Job summary
We are looking for a dynamic and enthusiastic band 8b clinical/ counselling psychologist to join our Trust and work in the Adulty Community Service Line in Merton.
The Integrated Recovery Hubs provide specialist assessment, treatment, and recovery work for adults with a wide variety of severe and enduring mental health needs creating a stimulating and rewarding role for clinical psychology. The Trust has a strong commitment to the development of psychological work, and you will be part of a larger group of psychologists working in the service and will receive regular supervision from the borough psychology professional lead. There are good CPD opportunities within the Trust.
Main duties of the job
You will be responsible for the provision of a systematic clinical psychology service within the context of a multidisciplinary service focussing on specialist psychological assessment and evidence based psychological interventions, including group work. Although embedded within CMHT, you will deliver psychological interventions as a part of the centralised psychology service in Merton and be supported through weekly meetings and individual supervision. You will also undertake service evaluation, audit, and development. You will be expected to provide a training placement to a trainee clinical psychologist.
You will assist the borough psychology lead in supervisory, leadership and service development activities and provide professional and clinical supervision to qualified psychologists and psychological therapy practitioners and work on leadership and service development projects in the borough.
Job responsibilities
1. To provide highly specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the team based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex psychological 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 clients, family members and others involved in the clients care.
2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a clients mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the clients problems, and employing methods of proven efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
3. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
4. 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.
5. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
6. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
7. To ensure that all members of the treating team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of clients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.
8. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide general advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.
9. To act as care coordinator, ensuring the provision of a care package appropriate for the clients needs, coordinating the work of others involved with care, tasking responsibility for arranging CPA reviews as required and communicating effectively with the client, his/her family and all others involved in the network of care, and to monitor progress during the course of multi-disciplinary interventions.
10. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.
11. To provide expertise, advice and support to all members of the treatment team to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care and to support other team Applied Psychologists in the service area, in their contribution (direct and indirect) to providing a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to all clients of the service in which they work.
Person Specification
Knowledge & Skills
Essential
* Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management, including evidence-based treatments for the types of presentations seen in secondary care adult / older adult services
* Well developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, 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
* Knowledge of our business and how it supports patient care
* Basic IT Skills
Desirable
* Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult-to-treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, dual diagnosis)
* High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies, which have an evidence base
* Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health
Experience
Essential
* Assessed experience of working as a qualified clinical/counselling psychologist for a significant period with experience of working at a highly specialist level with clients within the service area (adults and / or older adults in secondary care)
* Experience of working with a wide variety of client 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 severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems.
* Experience of delivering evidence-based psychological therapies to service users in secondary care settings
* Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care coordinator and also within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan.
* Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision.
Desirable
* Experience of representing psychology within the context of multi-disciplinary care
* Experience of assessing and treating clients across the full range of care settings
* Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts
Training & Qualification
Essential
* Doctoral level training in clinical or counselling psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS including models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and (for Clinical Psychologists) neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology ; OR alternative training outside of the UK that is recognised by the Health & Care Professions Council leading to registration in the UK as a Clinical or Counselling psychologist
* To be registered with the Health Professions Council under the appropriate domain specific title
* Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the HPC
* Formal training in supervision of trainee applied psychologists
Desirable
* Post-doctoral training in CBT or other NICE recommended psychological therapies relevant to the service user group within the service area
* BABCP accreditation as practitioner and/or supervisor
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.
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration.
Employer details
Employer name
South West London and St Georges Mental Health NHS Trust
Address
The Wilson Hospital
Cranmer Rd
Mitcham
CR4 4TP
Employer's website #J-18808-Ljbffr