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
An exciting opportunity has arisen for two 8b Principal Clinical Psychologists or Psychotherapists to provide management and leadership for our CMHT Psychologists and Psychotherapists based in Liverpool and Sefton. You will be supporting our existing CMHT Consultant Clinical Psychologist and joining the leadership team with existing Principal Psychologists covering other hubs.
We currently have the following posts available: 0.6WTE (3 days) at Moss house and 0.6WTE (3 days) at Southport.
Management and Leadership responsibilities will take up 0.5 of the post, the other 0.5 will be providing clinical interventions within a CMHT.
As an experienced clinician you will be providing supervision and exploring opportunities to develop the psychology service within your area. We are seeking candidates who are both team players and able to use their own initiative. We are passionate about improving access to psychological therapy and therefore part of your role will involve helping your team to meet KPIs around waiting times.
Our aim is to support, develop and retain you so you stay with the service for many years to come.
Main duties of the job
We are looking for an experienced clinician with the relevant skills, values and experience to provide a high quality psychological service to individuals with mental health difficulties.
The post holder will:
1. Demonstrate a strong interest and commitment to working with people with complex psychological presentations.
2. Work closely with the Consultant Clinical Psychologist and other members of the leadership team and contribute to clinical leadership by providing clinical, professional and management supervision, consultation, training and advice.
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
Clinical:
1. To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the service 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 client's care.
2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client's mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client's 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 and groups on the inpatient wards, 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 care.
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 service 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 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- disciplinary and multi- disciplinary care.
10. To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment service.
11. Will be required to sit in a constrained position for client therapy and extended assessment sessions.
12. Will be required to tolerate and manage frequent verbal abuse and occasional physical aggression.
13. Will be required to deal with the intense emotional atmosphere surrounding therapy contacts which may be highly distressing on a daily basis, and to work with frequent intense concentration for much of the clinical sessions of assessment and therapy. This will include writing reports of a potentially distressing nature e.g., safeguarding adults.
Policy and Service Development:
1. To participate as a senior clinician in the development of a high quality, responsive and accessible service including advising both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
Professional Leadership and Management:
1. To exercise delegated responsibility for managing the psychological resources available to the service, whether in the form of additional qualified and unqualified graduate psychology staff, or in the form of psychological materials employed in the assessment and treatment of patients.
2. To exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service.
3. To participate as appropriate in staff recruitment, both in the short-listing process and as a member of interview panels for assistant, trainees, and qualified clinical psychologists.
Clinical Supervision, Teaching and Training:
1. To provide clinical placements for trainee psychologists and psychological therapists, ensuring that trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good mental health care and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.
2. To provide post-qualification training (CPD) and clinical professional supervision to recently qualified psychologists attached to the service.
3. To provide specialist advice, consultation and training and clinical supervision to other members of the service for their provision of psychologically based interventions to help improve clients' functioning.
4. To provide pre- and post-qualification teaching of psychology as appropriate.
5. To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional pre- and post-graduate training and clinical supervision.
6. To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.
7. In common with all Clinical Psychologists, receive regular clinical supervision in accordance with good practice guidelines.
8. Receive specific specialist clinical supervision in psychological approaches in trauma- focused / -related mental health issues and presentations.
Research and Development Activity:
1. To take the psychology lead, as a senior clinician, in the evaluation, monitoring and development of the team's operational policies, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit and ensuring incorporation of psychological frameworks for understanding and provision of high- quality care.
2. To utilise theory, evidence-based literature, and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
3. To undertake a personal research and development programme and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research as a major job responsibility.
4. To initiate project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within and across the service to help develop and improve services to clients and their families.
Information Technology:
1. To use IT skills as required including updating client records.
General:
1. To ensure the development and articulation of best practice in psychology within the service area and contribute across the service by exercising the skills of a reflexive and reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal, and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the field of clinical psychology and related disciplines.
Person specification
Knowledge and experience
Essential criteria
1. Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
2. Well developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, highly technical, and clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
3. Skills in providing consultation to other professional and nonprofessional groups.
4. Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by UKCP and/or NMC or other professional bodies.
5. Knowledge of IT systems including word processing, e-mail and any local systems.
Desirable criteria
1. Formal training in supervision of others.
2. Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health.
3. High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.
4. Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, dual diagnosis, people with additional disabilities etc.)
5. Working towards doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex multivariate data analysis.
Skills
Essential criteria
1. 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 challenging behaviour.
2. Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multimedia materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
3. Must have enhanced CRB status.
Desirable criteria
1. Experience of working within a multicultural framework.
Values
Essential criteria
1. Ability to sit in a constrained position when working with clients.
2. Ability to sustain intense levels of concentration responding and participating as required.
3. Ability to self-reflect and use clinical supervision appropriately.
4. Ability to cope and deal with highly distressing emotional circumstances.
5. Ability to cope with unpleasant working conditions.
6. Willing and able to work flexible hours in order to meet the needs of the service.
Qualifications
Essential criteria
1. Clinical Psychologist: (eligibility for registration with relevant therapy body e.g. BABCP, UKCP, HCPC and NMC).
2. Post-graduate training and learning in specific area of specialist knowledge and expertise equivalent to post graduate diploma level.
3. Accredited therapist.
Desirable criteria
1. Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychological interventions.
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
* Job Description and Person Specification (PDF, 521.3KB)
* OH Risk ID (PDF, 152.4KB)
* 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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