Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust celebrates diversity and promotes equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.
We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from ethnic minorities, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people that are under-represented in our workforce. Furthermore we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces personnel as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.
Job overview
The Beacon is a prison-based assessment and treatment service for men with personality related needs underlying their risk and offending behaviour. It is a partnership based service between Merseycare Foundation Trust and HMP Garth and is located within HMP Garth in Leyland, Lancashire.
The service is part of the National Offender Personality Disorder Pathway of services. It provides a range of group based and 1:1 interventions as part a therapeutic milieu which involves a focus on attachment, trauma and systemic interventions, alongside comprehensive risk assessment and management.
Core aims of the service are consistent with those of the Offender Personality Disorder Pathway in improving psychological wellbeing, reducing risk, improving staff skills and competencies and formulation and pathway focussed interventions.
The service has a positive, enthusiastic and dedicated partnership team who have a commitment to creative and diverse interventions, to reflective practice and discussion, and to promoting genuine collaborative and compassionate working with all our service users. We have an equal commitment to understanding men and their behaviour in the context of their lives, and to engaging and working with the complex factors involved in change and rehabilitation at all levels of service delivery and development.
Main duties of the job
The Beacon is looking for a Consultant Clinical or Forensic Psychologist to provide maternity leave cover for 12 months. The successful candidate will share our passion for the above principles and values and will be motivated to support the leadership and management team on the further development and maintenance of the same across our respective partner agencies, and within and across the national OPD pathway.
You will have a demonstrable commitment to the provision of the highest standards of care and service delivery for individuals and services with complex clinical and risk needs. You will have a clear and proven ability to engage and provide clinical leadership within teams including within complex service and systemic contexts.
You will value the challenges and opportunities involved in supporting the clinical leadership of the service and in collaborating with partner colleagues and service users. You will have a sophisticated knowledge of the needs and strengths of individuals who may meet criteria for a diagnosis of personality disorder, or personality difficulties. You will have equal knowledge and ability to act in a senior role in leading and supporting staff teams to manage the personal, professional and ethical challenges and opportunities work within this area can involve. The post involves working in close partnership with operational managers and with the service Custodial Manager and with clinical and officer colleagues in the wider multidisciplinary team.
Working for our organisation
Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.
We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.
At the heart of all we do is our commitment to 'perfect care' - care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We're currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.
Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
You will find full details of the roles and responsibilities within the job description and person specification.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
* Honours degree in psychology.
* For clinical psychologists ... Doctoral level training or equivalent for those who trained prior to 1996, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology as accredited by the British Psychological Society or its equivalents.
* For forensic psychologists ... MSc in forensic psychology (or DFP qualifying exam) and stage II post-qualifying training and therefore have full membership and chartered status of the Division of Forensic Psychology or will have completed the forensic psychology doctorate and therefore have full membership of the Division of Forensic Psychology and chartered status.
* For clinical and/or forensic psychologists ... Post qualifications specialist training, research or study with evidence of additional theoretical or conceptual knowledge acquisition in the field of personality disorder.
* Eligibility for appointment at this grade as assessed by an appropriate panel.
Desirable criteria
* Higher degree by research.
* Further training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice
* Qualifications in specific therapeutic approaches.
* Management training
Knowledge
Essential criteria
* Assessed experience of working as a qualified clinical or forensic psychologist for a minimum of six years, including at least three years' post-qualification experience working in the personality disorder field in a forensic setting.
* At least six years' experience of working with complex cases involving the maintenance of a high degree of professionalism in the face of emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.
* Experience of exercising responsibility and leadership for clients' psychological care and treatment, both as a professional care coordinator and in the context of multidisciplinary care planning.
* Experience of developing and maintaining good working relationships with staff, professionals and services across health and HMPPS settings.
* Extensive supervision experience within an applied clinical context
* Experience of teaching and training psychologists and other health workers and professionals in the area of personality disorder and forensic issues.
* Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
Desirable criteria
* Highly developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to engage and treat groups (for example personality disorder dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities and severely challenging behaviours, etc).
* High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two highly specialised psychological therapies.
Skills
Essential criteria
* Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
* Enthusiasm for a broad range of psychological phenomena, an interest in models of service delivery and an ability to articulate the value added by psychology services within the context of multidisciplinary mental health services.
* Ability to cope and deal with highly distressing emotional circumstances and work on an individual basis with service users in crisis situations, for example in seclusion regimes.
* Ability to demonstrate leadership and management skills, particularly in the context of staff teams, including less experienced members.
* High level of self-reflective and supervision skills and a commitment and ability to use clinical supervision appropriately
* Ability to contain and work with organisational stress and ability to hold the stress of others in highly-demanding training and clinical environments.
* Ability to identify and employ, as appropriate, clinical governance mechanisms for the support and maintenance of clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
* Ability to follow and maintain security procedures and protocols
Desirable criteria
* Record of having published in either a peer-reviewed or professional journals and/or books.
Please ensure you check the email account from which you apply for all correspondence. All information regarding your application will come from apps.trac.jobs not NHS Jobs.
Only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview.
As a Disability Confident Employer, we offer a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants who consider themselves to be disabled who meet the minimum (essential) criteria for the role in the person specification. If you would like your application to be considered under the Trust's guaranteed interview scheme you can indicate this in the personal information section of your online application form.
Should you require a reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process please email recruitment@merseycare.nhs.uk to ensure that measures can be put in place to support you.
We reserve the right to close any vacancy earlier than advertised in exceptional circumstances once we have received a high volume of applications.
The Trust expects all post holders who require an enhanced DBS for their role subscribe to the DBS Update Service. You will be required to enrol for this service for a fee of £16 per year and maintain registration. Trans applicants who require a DBS check and do not want to reveal details of their previous identity can contact the DBS Sensitive Applications Team (01516761452 or email sensitive@dbs.gsi.gov.uk) with their application number once they have completed their DBS application form. The team can prevent any previous identity showing on the DBS Certificate, unless the applicant has a conviction under their previous details in which case this will need to be disclosed.
Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.
Please be advised that the use of Artificial Intelligence on applications is monitored and if you choose to use this, you must declare this on your application form.
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Applicant requirements
You must have appropriate UK professional registration.
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Documents to download
* JD/PS (PDF, 480.3KB)
* OH risk (PDF, 410.0KB)
* A Great Place to Work (PDF, 2.1MB)
* Our People Promise and Charter (PDF, 5.8MB)
* Employee Benefits (PDF, 950.7KB)
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