Working as a solo private practitioner has benefits.

Complete autonomy.  Flexibility.  Taking home 100% of after-expenses profit.

But there are also risks and drawbacks.

·        First there are the professional risks which are vital for solo practitioners to consider in order to avoid AHPRA/Psychology Board notifications – do you have best practice/up to date informed consent procedures/privacy and record storage policies?  Are you up to date with changing medicare requirements, e-health record management/storage and other psychology board requirements? Do you know how to manage high risk clients when you are sick/on holidays/away from the office?  Can you manage complex confidentiality and professional issues (eg requests for information, subpoenas etc) without colleagues easily available for consultation?

·        Second there are the business considerations – do you feel comfortable organising billing, marketing for clients, feel secure about making sure you have an ongoing caseload, doing marketing, managing urgent/appointment phone calls while on leave/away from the office, keeping up to date with GST requirements, accounting practices and managing administration procedures.

·        Finally there are the personal difficulties – when working on your own or without other psychologist support, it can be lonely experience.  It can also be repetitive to see clients day in and day out and tiring to manage everything yourself.

Many solo practitioners manage these risks and drawbacks well and find ways to overcome and manage them.

However some psychologists find a better solution for them is to work in a group practice.  This suits many psychologists very well as it reduces the risks and drawbacks above (in fact some of our practitioners have left solo practice to work with us) – but what if you really want to work in solo private practice or maintain the private practice you already have?

At Developing Minds, for a short time, we are offering limited opportunities for ciinical psychologists to work both in their own solo private practice part time and with us part time.

This means that for half of your working days, you will have the benefits of working in our group practice.  

 These benefits include:

  • Extensive training and supervision in how to work even more effectively with kids and young people (and their families).  This training and supervision is provided to you at no cost and initially will include weekly focussed training, case conceptualisaion and skills training to ensure you feel confident working with all families.
  • Debriefing opportunities and support from an extremely friendly and caring team
  • Extensive and efficient administration support (appointment bookings, reminder calls, rescheduling, payments taken, letters typed etc)
  • Strong client demand (generally between 4 week and 3 months waiting lists) for our services as a result of our recognition within schools in SA. This demand has existed for 10 years and therefore we can assure any employees a high level of security in working with us.  
  • Professional indemnity insurance paid in full for you by the business
  • Generous yearly professional development allowance to spend on any workshops or training you like
  • Access to our library: hundreds of print, email, video, book and therapy-material resources regarding how to work with families.  For those clinicians who are interested, we are also starting to video record some of our client sessions for our other clinicians to watch - in order to review and improve our practices.
  • Working in our rooms - purpose designed for kids and teens, with space to keep your own materials if you want to add them to ours
  • You are an employee which means you don't have to worry about doing your own BAS, putting aside tax or managing financial accounts as this is all done for you.   Superannuation and long service leave entitlements apply.

As well as paying an hourly rate for seeing clients, we also pay your insurance, provide a PD allowance and cover you for workcover.  You will also earn an hourly rate for some business related administration and meeting time, be paid (if you wish) to write simple articles for parents for our website.   Your salary is high enough to cover 4 weeks of holiday leave, and most sick/parental leave you might wish to take while still meeting/exceeding salary you would earn in the government sector as level 2 or 3 workers.  

We will also work with you to provide other opportunities to work with groups/provide seminars in schools over time, and depending on your skill set and interests.

Most importantly, we care about young people and their families - and we care about each other.  We meet formally together as a team four times a year to develop our skills in working with young people (and eat and drink!).  We also try to catch up a couple of times a year for social and/or family gatherings (ie dinners, the Zoo, Bounce!!) 

We also care about social justice and the business donates $5 from every new client to Save the Children - this year we ran the City Bay to raise funds.  (When I say "ran", some ran, I strolled :))

You can find out more about us by looking at our website: www.developingminds.net.au or going to our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/developingminds.net.au

These positions are available on a very limited basis:

These limited positions (for psychologists who want to maintain their own solo practice as well as working with us) are unfortunately only available for:

-    Clinically endorsed psychologists

 - Psychologists who DO NOT see children or teenagers in their own private practice or who are willing to cease taking children or teenagers while they are working with us (to avoid difficulties with referral source)

-    Psychologists who are able to offer at least 12-15 client appointments per week with us (these may be after hours and at least three of these MUST be after 3.45pm in the afternoon)

  For the rest of your working week you could work in your solo private practice /other employment

As a long established (over 15 years) private practice with an extremely strong referral base, we can work with you to help you build up your own practice and make sure you are doing so safely.

If you would like to talk more, please feel free to confidentially email me at kirriliesmout@developingminds.net.au. 

This round of applications is open for a limited time - once we have our quota of applications we will change the status on this page.

For more details, or if you have any questions feel free to confidentially email me at any time.

Kirrilie - Director, Developing Minds Psychology (kirriliesmout@developingminds.net.au)

P.S. Are you interested in this work but nervous about the perceived risks of working in private practice?  If so, confidentially email me directly (kirriliesmout@developingminds.net.au) with the subject line "Free report about private practice work" and I will send you the answers to frequently asked questions such as "How secure is private practice?", "How do you handle seeing many clients per day", "What about the skills required in private practice?" and others.