Specialist Psychologist/Psychological Therapist

Job description

Job responsibilities

Clinical:

1. To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the team

based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with clients, family members and others involved in the clients care.

2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a clients mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the clients problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.

3. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.

4. To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.

5. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically-based care plans.

6. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.

7. To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically-based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies.

8. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.

9. To act as care coordinator, where appropriate, taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans including clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved the network of care.

10. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.

Teaching, training, and supervision

1. To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues, as well as line management from the identified line manager.

2. To continue to gain wider post-qualification experience of clinical psychology over and above that provided within the principal service area where the post-holder is employed.

3. To develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training and supervision and to provide supervision to other MDT staffs psychological work, as appropriate.

4. To provide professional and clinical supervision of assistant/graduate psychology staff and, as appropriate, to contribute to the supervision of individual cases for trainee clinical psychologists.

5. To contribute to the pre- and post-qualification teaching of relevant healthcare staff, as appropriate.

6. To contribute to external and internal training programmes.

Management responsibilities

1. To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the teams operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.

2. To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.

3. To help manage the workloads of assistant psychologists, within the framework of the team/services policies and procedures.

4. To be involved, as appropriate, in the shortlisting and interviewing of assistant psychologists/graduate psychology staff.

5. To be involved in service development projects as agreed by the professional lead

1. To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other team members.

2. To undertake research as appropriate within the service, Directorate or multi- centred research across Trusts and to supervise research and audit projects.

3. To initiate, implement and contribute to the evaluation, monitoring and development of the service, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within and across the service, to help develop and improve services to clients and their families.

4. To contribute to the evaluation, monitoring and development of the multi- disciplinary team.

5. To contribute to the development, implementation, evaluation and monitoring of the Directorates and Trusts operational policies and services.

1. To be proficient in the use of IT for email, intranet and clinical record purposes. To be familiar with word processing, database and statistical packages, and to use such packages for complex data analysis as necessary. To use appropriate computer software to develop and create clinical or other service-related reports or documents.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION, PLEASE READ:

All applicants must be willing to undertake National Security Vetting in order to work in a Prison Setting. This will be completed as part of the pre-employment checks through Oxleas and the prison vetting team.

You will need to provide:

Proof of right to work documentation

Proof of ID, needs to include 1 photographic ID

Proof of address documentation

Non-UK passport holders will need to have correct documentation (right to work in the UK) and a Home office Share code.

Address History:

5 years address history will be needed.

Applicants that are not UK Passport holders who provide less than 5 years UK address history will need to provide a Police Certificate which must be in English from where they resided previously.

Applicants who are UK Passport holders who have lived abroad for a period of more than six months during the last three years will need to provide a certificate of good conduct or an overseas police check in English from the countries resided in or visited.

In order to assist you in obtaining a Police Certificate, guidance can be soughtfrom:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/criminal-records-checks-for-overseas-applicants

If the country you have resided in is not listed here, you can obtain the necessary information by contacting the relevant Embassy or High Commission for that Country. Their contact details can be found on the Foreign & Commonwealth Office website (http://www.fco.gov.uk/en).

Person Specification

Education/ Qualifications

Essential

• Doctoral level training in clinical/forensic/counselling psychology, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developments as accredited by the BPS.

Desirable

• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.

Experience

Essential

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and inpatient settings.

Desirable

• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course presenting 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 the threat of physical abuse
• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
• Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts.

Skills/Abilities/Knowledge

Essential

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• 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
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non- professional groups.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.

Desirable

• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (eg personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc).
• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health.

Effort and Environment

Essential

• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.

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).

Employer details

Employer name

Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust

Address

HMP Swaleside

Brabazon Road

Eastchurch

ME12 4AA

Employer's website

http://oxleas.nhs.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)