Please note the job is advertised as 0.6 wte but there may be some scope to extend this to 0.8 wte on a permanent or Fixed Term basis. This will be discussed further at the interview stage.
The service is part of the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT). To support and enhance the professional psychological care of clients within the service, across all sectors of care.To provide psychological assessment and therapy according to needs of the client. To offer advice and consultation on clients’ psychological care and well-being to non-psychologist colleagues. To work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures. To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the area served by the team/service. To contribute as a member of the Pathways Service to the development of effective and appropriate psychologically-informed services for people who are screened into the Pathways complex needs service
The post holder will be working, in a prison that is part of the Category-C prison estate with offenders presenting with a range of sentence types who present with complex needs. This includes: complex trauma, neuro-developmental issues, attachment complications, emotional dysregulation and interpersonal problems. Thus specialist skills, ‘forensic awareness’ is required of all staff working in Pathways, this including vigilance at all times on issues of safety and security, the capacity to de-escalate risk of violence, and the ability and capacity to deliver clinical input in locked, sometimes volatile, and sometimes distressing circumstances.
North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT) is committed to improving mental health care across North London to deliver excellent services to our local people.
Our Five-Year Strategy:
1. We will provide consistently high-quality care closer to home.
2. With our partners in North London and each borough we will ensure equity of outcome for all
3. We will offer great places to work, providing staff with supportive environment to deliver outstanding care.
4. We will be more effective as an organisation by pioneering research, quality improvement and technology.
Why NLFT?
• We develop and retain our staff through leadership behaviours and managers programme and many more opportunities.
• We promote flexible working and support staff with a range of health and wellbeing initiatives.
• NHS Discounts, generous annual leave and NHS pension scheme
• Excellent internal staff network
The post holder will be aligned with our Values:
• We Are Kind
• We Are Respectful
• We Work Together
• We Keep Things Simple
• We Empower
• We Are Proudly Diverse
In order to meet the needs of the Trust you may be required from time to time to work at different locations to your normal place of work. This may mean that you are required to work at any location that fall under Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey or Islington. The Trust reserves the right to require staff to work at such other places or locations as it considers reasonable and necessary on a temporary or permanent basis.
Clinical:
1. To provide psychological assessments 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 be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals and groups, adjusting and refining psychological formulations as practice and experience demands, drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
3. To provide highly specialist advice and consultation on service users’ formulation, psychological management and pathway planning to other non-psychologist colleagues
4. To evaluate and make decisions about intervention options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical, developmental, physical health and cultural processes and systems that have shaped the individual, family or group.
5. To use highly specialist psychological knowledge and skills to contribute to the more effective management of service users by the various agencies involved within and outside of the prison
6. To work in collaboration with the multidisciplinary teams to develop and implement desistance progression plans that aim to restore independence and quality of life.
7. To maintain effective liaison and joint working with other agencies to ensure the provision of integrated packages of care for the clients seen.
8. 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.
9. To be responsible for providing and receiving highly complex, sensitive, distressing and emotional information in relation to mental and physical health issues, where there can be difficulties in terms of acceptance or understanding.
10. To be able to communicate across language and cultural barriers, adapting the application of Westernised psychological models sensitively. This could include communicating with clients through professional interpreters where needed.
11. To be able to manage working for sustained amounts of time with individuals who may be aggressive and hostile, who may have difficulties with communication and/or self-care skills and special physical and/or mental health needs.
12. To be responsible for developing and maintaining own knowledge of resources across the OPD Pathways about desistance and personality difficulties and for developing working relationships with relevant statutory, voluntary and community groups and organisations.
13. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for relevant individual clients and to provide general advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.
14. To ensure that members of the multidisciplinary team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of clients through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.
15. To clinically supervise registered and unregistered staff.
16. To contribute to audit, research, policy and service development.
Teaching, training and supervision
1. In common with all psychologists, to receive regular clinical supervision in accordance with professional practice guidelines.
2. To develop skills and competencies that assist in the delivery of current duties.
3. To contribute to the training and support of other staff in psychological care.
4. To lead on the development and delivery of a workforce development plan for the prison to include operational and non-operational staff.
5. To deliver specific training as required by the service to internal and external stakeholders.
Management, recruitment and service development
1. To assist in the design and implementation of service development projects within the service as required.
2. To attend meetings in which service developments are planned and discussed.
3. Day to day operational management of staff
4. Caseload supervision
5. Represent the service at specialist meetings as requested
6. The co-ordination of small-scale projects as requested, including evaluation of the service
7. Collate and report on data for quarterly commissioning contract reports
IT responsibilities
1. To use computers to write reports and record data, including the use of statistical packages as part of psychological testing, research and assessment when needed.
2. To develop, maintain and provide regular reports from a database to monitor the service provided and support audit and service evaluation.
Research and service evaluation
1. To assist in the design and implementation of audit and research projects.
2. To undertake data collection, analysis, the production of reports and summaries, using IT and statistical programmes.
3. To undertake searches of evidence-based literature and research to assist qualified practitioner psychologists and member of the MDT in evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
General
1. To contribute to the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the post-holder’s professional and team/operational manager(s).
2. To maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping and report writing in accordance with professional codes of practice of the British Psychological Society and Trust policies and procedures.
3. To prepare test materials and visual aids as required.
4. To undertake specific administrative duties as required.
5. To perform other duties of a similar kind appropriate to the grade, which may be required from time to time by their Psychology Manager.
This advert closes on Sunday 9 Feb 2025