Consultant Practitioner Psychologist and Professional Lead

Job responsibilities

Job summary

This role of Consultant Practitioner Psychologist and Professional Lead for the Chailey Paediatric Neuropsychology Service entails working in the field of brain injury, pathology or other abnormality and complex physical, learning and neurodisability using a wide range of clinical skills that include formal and informal assessment, formulation and diagnosis, behavioural and therapeutic intervention, teaching and consultation.

A Consultant Practitioner Psychologist works autonomously as an experienced clinician with complex cases, provides leadership to less experienced colleagues and yet-to-qualify staff through direction, support and supervision, and contributes to the wider service Leadership Team. Consultant Practitioner Psychologists also use their research and service development skills to make positive contributions and changes to their department at a more organisational level. Key attributes of a Consultant Practitioner Psychologist include:

• Commitment to supporting change
• Ability to understand and analyse a range of complex information
• Ability to manage ones own emotions and the emotions of others
• Drive, self-motivation and assertiveness
• Exemplary listening skills
• Enthusiasm for joint working within multidisciplinary teams
• Ability to communicate in a variety of ways
• Advocacy for colleagues and client groups, ensuring proper regard for peoples dignity, choice and racial, cultural, sexual, and religious needs and preferences.

The postholder will be a key leader and supervisor to a vibrant and dynamic team of experienced and newly-qualified psychological professionals, trainee clinical psychologists on placement and assistant psychologists. The team works closely alongside a wider multidisciplinary team of Speech and Language Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapists and Paediatricians, as well as teachers, care staff and nurses within a residential education setting. Knowledge and expertise in assessment and therapeutic intervention work with children, young people and their families is required, as well as experience in consultation with other professionals, and support and supervision for more junior qualified and trainee clinical psychologists. The postholder will also form part of the Senior Leadership Team, supporting operations and contributing to wider leadership oversight and governance of Chailey Clinical Services. The postholder will work autonomouslywithin professional guidelines and within the overall framework of the Services policies and procedures. The role will include provision of consultancy and supervision to wider Trust colleagues, in particular with regards to psychology input into Child Development Centres and the Neurodevelopmental Pathway. The postholder will need to pass enhanced background checks.

The postholder will:

• hold a professional post-doctoral qualification in paediatric neuropsychology
• be eligible for full membership of the Division of Neuropsychology (DoN) and the Specialist Register of Clinical Neuropsychologists (SRCN)
• be registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC)
• be a member or encouraged to pursue membership of the British Psychological Society (BPS) or similar national network and special interest groups

Communication and working relationships

• The postholder will have excellent communication skills working with vast and varied professionals, families and other organisations.
• The postholder will be expected to confidently communicate highly complex condition-related information to children who may present with emotional and behavioural challenges, and their families. Some of this may be very distressing.
• The postholder will provide expertise and advice to facilitate effective and appropriate psychological care of patients by all staff in and associated with CCS.
• The postholder will oversee, supervise and/or support the work of psychology students, assistants, trainees and qualified practitioner psychologists in CCS and in the CDCs.
• The postholder will be an autonomous practitioner who is responsible and accountable for their own practice and decision making, working to professional guidelines, standards and boundaries, and in accordance with Trust policies, and leading and supporting the development of other psychology professionals within the team to do the same.
• The postholder will ensure effective and timely communication at all levels (with patients, families, multidisciplinary team members and external agencies).
• The postholder will have experience and skill in working with children and adults who are confused and agitated, potentially aggressive, and in heightened states of emotional distress, including serious mental illness, where there is safeguarding concern, parental and family disharmony, etc.
• The postholder will be adept in communicating significant, sensitive, distressing and potentially life-changing information to patients and families when required.

Key Responsibilities

• Contribute to the evaluation and monitoring of the teams operational policies and pathways through the deployment of professional skills in service evaluation, clinical audit and research, leading to an improvement in service delivery that has impact beyond own area of responsibility.
• Contribute to the development and articulation of best practice in psychology within CCS and the CDCs, by exercising the skills of a reflexive and reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal and maintaining an active engagement with current developments inthe field of psychology, neuropsychology and related disciplines, and leading others to do the same.
• Assess and treat specialist caseloads of clients at an advanced clinical level and maintain associated records. Make highly skilled professional evaluations and decisions, both in autonomous clinical psychological assessment, clinical decision making, treatment selection and treatment evaluation, and in multidisciplinary team settings.
• Form judgments in leadership and practice and offer specialist opinion and support in relation to highly complex conditions, issues and situations that take account of the wide variety and sometimes conflicting needs of patients, families, colleagues, team and service, and in the context of limited resources. This, whilst maintaining service quality, team wellbeing and wider staff morale.
• Plan, manage and prioritise relevant waiting lists and clinical caseloads.
• Provide, develop and manage highly specialist interventions.
• Be responsible for the planning, management, and prioritisation of a clinical caseload.
• Contribute to the development of measures of outcome from psychological treatments, and methods of feedback from patients and families.
• Acknowledge and take responsibility for assessing and managing risk, including in a crisis or safeguarding situation, and supporting junior colleagues to do the same.
• Coordinate provision of specialist services; provide specialist advice to other professions and carers; provide psychological consultation to both psychology and non-psychology professionals.
• Promote partnership with colleagues in other health and social care settings and associated external services.
• Establish and maintain effective relationships with colleagues, other agencies, service users and their families.
• Develop and deliver education and training to the multidisciplinary team.
• Design and conduct clinical audit, service development and other governance activity in CCS and the CDCs in line with trust priorities, maintaining and implementing best practice according to recent evidence base from research findings and developments within the field of paediatric neuropsychology.
• Recruit, retain and supervise qualified, trainee and assistant psychological practitioners, and provide senior supervisory clinical psychology support to themultidisciplinary rehabilitation and transition team and to Child Development Centres, as required.
• Be a member of the Chailey Clinical Services Senior Leadership Team, contributing to the development and implementation of Trust and Service policies and procedures.

Qualifications and/or Professional Registration

Essential

• Doctoral level training in clinical psychology including specifically models of psychopathology and clinical psychometrics, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology. OR doctoral training as a registered Counselling/Educational Psychologist with additional QiCN (or equivalent) training and experience in paediatric neuropsychology conferring eligibility for the SRCN.
• Successful completion of post-doctorate advanced qualification in Paediatric Neuropsychology, Theory and Practice.
• Current registration with the HCPC as a Clinical Psychologist OR Counselling/ Educational Psychologist with additional QiCN (or equivalent) training in Paediatric Neuropsychology, conferring eligibility for entry to the DoN and SRCN.
• Registration in Paediatric Neuropsychology with an appropriate body such as the BPS.

Desirable

• Recognition as an approved supervisor within the guidelines of the BPS.
• Membership of the BPS, ACP-UK, similar national network/professional body and/or special interest group.

Experience

Essential

• Significant post-qualification experience as a Clinical, Counselling or Educational Psychologist with significant experience in the field of paediatric neuropsychology.
• Significant experience of working as a qualified psychologist within children's services.
• Experience of working autonomously and exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified independent practitioner and within the context of a multidisciplinary care team.
• Significant experience of clinical supervision and consultancy to all grades of psychologist in the context of paediatric neuropsychology and neurodevelopmental pathways.
• Significant experience in psychological consultancy to a range of multiprofessionals.
• Experience of teaching and training and professional supervision.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course presenting with problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity, including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and threat of physical abuse.
• Post-qualification experience of working with children and young people with neurodevelopmental conditions, other complex neurodisability (including profound physical and intellectual disability) and acquired brain injury.
• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of children and young people across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and inpatient settings.
• Experience in managing highly complex situations concerning, e.g. safeguarding, risk assessment and management, clinical governance, complaints, and investigations.
• Significant leadership experience and evidence of success in leading service evaluation/audit, contributing to service transformation and implementing change to service delivery.
• Experience of management of colleagues/team/service (line and/or operational).

Desirable

• Experience of working within a paediatric neurorehabilitation setting.
• Experience conducting research.

Skills and Knowledge

Essential

• Advanced theoretical and practical knowledge of clinical neuropsychology and ability to apply these to paediatric services.
• Understanding and application of evidence-based psychological practice.
• Skills in the use of complex methods and tools of psychological assessment, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Significant skills in or knowledge of the use of standard neurodevelopmental assessment tools and strategies, such as for autism and ADHD.
• Specialist knowledge of psychological effects of brain injury and consideration of psychological approaches and interventions for this group of paediatric patients.
• Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Ability to identify, provide and promote appropriate means of support to patients and families exposed to, or at risk of, highly challenging, distressing and potentially safeguarding situations.
• Skills as a senior clinician to undertake clinical leadership roles and tasks within multidisciplinary, multi-professional and multi-agency contexts.
• Significant skills in providing consultation to other professional and nonprofessional groups.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practised within the clinical fields of psychology.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS / HCPC.

Personal

Essential

• Enthusiasm for a broad range of psychological approaches and interventions, interest in models of service delivery and ability to articulate the value added by clinical psychology within the context of multidisciplinary paediatric neurodisability services.
• Capacity and motivation for higher-level work, professional growth and further development.
• Ability to demonstrate the skills of a leader and supervisor.

Other requirement

Essential

• Ability to teach and train others using a variety of complex multimedia materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance and risk management as appropriate, to support and maintain own and team clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
• Ability to travel between bases and within the community as required for the post.
• Standard keyboard skills.

Desirable

• Familiarity with Q-interactive iPad-based testing system.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).