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 particularly encourage applications from ethnic minorities, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people that are under-represented in our workforce. We also 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.
Job overview
Cheshire and Merseyside Adult Gender Identity Collaborative (CMAGIC) is a new NHS England pilot, establishing how Gender Incongruence can be best treated within a Primary Care setting. We are seeking a Clinical Psychologist to support the delivery of this care, working closely with our MDT, local GPs, relevant partner agencies, and directly with service users.
This is an exciting opportunity to be involved in developing not only a new service but a new way of delivering care for a disadvantaged service user group.
The office base for this post will be provided within the designated service area, alongside other Mersey Care services, and will follow a hybrid model of working, where home and office can both be utilised. The delivery of the service will be predominantly virtual, but may need to offer face-to-face depending on service user needs. Some sessions may involve working in other geographical areas covered by the local services.
Main duties of the job
The post holder will apply and maintain those skills acquired through further specialist training and experience to monitor and ensure the systematic provision of highly specialised psychological services. Responsibilities include:
1. Providing a service to clients and their families/carers referred to the designated service area, across all sectors of care, within an equality and human rights framework.
2. Supporting the highly specialised psychological assessment and therapy provided by other psychologists and clinical team members.
3. Exercising delegated management responsibilities where appropriate.
4. Working autonomously within professional guidelines and exercising responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the designated service area.
5. Supporting the team with audit, policy and service development, and research.
6. Developing a work plan that will be reviewed on a yearly basis depending on the needs of the service.
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. We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health, learning disability, addiction, and brain injury services.
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.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Clinical
1. To provide specialist psychological assessments of service users referred to the team based on the appropriate use, interpretation, and integration of complex data from various sources.
2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of service users' psychological problems.
3. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families, and groups.
4. To make decisions about treatment options considering theoretical and therapeutic models.
5. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment, and discharge of service users.
6. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance, and consultation to other professionals.
7. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users.
8. To communicate complex information about assessment and treatment plans sensitively.
9. To provide expertise and support to facilitate effective psychological care.
Teaching, Training and Supervision
1. To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist.
2. To provide clinical placements for trainee clinical and/or counselling psychologists.
3. To provide post-qualification training and clinical professional supervision to qualified clinical psychologists.
4. To provide advice, consultation, and training to other members of the team.
Management, Recruitment, Policy and Service Development
1. To manage the workloads of Assistants, Trainees, and recently qualified psychological services staff.
2. To participate in the development of a high-quality, responsive service.
3. To exercise responsibility for managing the psychological resources available to a team.
Service Governance
1. To lead in the evaluation, monitoring, and development of the team's operational policies.
2. To utilise theory, evidence-based literature, and research to support practice.
General
1. To ensure the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice.
2. To maintain up-to-date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies regarding mental health.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
* Doctoral level training in clinical/counselling psychology accredited by the BPS or its approved equivalent.
* Registration with Health Professions Council as Practitioner Psychologist.
Desirable criteria
* Pre-qualification training in research methodology, staff training, or other fields of applied psychology.
Knowledge/Experience
Essential criteria
* Assessed experience of working as a qualified clinical/counselling psychologist at a specialist level.
* Significant experience of representing psychology within multidisciplinary care.
* Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care.
* Experience of teaching and supervision.
* Expertise in complex methods of psychological assessment and intervention.
* Understanding of the philosophy and principles of care underpinning gender healthcare.
* Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health.
Values
Essential criteria
* Continuous improvement, accountability, respectfulness, enthusiasm, support, high professional standards, responsiveness to service users, engaging leadership style, strong customer service belief, transparency, honesty, discretion, and change orientation.
Skills
Essential criteria
* Well-developed communication skills, both oral and written.
* Ability to provide consultation to other professional groups.
* Ability to self-reflect and consider complex organisational dynamics.
* Ability to identify and promote appropriate support for carers and staff.
* Ability to teach and train others using various materials.
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.
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 to subscribe to the DBS Update Service.
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 (PDF, 424.6KB)
* Functional Requirement CP (PDF, 83.7KB)
* 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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