Principal Applied Psychologist and Clinical Lead
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Swanwick Lodge is a secure children's home caring for up to 10 young people who are held under section 25 of the Children's Act, on welfare placements. The home is run by Hampshire County Council, who deliver the care and education for the young people in the home. Young people typically stay for around 6 months, but this can vary based on their individual needs.
The post holder will join an engaging, friendly and supportive team that is a valued resource within the home. The health and wellbeing team is commissioned separately to the care and education elements in the home, but we work together very closely with our integrated colleagues to understand and meet the needs of the young people. As part of integrated working our delivery is scaffolded by the SECURE STAIRS framework and a central part of our role is to offer wellbeing support to the wider team including the delivery of training and a variety of reflective spaces. This is to promote a system wide, trauma informed approach to the understanding of the young people.
As Clinical Lead for the Health and Wellbeing Team you will be responsible for providing clinical leadership for the team and the delivery of the SECURE STAIRS framework.
The role is offered as a 12 month fixed term or secondment maternity cover. The role is up to full time, and applicants wished to work on a part time basis will also be considered.
Main duties of the job
1. To provide a systemic psychology service of a high quality to the multidisciplinary team, and across all sectors of care.
2. To promote an integrated approach enhancing the delivery of trauma informed care.
3. To provide psychological assessment and therapy to young people within the service.
4. To provide advice and consultation through formulation, on psychological intervention and risk to non-psychologist colleagues, external agencies, and non-professional carers.
5. To work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the service's policies and procedures.
6. To utilise research skills for audit, policy, service development and research within the area served by the service.
7. To undertake a personal research and development programme and develop and encourage a research culture within the clinical team.
As a senior clinician, with substantial clinical experience and post-qualification training, the post-holder will provide a high level of expertise within the secure children's home. The post-holder is a member of the multi-professional team.
Working with the senior management team and Hampshire County Council staff to clinically lead the creation; development, containment and support of a multi-professional therapeutic environment and informed by the SECURE STAIRS framework and the Trauma Recovery Model which can provide the highest quality psychologically informed care for young people.
About us
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is a newly established organisation, bringing together expertise from across mental health, learning disabilities, community, and physical health services. We are dedicated to delivering compassionate, high-quality, and accessible care to the diverse communities of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
With over 13,000 dedicated staff working across more than 300 sites, we place patients and staff at the centre of everything we do. Our goal is to create an integrated healthcare system that improves accessibility and ensures more consistent care for patients. By working together, we aim to improve patient outcomes, drive innovation, and meet the unique needs of the populations we serve.
Our Trust unites services from Southern Health, Solent NHS Trust, Isle of Wight NHS Trusts community and mental health teams, as well as Hampshire CAMHS, originally part of Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. This transformation enables us to deliver more seamless care across the region, ensuring that patients receive the right support, in the right place, at the right time.
Join us as we embark on this exciting journey to shape the future of healthcare across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. We are deeply committed to our CARE values of compassion, accountability, respect, and excellence, and offer outstanding opportunities for career development, training, and collaborative working.
Job responsibilities
1. Take clinical leadership responsibility for the implementation and coordination of psychological care for the home/unit they are responsible for.
2. Ensure the systematic provision of high-quality specialist psychological services for young people and their families/ carers, with an emphasis on co-production, dealing primarily with complex psychological problems on the home/unit they are responsible for.
3. The post-holder will undertake complex assessments and intervention strategies, including specialist neuropsychological assessment; offer consultancy and provide expert advice to multidisciplinary colleagues, and the wider clinical multi-professional team, other agencies and non-professional carers.
4. Provide leadership, consultation, supervision and support to psychologists and other members of the clinical team who provide psychologically based care and treatment within this setting.
5. The post-holder will utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development, research and teaching and act as a highly specialist resource to the wider professional community.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. To work with the multidisciplinary team in developing and implementing psychological interventions for the management of specific difficulties.
9. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the specialist assessment and treatment of individuals whose problems are managed by psychological, trauma informed based care plans.
Person Specification
Qualifications
* Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies. and lifespan developmental psychology.
* Formal training in supervision of other psychologists or equivalent experience.
* Registered with the Health and Care Professions Council as a Practitioner Psychologist
* Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice.
* Management/leadership training
Experience
* In depth experience of working as a qualified clinical psychologist at a highly specialist level.
* Experience of working with a wide variety of patient groups, across the whole life course and 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.
* Experience of providing Neuropsychological Assessment
* Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for client's psychological care and treatment, within the context of a multi-professional care plan.
* Experience of teaching, training and professional and clinical supervision.
* Experience of providing neuropsychological supervision to other staff.
* Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of patients in clinical mental health settings.
* Experience of working with service users with complex psychological needs.
* Experience of engaging and sustaining work with ambivalent clients.
* Experience of liaison with other health professionals.
* 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.
* Experience of managing staff
Additional Criteria
* 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.
* Well-developed knowledge of the theory and practice of working with young people with complex health problems and within the care setting.
* Skills in the application of interventions for young people with complex attachment and trauma histories and mental health difficulties.
* Ability to contain, explore and formulate an understanding of high levels of distress both directly with young people and indirectly via supervision of other staff.
* Ability to constructively manage situations and people at times of conflict.
* Ability to work collaboratively with senior managers and staff in service delivery and developments.
* Knowledge of legislation in relation to the patient group and mental health.
* Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS.
* Ability to identify provide and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and severely challenging behaviours.
* IT skills including email, word processing and basic databases. Interest in models of service delivery and an ability to articulate the value added by clinical psychology services within the context of multi-disciplinary mental health services.
* Well-developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups.
* 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.
* A commitment to the evaluation of services, enthusiasm for both multi-professional and uni-professional audit and a wish to continue to develop expertise in the service area.
* Ability to demonstrate leadership and management skills
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.
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