The ACCESS service itself is presented as a partnership between the local authority and SW London & St George’s NHS Trust. Its remit covers initial assessments and Tier 2 interventions for children and young people aged 4.5 to 18 years, along with their parents and carers. The age range is wide enough to require a clinical approach that shifts rapidly from early childhood formulation to adolescent intervention, often within the same service pathway.
Clinical work will mirror the academic modality
The successful applicant will train on the Children & Young People Mental Health ASC/LD course while carrying out direct clinical work aligned with that training. The role is intended to equip the practitioner to deliver evidence-based interventions consistent with the autism spectrum condition and learning disability pathway. In a service like ACCESS, that usually means translating theoretical teaching into assessments, formulations, parent work, and interventions that can be adapted to communication style, cognitive profile, and family context.
A single post can carry a broad clinical load when the population spans different developmental needs. Children with neurodevelopmental complexity often present with overlapping emotional, behavioural, social, and educational difficulties, and the service model described here requires the trainee to work across those domains rather than treating them as separate silos.
Training time is split between teaching and seeing families
The timetable is explicit: around 2.5 days each week will be devoted to academic work, including teaching and personal study, while the remaining 2.5 days will be spent in service seeing clients and completing training-linked assignments. The trainee will be based at Springfield Hospital in Wandsworth and will also travel to Anna Freud in central London for teaching.
This split placement model matters because it keeps the training tightly connected to real patient contact. Child mental health interventions become more useful when the clinician can immediately test new concepts in clinic, refine formulation after supervision, and return to teaching with the realities of family work in mind. The post is therefore designed less as a classroom apprenticeship and more as a clinically embedded education pathway.
The service expects the trainee to work with families from different cultural backgrounds and to use interpreters when required. Equity, diversity, and inclusion are built into the wording of the appointment, reflecting the reality that child mental health assessment often depends on language access, culturally attuned formulation, and family engagement rather than symptom checklists alone.
Recruitment is linked to university acceptance criteria
Applicants must meet the university acceptance criteria set out in the recruitment information provided with the post. Two applications are required: one to the employing service and another directly to the UCL/Anna Freud course team. University staff will review academic eligibility during recruitment, and a training place at UCL is only available if the candidate secures the post and satisfies the course requirements.
That dual-track process places unusual weight on both service fit and academic readiness. A candidate may be clinically strong but still fall short if the university criteria are not met, while a strong academic applicant still needs to be competitive for the job itself. The recruitment model is therefore selecting for a narrow intersection of practice aptitude, training potential, and readiness for supervised specialist work.
The post also carries a privacy notice explaining that application details, including name, contact information, qualifications, and relevant experience, will be shared with UCL/Anna Freud staff during recruitment. Safeguarding expectations are clear as well: the employer states that it is committed to promoting the welfare of children and young people, and the role may be conditional on a satisfactory Disclosure and Barring Service check.
A rare blend of service pressure, training, and career entry
For child mental health services, posts like this serve two functions at once. They add hands-on capacity to a pressured system, and they train future practitioners in the very pathways where demand is already high. The vacancy is therefore as much about workforce development as it is about an individual appointment.
The role also signals how neurodevelopmental and child psychological therapy training is being organized in the NHS: by embedding trainees inside live services rather than separating education from practice. For families, that can mean access to a clinician who is both supervised and actively trained in evidence-based intervention. For the service, it means building future expertise while meeting current need.
Applications close on 8 November 2026, with shortlisting scheduled for 11 November 2026 and interviews planned for 23 November 2026. The employer says the vacancy may close early once enough applications have been received, leaving a relatively short window for candidates who meet both the clinical and academic entry requirements.