Clinical Pyschologist

Job description

Job responsibilities

To provide a systemic psychology service of a high quality to the multidisciplinary team, and across all sectors of care. To promote an integrated approach enhancing the delivery of trauma informed care. To provide psychological assessment and therapy to young people within the service. To provide advice and consultation through formulation, on psychological intervention and risk to non-psychologist colleagues, external agencies and non-professional carers. To work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the service's policies and procedures. To utilise research skills for audit, policy, service development and research within the area served by the service. To undertake a personal research and development programme and develop and encourage a research culture within the clinical team.

To provide specialist psychological assessments of young people 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 young people, family members and others involved in the person's care.

To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a person's mental health problems and risky behaviour, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the young person's problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.

To provide a psychological opinion about diagnoses, treatment needs and risk and to represent these as appropriate, to multiagency meetings both internal and external to Swanwick Lodge.

To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses

To work with the multidisciplinary team in developing and implementing psychological interventions for the management of specific difficulties.

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.

To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the specialist assessment and treatment of individuals whose problems are managed by psychological, trauma informed based care plans.

To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals and external agencies contributing directly to young people's formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.

To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all young people and staff throughout the home and across all settings and agencies serving the young people placed with us.

To undertake and develop a core competency in risk assessment and risk management for individuals and to provide advice to other professionals 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 young people under our care and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.

To deal appropriately with the intense emotional atmosphere surrounding therapy contacts on a daily basis and to work with frequent intense concentration for the clinical sessions of assessment and therapy.

To work as an autonomous, independent practitioner responsible for own work and interventions, their prioritising and planning and for the interpretation of agreed guidelines and policies

To sit in a constrained position for patient therapy, staff meetings and extended assessment.

To tolerate and manage verbal abuse and occasional physical aggression. Training and critical awareness of physical intervention procedures (Team Teach) is required.

To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the team's 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 be actively involved in the Clinical governance activities within the Service and Trust

Clinical Supervision, Teaching and Training

To develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training and supervision and to provide supervision to other MDT staff's work, where appropriate.

To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional pre-and post-graduate training and clinical supervision.

To provide professional and clinical supervision of assistant/graduate psychologists.

To contribute to the training and supervision of trainee clinical and/or counselling psychologists ensuring that trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good mental health care and to contribute to the assessment of such competencies.

To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the patient group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.

Receive regular supervision in accordance with good practice guidelines.

Professional Leadership and Management

To manage the workloads of assistant and trainee clinical psychologists, within the framework of the service's policies and procedures.

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

To participate in the planning and development of the services for individuals and their families at Swanwick Lodge as is appropriate to the post holder's level of experience

Management and Recruitment

To support and participate in professional psychology recruitment as appropriate.

To represent the Psychology perspective on relevant working groups within the service and more widely as agreed with their manager.

Information Technology

Update patient records

To have at least a basic level of competency in use of Trust IT equipment, software, intra- and extra-net, in order to facilitate clinical and service related work.

Research and Development

To undertake project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within the service to help develop service provision.

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

To undertake a personal research and development programme and also develop and encourage a research culture within the team, providing research advice to other staff.

General

To contribute to the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the post holder's professional and service manager(s). HCPC registration as a Clinical Psychologist is required for this post.

To contribute to the development and articulation of best practice in psychology across the service, by continuing to develop 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 in the field of clinical psychology and related disciplines.

To maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry and recording, report writing and the responsible exercise of professional self-governance in accordance with professional codes of practice of the British Psychological Society and Trust policies and procedures.

To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to both the specific patient group and mental health.

Further information about the Trust and this role can be found on the Job Description and Person Specification document attached.

We are happy to talk Flexible Working - all requests for flexible working options can be discussed as part of the interview process.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Doctoral level training in applied psychology.
• Post-holder must be HCPC registered (or working towards this if qualifying this year)
• To have undertaken systemic practice training equivalent to the foundation year of systemic practice or be working towards this-- this includes the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology courses where systemic therapy is a core model

Desirable

• Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice.
• Qualification in systemic practice/family therapy

Experience

Essential

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of patients in clinical mental health settings, e.g., hospital or community mental health teams.
• Experience of working with service users with complex psychological needs.
• Experience of engaging and sustaining work with ambivalent clients.
• Experience of exercising clinical responsibility for service users' psychological care within the context of a multi --disciplinary teams and care plans.
• Experience of teaching and training.
• Experience of liaison with other health professionals.
• Experience of supervision of staff.

Desirable

• Post-qualification experience in secure/ inpatient/forensic or other relevant clinical settings
• Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Experience of delivering group programmes
• Experience of working with young people presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity.

Additional Criteria

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 patients, 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.
• 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.

Desirable

• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. looked after children, 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 setting, mental health and looked after young people.
• Experience of working within a multicultural framework.

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.

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

Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust

Address

Swanwick Lodge

Glen Road, off Swanwick Lane

Southampton

Hampshire

SO31 7HD

Employer's website

https://www.southernhealth.nhs.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)