Senior Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner

Job responsibilities

Key Responsibilities:

Clinical

1. To help ensure that practitioners working within Northumberland Talking Therapy sites are able to offer rapid screening and assessment, supported by appropriate systems and processes.

2. To help ensure that practitioners are adequately skilled to provide assessment and low intensity interventions e.g. psycho-educational interventions, Guided Self Help, computerised CBT based on evidence and on CBT theories and techniques.

3. To help ensure that step 2 interventions are an integral part of services that are comprehensive and accessible to a broad range of patients with common mental health problems over 16 years of age.

4. To help ensure that step 2 services across Northumberland Talking Therapy sites develop to meet local needs or priorities; this might include developing the suites of psycho-educational classes on offer in each locality.

5. To help ensure that step 2 staff are able to meet service targets and KPIs both individually and as teams in each of our Talking Therapy sites.

6. To help ensure that services are equitable and non-discriminatory in terms of age, gender, ethnicity and disability.

7. To help ensure that suitable referral pathways are in place to support GPs and other potential referrers in making appropriate referrals and in carrying out the mental health aspects of their own roles.

8. To help ensure that suitable onward referral pathways are in place to enable our staff to make appropriate referrals to other service providers in the statutory and voluntary sectors and redirect patients to other sources of appropriate support within their local community as required.

9. To help develop a local knowledge of the various localities and their services and facilities, particularly in relation to mental health issues.

10. To help ensure that services are flexible as far as possible in terms of clinic hours, enabling clinics to be run outside normal working hours where necessary.

11. Liaise as appropriate with secondary care mental health services and social service departments.

1. To help support practitioners to conduct risk assessments, prepare risk management plans and initiate appropriate action where indicated (including requests for mental health act assessments and referrals to relevant secondary care services).

Supervision and Training

1. Undertake own clinical and management supervision on a regular basis in accordance with relevant professional guidelines and policies.

2. To help ensure that qualified and trainee PWPs within our Talking Therapy services receive sufficient and suitable case management supervision and clinical skills supervision to enable them to carry out their role safely and effectively.

3. Provide CMS and clinical skills supervision to PWPs and trainee PWPs as necessary.

4. To help co-ordinate and provide training and CPD opportunities to PWP teams across our Talking Therapy sites.

5. Offer training to Primary Care staff in CBT based interventions.

6. Attend locally organised and national training appropriate to the work role.

Professional

1. Take personal responsibility for Northumberland Talking Therapy sites to achieve service targets and KPIs.

2. To act as a resource of information relating to low intensity CBT for the whole organisation.

3. Adhere to the policies and procedures of NTT, Sunderland Counselling Service and partner organisations as required.

4. Maintain appropriate clinical records in keeping with service operational policy.

5. Participate in setting and review of objectives for the post on an annual basis.

6. Participate in activities of continuing professional development (CPD) on an annual basis.

7. Attend meetings as appropriate, including the senior clinical and operational management teams across Northumberland Talking Therapy sites.

1. Ensure that client confidentiality is protected at all times.
2. Exercise personal responsibility for the systematic clinical governance of low intensity interventions.
3. Proactively take responsibility for attending supervision, case management and line management regularly, participate in objective setting, performance reviews and respond to agreed objectives.
4. Promote and contribute to the development and maintenance of a healthy therapeutic culture within the service amongst colleagues and service users.

Management

1. To help ensure that qualified and trainee PWPs within our Talking Therapy services receive sufficient and suitable case management supervision and clinical skills supervision to enable them to carry out their role safely and effectively.

2. Provide CMS and clinical skills supervision to PWPs and trainee PWPs as necessary.

3. To help ensure that staff teams achieve appropriate targets in terms of weekly clinical activity, number of contacts per week, case load etc.

4. To help ensure that staff teams maintain appropriate clinical records in keeping with service operational policy.

5. To help ensure staff teams maintain outcome data and achieve recovery targets as per service operational policy.

6. To help ensure that staff teams participate in setting and review of objectives for their post on an annual basis.

7. To help ensure that staff teams participate in activities of continuing professional development (CPD) on an annual basis.

8. Participate in audits of clinical activity and evaluative research as required.

Communication and Relationship Skills:

1. Proactively develop robust professional relationships with colleagues within SCS and Northumberland Talking Therapy sites.
2. Provide and receive information related to mental health and CBT to individuals or groups of service users, relatives, carers, members of the public and professionals.
3. Communicate as appropriate with external agencies (including housing, police, local authority, employers, employment support workers etc.)
4. Proactively develop robust professional relationships with primary care professionals (e.g. General Practice staff), supporting the active integration of CBT provision into primary care.
5. Develop and maintain good professional relationships with mental health workers in primary and secondary care.
6. Develop and maintain good professional relationships with mental health workers in the voluntary sector.

Knowledge, Training and Experience:

1. Have theoretical and practical clinical knowledge of Low Intensity Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
2. Have knowledge, training and experience in disorders common in primary and secondary mental health care to identify, provide preliminary education to the service user and direct the service user to clinical resources where CBT is not the optimum intervention.
3. Have training in models of supervision so as to be able to act credibly as supervisor to PWPs.
4. Knowledge, training and experience of acting in a leadership role.

Analytical and Judgment Skills:

1. Gather a range of facts and contexts, relevant to the service user(s) clinical care. Analyse and weigh the relative importance of the factors to form an understanding of the service user(s) difficulties and relate these to the range of treatment options available. Acting as a senior therapist, enable others to form a judgment between the relative utilities of the treatment options and the service users preferences.
2. To collate clinical data from service users in our services, within the overall framework of the required data output of the service with the intention of: (a) identifying and minimising risk, (b) optimising clinical effectiveness, (c) optimising service efficiency.
3. Contribute to the monitoring, review and audit of the work in our services.
4. Contribute to the clinical governance framework of the services by identifying and acting on areas of concern and supporting colleagues who are taking the lead in designated areas of responsibility.

Planning and Organisational Skills:

1. Co-ordinate your own activities to balance the conflicting needs of service users, demands from staff teams, demands of the different areas of service provision, your own continuing professional development, and organisational needs. This may involve sudden changes in plans to respond to clinical emergencies or organisational priorities on a frequent but not regular basis.

Responsibility for Patient / Client Care:

1. Assess service user(s), prepare a psychotherapy care plan and deliver low intensity CBT to individuals and to groups of service users.
2. Support other clinicians in the delivery of individual and group CBT.
3. Hold your own caseload and respond to service user crises as appropriate.
4. Maintain appropriate confidentiality.

Responsibility for Policy / Service Development:

1. To help implement policies for your areas of responsibility, across Northumberland talking Therapy sites.
2. In supervision, identify procedural areas of difficulty within your own work, and propose improvements thus contributing to policy or service changes in line with clinical governance and service objectives.
3. Conduct audits of your work against agreed standards and make recommendations for improvements within the service.
4. To make an active contribution to pursue the aims, objectives and overall strategy of Talking Matters Northumberland, thereby contributing to the development of clinical services provided.

Responsibility for Human Resources:

1. Manage your own time and resources efficiently and effectively, actively engaging in your own Continuing Professional Development.

2. Ensure that you keep your professional knowledge up to date and keep a record of the steps that you have taken to achieve this (record your CPD appropriately).

Responsibility for Information Resources:

1. Using computer based data entry systems, record clinical input and outcome data.
2. Collate this information and communicate it to senior management to provide reports of the performance of step 2 services across Northumberland Talking Therapy sites.

Knowledge and Skills

Essential

• Knowledge and understanding of the context of Talking Therapy stepped care
• Knowledge of the Talking Therapy strategy and its implications for LICBT service development
• Knowledge of working with diversity and knowledge of working with BME groups
• Evidence-based practice at low intensity
• Models of assessment, screening, referral, record-keeping and evidence-based brief psychological intervention
• Knowledge of outcome measures and their use for clinical and audit purposes
• Ability to be self reflective, whilst working with service users, in own personal and professional development and in supervision
• Able to develop good therapeutic relationships with clients
• Ability to work within a team and foster good working relationships
• Ability to use clinical supervision and personal development positively and effectively
• Regard for others and respect for individual rights of autonomy and confidentiality
• Able to communicate clearly and persuasively, both verbally and in writing
• Worked in a service where agreed targets in place demonstrating clinical outcomes
• Ability to manage own caseload and time

Desirable

• IT Skills

Qualifications

Essential

• IAPT accredited postgraduate certificate in Low Intensity CBT.
• Currently in the process of completing the five day Low Intensity Supervision course or willing to begin the Supervision Course in 2024

Experience

Essential

• Significant experience of working with people with common mental health problems
• Ability to demonstrate significant post-qualifying experiences in offering and delivering the range of evidence-based Talking Therapy low intensity interventions such as computerised CBT, guided self-help and group psycho-education
• Consolidated and reflective supervised post-qualifying experience, preferably in a Talking Therapy setting.
• Experience of partnership working
• Experience of working with suicidal clients and of risk management

Desirable

• Experience in drug / alcohol management
• Experience of line managing others
• Experience of safeguarding
• Experience of audit and research
• Experience of and ability to provide mentor / supervisor role
• Experience of delivering training to a range of professionals

UK Registration

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