32 hours per week.
An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Clinical Psychologist to join our Psychiatric Liaison Service at Livewell Southwest. The successful applicant will be based at Derriford Hospital, supporting to deliver assessment, evidence-based interventions, leadership and support for the wider team, including education.
This role may not be eligible for sponsorship under the Skilled Worker route, please refer to the Direct Gov website for more information with regards to eligibility.
Main duties of the job
We are looking for a clinical psychologist who is able to demonstrate a forward-thinking approach, who is able to work to continue raising team standards and provide excellent assessment and intervention for the people we see. Collaboration across a range of services will be essential as we continue to build care pathways and ways to interface with other teams.
Our service continues to be developed into a forward-thinking team, supporting people who often present in crisis. Presentations the team works with include self-harm and suicidality, difficulties with eating, unusual experiences and psychosis as well as emotional difficulties (such as anxiety, depression, and dysregulation). The team also provides support to those presenting with cognitive difficulties (such as dementia or brain injury).
All Livewell Southwest staff are expected to be able and willing to work across a 7-day service.
Job Share(s) Considered.
Please note that Livewell may close the job advertisement earlier than the specified deadline if a high number of applications are submitted. Therefore, we recommend you submit your application at the earliest opportunity.
About us
Livewell Southwest is an independent, award-winning social enterprise delivering integrated health and social care services across Plymouth, South Hams, and West Devon, with specialist services in parts of Devon and Cornwall. Our teams work in community hospitals, GP practices, sports centres, and health hubs.
As an organisation with a strong social conscience, we are guided by our values: kindness, respect, inclusivity, ambition, responsibility, and collaboration. We focus on transforming services to ensure sustainability while empowering staff and those we serve.
We involve the people we care for, along with their families and carers, in shaping the care they receive, striving to deliver the right care at the right time and place. Centering our work on individual needs helps people lead healthy, independent lives.
We prioritise employees' development, offering protected CPD time, training pathways, leadership programs, and funding for qualifications like the Care Certificate and Nurse Training Scholarships. Our induction and preceptorship programs ensure a smooth transition into our organisation.
Livewell Southwest values diversity and encourages applications from all sections of the community, including those with armed forces experience, lived experience of mental health, neuro-diverse conditions, and learning disabilities. If you need assistance or reasonable adjustments during the application process, contact the Recruiting Manager listed in the job advert.
Job description
Job responsibilities
Job Summary:
As a lead specialist, responsible for assessment and treatment of own specialist caseload of clients with a variety of complex problems including complex trauma, dissociation, psychosis, and other severe mental health problems.
As a lead specialist, responsible for providing, developing, and managing highly specialist psychological interventions to clients and for communicating psychological formulations and treatment plans to carers and professional colleagues.
Responsible for planning, organising, auditing, and developing policy and strategies for the delivery of a specialist psychology service within the multidisciplinary team.
The post holder would be expected to develop specialist responsibilities and provide leadership from a psychological perspective on a specific area of expertise that balances their experience, interests, and needs of the service.
Responsible for providing professional support, guidance, and clinical supervision to other clinical psychology staff (clinical psychologists, assistant psychologists, trainee psychologists, MHWP, CAPS, undergraduate placement students) in the psychiatric liaison team and in other parts of the service as required by their level of experience.
Responsible for the planning, delivery, and clinical supervision of a specialist clinical training placement for trainees on the postgraduate Doctoral Course in Clinical Psychology from the University of Plymouth.
Responsible for providing specialist consultation, advice, and clinical supervision to other non-psychology staff within the service on psychological understanding, interventions, and evaluations.
Responsible for developing and delivering teaching on psychological work and care for trainee clinical psychologists and qualified members of clinical psychology and other professions in Livewell Southwest.
Responsible for initiating and maintaining research and development projects relevant to furthering both clinical knowledge and service evaluation and delivery.
Responsible for working within the Guidelines for Professional Practice of the Health & Care Professions Council and the British Psychological Society Division of Clinical Psychology or ACP-UK, and for adhering to policies and procedures of Livewell Southwest.
Responsible for participating in an annual appraisal with the SORT or CMHT Consultant Clinical Psychologist plus a team manager.
Responsible for continuing professional development (CPD) in line with the annual appraisal Professional Development Plan PDP, the Knowledge and Skills Framework KSF, and the HCPC requirements for CPD.
Responsible for keeping aware of and being knowledgeable about current developments within the profession of clinical psychology.
Responsible for keeping up to date with legislation, national directives, policies, and NICE guidelines in relation to the work.
Clinical Skills:
To possess and practice a very high level of communication and relationship skills in situations where emotional distress, and risk of self-harm and of life-threatening behaviour can be expected.
To engage clients with complex presentations in a therapeutic alliance and maintain this through periods of doubt and relapse.
To work with, and support others to work with, clients with complex trauma, emotional disorders, and psychosis for whom psychological expertise is required in order to provide appropriate assessment, testing, rehabilitation and/or maintain placement, contributing to the liaison with commissioners and funding managers to provide feedback and advice on such clients' progress and ongoing needs.
To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account theoretical and therapeutic models, highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group and available resources.
To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client's cognitive, behavioural, and emotional sequelae of trauma for Psychiatric Liaison clients.
To be able to complete the most appropriate formal psychometric assessments with complex clients.
To be able to communicate complex psychological formulations and treatment plans to the client and to appropriate professional colleagues and to family members or carers, as appropriate, so that they are understood.
As part of the psychiatric liaison assessment process, to develop a psychological formulation of a client's problems that enables a healthy, holistic discussion of treatment options.
To prepare and provide complex medico-legal reports and reports for housing and employing bodies.
To have knowledge of and skill within several psychological models of understanding and managing behaviour, including, for example, cognitive behaviour therapy, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and systemic therapy.
Through consultation or case discussion with MDT colleagues, to be able to add both an understanding of psychosocial factors and offer advice as to an appropriate intervention for clients referred to the services but not on psychologists' caseload. In this way support the implementation of a Trauma-Informed model throughout our services.
Create and monitor effective and efficient referral criteria and pathways to Clinical Psychology from all services.
To be able to manage the emotional impact of working, often one-to-one, with people who can be in crisis and who can show high levels of arousal and can be actively self-harming or suicidal.
To ensure receipt of clinical and personal supervision in accordance with good practice guidelines for all clinical psychologists.
Policy and Service Development:
To be responsible for promoting the need to plan and develop specialist psychology services within the psychiatric liaison service.
Through membership of the psychology specialty, to be responsible for contributing to the planning and development of specialist psychology services across the service.
As a member of the psychiatric liaison service to be responsible for promoting the need to plan and develop the multidisciplinary response to clinical demands and expectations on it.
To attend the Psychology meetings and other relevant meetings regularly.
Human Resources:
To be responsible for providing clinical supervision and professional support and guidance as required to Clinical Psychologists, CAPS, MHWP, and trainee clinical psychologists within the service who are less experienced.
To be responsible for providing clinical supervision to non-clinical psychology members of the service as appropriate.
To be responsible for planning and supervising the work of undergraduate psychology students on year-long and short-term placements.
To be responsible for the supervision of the work of Assistant Psychologists.
To be responsible for planning and providing a clinical training placement to trainees on the postgraduate Doctoral Course in Clinical Psychology of the University of Plymouth. This clinical placement requires liaison with Human Resources to arrange appropriate DBS checks, honorary contracts, and IT access as well as completion of Livewell Southwest and service inductions. It also requires a sensitive awareness of the impact on trainees of induction to being members of a large and complex organisation as the context for learning and practising their professional skills.
To teach on the postgraduate Doctoral Courses in Clinical Psychology at the University of Plymouth if required and on pre and post-qualification professional courses for other disciplines represented within Livewell Southwest as required.
To ensure the development, maintenance, and dissemination of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external Continuing Professional Development - CPD training and development programmes and courses.
Research and Development:
To conduct and supervise research and audit and evaluation relevant to the provision of specialist psychological services for people accessing the psychiatric liaison service.
To initiate and implement project management techniques and tools in order to achieve completion of evaluations, audits, research, and service developments.
To collaborate with the University of Plymouth in setting up and conducting Doctoral level long-term research projects on psychiatric liaison, and providing teaching.
To use SPSS and other packages in the analysis of data and to write up the information in a meaningful format that is accessible and understood by the target audience.
To prepare and present information from audits, evaluations, and research to professional audiences within and outside the organisation.
To prepare papers for publication based on audit, evaluation, research, and development work.
To utilise theory, evidence-based literature, and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with team members in the service and Clinical Psychology.
Information Technology:
To contribute to the maintenance and development of office systems and procedures within clinical psychology and the wider service.
To be able to use a range of software packages including Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, and SPSS.
To be responsible for maintaining appropriate service statistics and records of work within the requirement of policies covering Care Programme Approach and its successor.
To ensure that electronic CPA (and its successor) and System One and other relevant computer databases are kept up-to-date.
Person Specification
Experience
Essential
* Experience of working as a psychologist with adults with severe and enduring mental health difficulties.
* Experience of teaching, training, and providing professional and/or clinical supervision.
* Experience of assessing and treating clients in the full range of care settings.
* Experience of working within multidisciplinary services for adult clients.
* Experience of offering consultation and advice to staff groups supporting vulnerable clients.
Desirable
* Post-qualification experience of two years or more.
* Record of having published in peer-reviewed or academic or professional journals and/or books.
* Experience of working as a qualified clinical psychologist in a psychiatric liaison service.
* Experience of working with clients with complex trauma.
* Post-qualification training in CAT, Schema Therapy, DBT, or CBT.
Knowledge & Skills
Essential
* Ability to analyse and interpret highly complex situations involving a range of options to make a decision about an appropriate course of action or solution to a problem.
* Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention, and management with adult service users.
* Skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, highly technical and clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, and professionals both within and outside the NHS.
* Doctoral level of research design and methodology as practiced within the profession.
#J-18808-Ljbffr