Job responsibilities
Clinical:
- To provide specialist psychological assessments of service users referred to the teams 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 service users, service users family members and others involved in the service users care. Ensuring all service users referred to the teams have equitable access to the range of psychological interventions applicable to the service based on presenting need.
- To formulate and implement focused plans for the formal psychological treatment and / or management of a service users mental health challenges, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the service users challenges, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
- 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.
- To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning socio-economic, historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.
- To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of service users.
- To provide highly specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to service users formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan. To support the team in providing care to service users with highly complex presentations in acute crisis.
- To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all service users, across all settings and agencies serving the service user group.
- To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
- To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of service users 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.
2. To continue to gain additional specialist experience and skills relevant to HTT, psych liaison and clinical or counselling psychology service and the amount and nature of such experience to be agreed with the head of specialty.
- 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.
- To provide professional and clinical supervision of assistant / graduate psychologists and as appropriate, to contribute to the supervision of individual cases for trainee clinical psychologists.
- To contribute to the pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical or counselling psychology.
- To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the service user group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.
Management, recruitment, policy and service development
- As a senior team member 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.
- To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and / or organisational matters need addressing.
- To manage the workloads of assistant and graduate psychologists, and trainee clinical psychologists, within the framework of the teams policies and procedures.
- To be involved, as appropriate, in the short listing and interviewing of assistant / graduate psychologists under the direction of the Borough Head of Adult Psychology and HTT and Psych Liaison staff under the direction of the Operational Manager. Ensuring the Trusts Equality Diversity and Inclusivity polices are rigorously followed.
- As negotiated and within time constraints, the post holder will be expected to attend relevant clinical meetings within and outside the service.
- The post holder will be required to attend the regular professional meetings in HTT and Psych Liaison and the professional meetings of the Adult Psychology Specialty and other Departmental meetings as agreed with the manager and Borough Head of Adult Psychology.
Research and service evaluation
- To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with team members.
- To undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research.
- To undertake Quality Improvement and project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within the service to help develop service provision.
- To familiarise themselves with, and to comply with, the Trusts requirements on research governance
ESSENTIAL DESIRABLE HOW TESTED TRAINING & QUALIFICATIONS
Doctoral level training in clinical or counselling psychology or its equivalent, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology as accredited by the BPS.
Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.
Experience of using family/ systemic interventions.
EXPERIENCE Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of service users across the full range of care settings, including, community, primary care and in service user settings.
Experience of working with a wide variety of service user 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.
Demonstrate further specialist
training / experience through having received a minimum of 50 hours clinical supervision of working as a specialist clinical psychologist, or an alternative agreed by the Trust Chief Psychologist.
Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
Experience of the application of clinical or counselling psychology in different cultural contexts.
Experience working as a specialist clinical psychologist under supervision.
KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS
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 service users, 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.
Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS.
Formal training in supervision of other psychologists, including trainees.
Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. 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 service user group and mental health.
Experience of working as part of a multi-disciplinary team.
OTHER Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
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.
Personal experience of mental health challenges.
Experience of working within a multicultural framework.
