Are you an enthusiastic and dedicated Practitioner Psychologist with a passion for delivering high-quality, person-centred services? We have an exciting opportunity for you to join our team, where you can make a meaningful impact in the lives of autistic adults accessing mental health services at risk of placement breakdown or hospital admission.
As a vital member of our multi-disciplinary team (MDT), you will provide specialist interventions aimed at achieving positive life outcomes for individuals. Covering the Mersey Care areas of Warrington, Halton, St Helens, Knowsley, Liverpool, and Sefton, you will enhance the support already offered by involved services. Some of your key responsibilities will include:
* Contributing to the identification and management of risk
* Liaison and consultation with our partner agencies
* Conducting highly specialised assessments where appropriate
* Supporting service development and delivery
* Collaborating closely with the Consultant Clinical Psychologist
* Liaising and consulting with partner agencies, including mental health providers and social care teams, often at senior level
Main duties of the job
To ensure the systematic provision of a high-quality specialist clinical psychology service to Improving Access to Autism (ASC) service users across a community primary care setting. To advise, supervise and support the assessment and treatment provided by clinical members of the teams who provide psychologically based care and treatment within the ASC service. To work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service/team. To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research. To propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the service. To work in an effective partnership with the clinical service leadership including other IAPT team members and members of other agencies responsible for a client's care.
About us
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.
Job responsibilities
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 clients care.
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.
To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals and groups, within and across Mersey Care IAPT teams adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
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.
To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based care.
To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
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.
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.
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.
To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment service.
Will be required to sit in a constrained position for client therapy and extended assessment sessions.
Will be required to tolerate and manage frequent verbal abuse and occasional physical aggression.
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.
For full list of duties and responsibilities please refer to the Job Description Attached.
Why Join Us?
We welcome and encourage enthusiasm and creativity.
You will be joining a supportive, forward-thinking team, who prides themselves on building positive therapeutic relationships and our strong commitment to continual improvements in patient care.
You will have links to peer psychology meetings and appropriate training and CPD opportunities and an annual personal development review.
You will have the opportunity to engage in research projects with the support of our dedicated research team, further advancing your career while contributing to meaningful change.
You will have the opportunity to work both at home and in the workplace; however, the ability, means and willingness to travel between multiple sites in the course of performing duties is essential. Flexible working requests will be considered.
Person Specification
Qualifications
* Doctoral level training (or equivalent) that confers HCPC registration as a practitioner psychologist.
* Post-graduate training and learning in specific area of specialist knowledge and expertise equivalent to post graduate diploma level.
* Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychological interventions.
* Formal training in supervision of others.
Knowledge/ Experience
* Experience of working with neurodivergent people, complex presentation of crisis including personality disorder, psychosis and complex mental health difficulties.
* Substantial post-qualification experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across a range of care settings as appropriate to the specialty, including A&E, outpatient, community, primary care and inpatient settings.
* Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.
* Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex multivariate data analysis as practiced within the field of clinical psychology.
* Knowledge of IT systems including word processing, e-mail and any local systems.
* Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
* Experience of the application of psychological assessments and therapies in different cultural contexts.
* Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g., autistic people, personality disorder, dual diagnosis, people with additional disabilities etc.) Experience of bid writing.
* High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.
* Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health.
Values
* Accountability
* Support
* High professional standards
* Responsive to service users
* Engaging leadership style
* Transparency and honesty
* Discreet
* Change oriented
Skills
* Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
* 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 nonprofessional groups.
* Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by professional bodies. Knowledge of legislation in relation to client group.
* Ability to sit in a constrained position when working with clients.
* Ability to contain and work within organisational stress.
* Ability to sustain intense levels of concentration responding and participating as required.
* Ability to self-reflect and use clinical supervision appropriately.
* Ability to cope and deal with highly distressing emotional circumstances.
* Ability to cope with unpleasant working conditions.
* Willing and able to work flexible hours in order to meet the needs of the service. 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 and challenging behaviour.
* Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multimedia materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
* Must have enhanced CRB status.
* Experience of working within a multicultural framework.
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.
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