How we screen and select imatta clinicians and therapists

We wanted to document the screening and selection process for imatta clinicians and therapists. We hope that with this transparency you’ll be assured of the rigour that goes into our process, and trust that when you’re seeking support you, or your team members, will only ever deal with highly qualified professionals.

- 

We ensure that all associates offering clinical work via our organisation adhere to the highest of professional and ethical standards.

Only clinicians and therapists who hold professional regulation / accreditation with a statutory or accrediting professional body are permitted to work with us. This ensures that there is professional oversight of their work, and that minimum standards of prior experience and training have been demonstrated. 

Professional regulation / accreditation ensures that clinicians maintain the quality of their work via ongoing Continued Professional Development (CPD), Clinical Supervision and ongoing, active clinical work. It also ensures that a statutory accrediting body holds professional responsibility and oversight for the standards of work of its members, and that members of the public and/or instructing parties have recourse should ethical or professional standards not be met.

For imatta services, we currently recruit clinicians from the following professional groups:

*Professionals regulated by BACP must be Accredited and not only Registered

We acknowledge that CBT has the largest evidence base for the treatment of common mental health problems. We understand that CBT training is commonplace and variable in its depth and quality. That is why we ensure that any clinicians offering CBT as their main treatment option have attained BAPCP accreditation, which is commonly recognised as the gold standard of CBT training and accreditation.

We also acknowledge that delivering flexible treatment, with an ability to draw on techniques from other evidence-based psychological models will be paramount to optimise outcomes. For this reason, we have prioritised the recruitment of professionals whose training ensures competence in complex integrative therapeutic practice, such as that attained by Clinical and Counselling Psychologists.

Our recruitment process is rigorous. Candidates are screened by a healthcare recruitment specialist with many years’ experience in the field. Candidates must be in possession of the following to be eligible for work with imatta:

• Up to date CV
• DBS certificate - The Disclosure and Barring Service is a non-departmental public body of the Home Office of the United Kingdom. The DBS enables organisations in the public, private and voluntary sectors to make safer recruitment decisions by identifying candidates who may be unsuitable for certain work, especially involving children or vulnerable adults, and provides wider access to criminal record information through its disclosure service for England and Wales. We request to see a physical copy of the certificate and ask candidates' whether they have any criminal convictions or if anything appears on their DBS. If it's rolling DBS which means it automatically renews, we carry out a status check to ascertain there have been no changes or any convictions since it was first issued.
• A copy of a valid Indemnity Insurance certificate (minimum cover – five million pounds)
• A valid professional registration certificate (we confirm their prof status and date of expiry from the relevant professional bodies' website - HCPC, BABCP, RCN)
• A professional reference from a line manager or clinical supervisor

A summary of the stages involved in our recruitment process can be seen below:

1. Current CV - through screening by our Healthcare Recruitment specialist, examining the candidates role and responsibilities in existing and previous positions, questioning any job haps on their CV, looking at their relevant experiences with addiction.
2. If screened as appropriate, our recruitment specialist will complete a telephone interview in which prior experience, current practice and various safety checks (DBS, indemnity, prof regulation, professional reference are completed. 
3. If deemed acceptable, a further interview call is arranged with our clinical lead Jamie Barksy. Clinical competence and therapeutic orientation and style is discussed. Information about imatta and our services is provided.
4. If approved, the clinician will be contacted by our recruitment specialist and confirmatory paperwork is requested and verified (DBS, indemnity, prof regulation, prof reference).
5. Once the necessary paperwork is verified, the clinician will be sent a contract detailing the nature of the working relationship. Once signed, they must complete our clinical and platform induction in order to be activated on our clinical database.
6. Ongoing clinical oversight and quality assurance is maintained via the following processes:

• All clinicians will receive their own clinical supervision
• Clinicians will have a consultation with a clinical lead at session 6 
• Care calls offered to client by treatment coordinator when required
• Routine feedback, outcome reporting and complaints procedure used to monitor quality of service

If you have any questions about our one-to-one support sessions, and how we can support you or your workforce please contact us.