Psychologist – Assessment | Neuroaffirming, Trauma-Informed Practice

bout the job

Developmental | Autism | ADHD | Cognitive & Learning

Contractor | North Gosford, Central Coast

We’re looking for an experienced psychologist who genuinely enjoys assessment work to join our growing assessment team.

The role can include assessments across the lifespan, with referrals for autism, ADHD, developmental, cognitive and learning assessments. We have a particular need to grow our capacity for children’s assessments, so we’re looking for someone who is confident working with children and families and, importantly, has the skills and experience to assess children under 5.

We’d particularly love to hear from Educational & Developmental Psychologists and Clinical Psychologists with strong assessment experience.

The work

Depending on your experience and interests, your assessment caseload may include:

• Autism assessments
• ADHD assessments
• Developmental assessments
• Cognitive assessments
• Learning and academic assessments
• Combined autism and ADHD assessments
• More complex presentations where neurodevelopmental, developmental, learning, emotional and other factors may overlap

You can work across children, adolescents and adults, with scope to shape your caseload around your areas of expertise.

What we do need is someone who can help us meet the growing demand for child assessment, including preschool-aged children from around 3 years.

What matters to us

We want assessments to do more than answer a diagnostic question.

A good assessment should help someone understand themselves or their child better, make sense of strengths and areas of difficulty, and provide useful direction about what may help next.

That requires good clinical judgement, curiosity and the ability to look beyond test scores.

A neuroaffirming and trauma-informed approach is an important part of how we work and needs to be a genuine strength in your practice.

We’re looking for someone who can recognise the many ways neurodivergence can present, while also thoughtfully considering development, trauma, mental health, learning, environment and other factors that may be contributing to the clinical picture.

For our younger clients in particular, you'll be comfortable adapting the assessment process to the child, using observation well, gathering information from the adults around them and understanding behaviour within a developmental context.

We'd love to hear from you if you:

• Hold general registration as a psychologist with AHPRA
• Have strong psychological assessment experience
• Are confident assessing children including children under 5
• Have a strong understanding of child development and neurodevelopment
• Have experience in autism, ADHD, developmental, cognitive and/or learning assessment
• Practise from a genuinely neuroaffirming and trauma-informed perspective
• Are comfortable with complexity and differential diagnosis
• Can integrate developmental history, clinical observation, collateral information and formal assessment findings
• Communicate findings clearly and sensitively with clients and families
• Write thoughtful, practical and useful reports
• Enjoy working independently while still having a team around you to collaborate with

Experience with a range of assessment tools relevant to your areas of practice will be important. Experience in early childhood developmental assessment and autism assessment with preschool-aged children will be particularly valuable.

About working with us

This is a contractor role, with flexibility around your availability and the volume of assessment work you take on. This role would suit a psychologist looking to complement their existing work with flexible assessment work in private practice.

The Heart & Mind Collective is a multidisciplinary private practice in North Gosford with an established and growing assessment service.

Our Client Care team supports the administrative side of the assessment process, and you'll have established assessment systems and resources around you, as well as a multidisciplinary team to collaborate with when useful.

We want our psychologists to have the time and headspace to do assessment well — not simply move people through an assessment process.

There is also plenty of opportunity to make the role your own. If there are particular age groups, presentations or types of assessment work you enjoy, we'd like to build on those strengths.

Although there is scope for providing assessments across the lifespan, the one thing we particularly need you to bring is confidence and experience assessing children — including our under-5s.

Interested?

If assessment is the part of psychology you love, we'd like to hear from you.

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