Psychological Therapist

Job responsibilities

Living well is a new innovative and developing service model in Salford. Living Well is a partnership between Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust, Mind in Salford, Start Inspiring Minds and Six Degrees. The Living Well team is multi agency and the core principles are based on lived experience and peer support, solution focussed interventions, strengths-based approaches, relational recovery, and trauma informed care.

We aim to support people to connect with their local community and build on their strengths and aspirations. As a developing service the post holder will be highly adaptable and flexible to service change, and through reflection and prototyping support the ongoing service developments.

The purpose of this role is to provide support for a team of practitioners, including mental health practitioners, recovery workers and peer support mentors, delivering services through Primary Care Networks (PCN) and Living Well Initiative, which aims to provide rapid, easy access to recovery-focused psychosocial support.

The successful candidate will have demonstrable experience of providing skilled psychological supervision to clinicians within the team to develop psychologically informed practice.

You will contribute to the development of practitioners’ clinical skills, on an individual and group basis and use theory, literature, and research to support evidence-based practice.

You will be able to communicate highly complex and potentially contentious information in a skilled and sensitive manner. Your ability to build successful partnerships will enable you to develop and nurture relationships with external stakeholders and partners, specifically GPs and other mental health care staff, and other statutory and voluntary sector agencies.

You will show commitment towards the development, evaluation and monitoring of the service’s operational policies and procedures and take the lead on audits, evaluating and reporting.

You will have the ability to formulate and provide treatment within one model of psychological therapy and the experience and a working knowledge of at least one other approach to psychological intervention.

You will work closely with service leads and team members to ensure the service runs effectively, efficiently, and safely. You will make an active contribute to the psychological health and overall sense of wellbeing of the team.

As an individual, you will display flexibility, creativity, and preparedness to be innovative in a developing organisation with a commitment to personal and professional development.

Qualifications

Essential

• UK recognised postgraduate training in Clinical or Counselling Psychology, Nursing, or Social Work, Psychodynamic psychotherapist with a recognised qualification.
• Registered with relevant professional bodies.

Desirable

• Additional formal training since qualification or experience of delivering a recognized relational psychological therapy including psychodynamic psychotherapy, CAT, DIT, MBT, IPT.
• Group and/or systemic qualification.

Experience

Essential

• Qualified and minimum one year post qualification and clinical experience in working in a mental health setting
• Experience working in Primary or Secondary Mental Health Care
• Substantial clinical experience with complex patients who fall within the service remit.
• 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.
• Knowledge of systemic or psychodynamically informed formulations and/or supervision and interested in group or systemic theories.
• Experience of specialist psychological assessment/psychotherapeutic assessment and treatment of individuals with a wide range of mental health problems, of varying severity and complexities.
• Experience of providing joint assessments with other professionals/colleagues.
• Experience of complex managing risk and safeguarding.
• Understanding and sensitivity to working in a multi- cultural community with an attendant understanding of the key issues.
• Experience of providing supervision to other clinicians.
• Experience of offering psychosocial interventions.
• Ability to form and develop psychological formulations and care planning.

Desirable

• Experience of and capacity to make a contribution to service delivery and service development.
• Demonstrate further specialist training/experience in psychodynamic/systems theory
• Specific experience of working with patients with medically unexplained symptoms and personality disorder.
• Experience of offering family interventions and/or group therapy programmes.

Knowledge and Skills

Essential

• Awareness of issues and interest in the provision of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and/or psychological /psychotherapeutic therapies
• Skills and an interest in providing consultation/training to other professional and non-professional groups.
• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management.
• 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.
• Completion of formal training or courses in conducting specialist psychological assessments (incl. risk assessment and risk management).
• Able to prioritise, work independently and on own initiative.
• Able to multi-task and set goals for completion.
• Ability to work well under pressure and/or in times of crisis.
• Flexibility, creativity, and preparedness to be innovative in a developing organisation.
• Ability to be reliable, co-operative and consistent both as an independent clinician and in team settings.
• Ability to demonstrate commitment to own personal & professional development.
• Be IT literate.

Desirable

• An ability to formulate and provide treatment within one model of psychological therapy and the experience and a working knowledge of at least one other approach to psychological intervention.
• Ability to work professionally in a language other than English.

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).