Consultant Clinical/Forensic/Counselling Psychologist
Band 8c
Main area: Offender Healthcare
Grade: Band 8c
Contract: Permanent
Hours: Part time - 22.5 hours per week
Job ref: 277-7042882-DORS-A
Site: HMP's Guys Marsh, Portland and The Verne
Town: Shaftesbury
Salary: £74,290 - £85,601 pa pro rata
Salary period: Yearly
Closing: 27/03/2025 23:59
Job overview
This is an excellent opportunity for an experienced psychologist to join our team of diverse, talented healthcare professionals to deliver care that is not only efficient but deeply centred on the patient.
Our healthcare teams have a real impact on promoting health and well-being to those in prison, and we pride ourselves on using skills and strategies that instil hope for patients’ future resettlement back into the community. Our Psychological Therapies department is an unusually large, long-established and nationally well-regarded specialty. Psychologists are highly valued within the trust and occupy a variety of service-wide leadership roles. The Psychological Therapies team is warm and friendly, whilst also being dynamic and innovative.
Join us in a stimulating role where we are seeking a dynamic and passionate experienced psychologist who has the skills required to develop a trauma-informed care service across three prisons.
The successful applicant will be able to demonstrate a keen interest in prison mental health as part of a multi-disciplinary team, consulting on and promoting psychological and trauma-informed approaches to understanding and working with this population. Candidates will be qualified psychologists with post-qualification experience. Previous experience in forensic settings would be beneficial.
Main duties of the job
This post is based within the mental health team across three Dorset prisons, HMP’s Guys Marsh, Portland and The Verne. You would be providing senior leadership and oversight of a range of psychological therapies across the prisons, ensuring these are safely and effectively delivered by you and your team of specialist psychologists and multi-professional mental health in-reach colleagues. You will contribute actively to service development, including culturally appropriate services for people of differing ethnicity and socio-economic status. You will work closely with director-level colleagues, commissioners and prison governors to design and implement a trauma-informed model of care.
You will supervise qualified psychologists who will supervise other psychological therapists to apply the NICE stepped care model and lead on trauma-informed consultation activity with both operational and clinical staff. There is a focus on attachment, trauma and systemic approaches with expert supervision provided for several evidence-based therapy modalities such as Cognitive Analytic Therapy, Mentalisation-based Therapy (MBT) and Eye Movement Desensitisation Therapy (EMDR). There would be an expectation that the post holder would carry a small caseload and carry out psychological assessment and therapy with complex individuals and groups of prisoners.
Working for our organisation
Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives.
We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London, we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.
Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:
* We Listen
* We Care
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
* To provide direct psychological care (assessment and intervention) and support the delivery of psychologically informed care by all disciplines within the service.
* To provide highly specialist psychological therapy assessments, formulations and interventions.
* To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of community clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans, including taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans with input from clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.
* To provide culturally appropriate psychological therapy interventions with service users, carers or families of referred clients when required.
* To communicate, in a highly skilled and sensitive manner, to clients, family carers and others as appropriate, information that may be contentious or highly distressing concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care.
Important information
All applicants must be willing to undertake National Security Vetting in order to work in a Prison Setting. This will be completed as part of the pre-employment checks through Oxleas and the prison vetting team.
Person specification
Education/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.
* HCPC registration as a Practitioner Psychologist.
* Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice.
* Additional training in neuropsychology.
Experience
* Substantial assessed experience of working as a qualified clinical psychologist with a relevant client group.
* 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.
* Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision.
* Experience of multi-professional management of teams or services.
* Experience in working in Forensic or Prison services.
Knowledge
* Doctoral level knowledge of clinical psychology including highly developed knowledge of lifespan developmental psychology, models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, and two or more distinct psychological therapies.
* Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
* Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex multivariate data analysis as practiced within the field of clinical psychology.
* Ability to articulate and interpret clearly the role of the professions of psychological therapies based upon a good understanding of the framework of government and national professional policy.
* Highly developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. severely challenging behaviours etc.).
We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace that welcomes and supports individuals of all abilities. Remember, if you meet the minimum criteria for this role and you have a disability, you can be guaranteed an interview under the Disability Confident Scheme - Please ensure you select this on your application form. We would encourage you to be open about your needs so we can work with you to design a comfortable and accessible interview experience. Any information you provide regarding a disability or a need for adjustments will be treated in confidence and will only be shared with colleagues who are supporting this request.
If you require any adjustments to participate fully in the interview process, please let us know by adding the relevant details when scheduling your preferred interview date and time. Please feel free to contact the appointing manager to discuss your needs.
We encourage applicants to contact the hiring manager before their interview, if they have any questions about the role or the process. This is a great way to get clarity and prepare effectively for the interview.
Please note that the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is prohibited during the interview process. We also discourage overuse of AI during the application process because this can negatively impact the quality of your application and may hinder your chances of being shortlisted. Thank you.
Employer certification / accreditation badges
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.
Name: Peter Stevens
Job title: Consultant Psychologist/Clinical Director
Email address: peter.stevens1@nhs.net
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