Practitioner Psychologist (Clinical or Counselling)

Job description

Job responsibilities

You will be able to find a full Job description and Person Specification attached within the supporting documents or please click "Apply now" to view in Trac

This is a fixed term post for 12 months to cover the needs of the service

1. To provide a highly specialised psychological service to the Perinatal Community Health service within Cardiff and Vale UHB and to be a core member of the team. This service will be to individual mothers and their families, and involving other people as appropriate, and this service might be provided at a range of locations, including patients homes and other sites as appropriate.

2. To provide highly specialised psychological assessment to aid problem definition, understanding a diagnosis where appropriate and aid care planning. This may involve disclosing the outcome to the patient and/or family member and the provision of specialist psychological advice to facilitate adjustment to this information.

3. To advise on, provide specialist consultation to, and deliver appropriate psychological strategies to manage psychological problems impacting those with perinatal mental health conditions and to help patients and/or family members in their use.

T 4. To assess patients for psychological therapy and/or behaviour management across a broad range of mental health/psychological problems and to independently select and employ appropriate assessment methods (e.g. applied behavioural analysis, clinical interview, rating scales, etc.). This frequently involves gathering information from a variety of sources (e.g. the patient, her family and care staff) and examining the patients difficulties in relation to these contexts. Frequent and prolonged periods of intense concentration will be necessary.

5. To individually formulate the patients problems based on the highly complex information and perspectives gathered during the assessment and drawing on psychological theory and research. This will form the basis of therapy and will be guided by further review and reformulation.

6. To develop individual psychological therapy based on the formulation and to adapt this according to further review/reformulation.

7. To plan, coordinate and implement a range of different types of highly specialist therapies (e.g. cognitive-behavioural, systemic, etc.) according to the patients problem/situation. This will frequently involve exposure to highly distressing and emotive information, e.g. regarding bereavement, trauma, abuse, etc. and will necessitate frequent and prolonged periods sitting in a constrained position. Frequent and prolonged periods of intense concentration will also be necessary.

8. To maintain and continue to develop high level therapeutic skills across a broad range of mental health/psychological problems and to adapt therapeutic input accordingly, especially those most relevant to perinatal mental health.

9. To plan and coordinate therapeutic group programmes where relevant and involving non-psychologist colleagues as fully as possible within the service.

10. To be responsible for the development and co-ordination of highly specialised programmes of psychological care for individual clients in various settings including the community, hospitals, and residential/nursing home settings. This will necessitate assessment and consultation to staff plus provision of psychological expertise for ongoing support, monitoring, adaptation and evaluation of programmes.

11. To provide regular clinical and professional supervision of assistant psychologists and clinical psychology trainees and manage and coordinate their day-to-day work within the CPMH service.

12. To provide specialist training for staff and carers on a variety of topics. This will require planning, organising and delivering training for a varied audience.

13. To provide specialist psychological consultation in relation to individual patients, including helping them to develop team formulations of patients problems.

14. To initiate and conduct service-related psychological research/audit into areas relevant to the work of perinatal mental health conditions within UHB/Directorate guidance. This may involve the input and storage of data on computer system.

15. To take an active part in evaluation and audit as part of clinical governance within UHB guidance.

16. To provide research opportunities to trainee clinical/counselling psychologists while on placement and to assist in developing and implementing a research idea within UHB guidance.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Good Honours degree in Psychology with eligibility for Graduate Basis for Chartership (GBC) with the BPS.
• Post-graduate Doctorate in Clinical/Counselling Psychology accredited by the HCPC (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996 as accredited by the BPS) OR (for trainees) doctorate to be completed by end of 2024
• HCPC registration as a practitioner psychologist OR (for trainees) eligible by October 2024

Desirable

• 8a Practitioner Psychologist: Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialist areas of psychological practice.

Experience

Essential

• Experience in applying clinical/counselling psychology in the NHS, including cognitive and structured assessment, formulation, intervention, research and service development.
• Experience of effective multi-disciplinary team working in NHS or equivalent.
• for band 8a: Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan.

Desirable

• Experience of working with people with mental health/psychological problems in a medical setting; problems presenting with the full range of clinical severity across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care, in-patient and residential care settings and maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems.
• Experience of teaching/training and/or professional and clinical supervision.
• for band 7: Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan.

Skills

Essential

• Ability to make clinical and service-related judgments involving complex facts requiring analysis, interpretation and comparison of several options.
• Ability to contribute to the development of, and to implement, agreed policies and strategic long-term service developments.
• Ability to use the highest level of interpersonal and communication skills to convey and receive highly complex/sensitive information effectively, requiring empathy and reassurance, in a highly emotive atmosphere and the ability to overcome psychological resistance to potentially threatening information, whilst maintaining a high degree of professionalism at all times.

Desirable

• Experience of the development and implementation of policies and strategic long-term service developments.

Special knowledge

Essential

• Practitioner Psychologist: Doctoral level knowledge of clinical/counselling psychology theory and practice, assessment, psychological therapies and their application.
• Practitioner Psychologist: Participation with CPD as recommended by the BPS.

Desirable

• 8a Practitioner Psychologist: Post-doctoral training in relevant specialist areas of psychological practice (e.g. assessment of autism; working with psychosis; specific psychosocial approaches).

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

Cardiff and Vale University Health Board

Address

Cardiff Royal Infirmary

Cardiff Royal Infirmary (administrative base)

Cardiff & Vale of Glamorgan

CF24 0SZ

Employer's website

https://cavuhb.nhs.wales/ (Opens in a new tab)