Job responsibilities
Key Duties/Responsibilities
Clinical: To provide clinical leadership to psychologists and psychological therapists working across the Clinical Health Psychology and Paediatric Psychology teams to ensure the provision of a high quality therapy service to people with complex co-morbid physical and mental health conditions.
To work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for governance of psychological and therapeutic practice across Clinical Health Psychology teams and Paediatric Psychology.
To provide professional appraisal and the identification of CPD needs across the Clinical Health Psychology teams.
To ensure systems are in place and working effectively for the clinical and professional supervision and support of psychologists and therapists working with long-term conditions, including those within IAPT teams.
To take lead for workforce planning in and related recruitment and staff professional development activities within but not limited to Clinical Health Psychology teams and Paediatric Psychology.
To contribute significantly to expansion of Clinical Health Psychology and Paediatric Psychology through the development of new SLAs within acute trusts and pathways across teams within the Trust and to lead on service innovation and evaluation.
Responsible for the highly specialist psychological assessment and care-planning of clients with highly complex and contentious comorbid physical and mental health conditions based on the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of data from a variety of sources.
Responsible for recognising the potential for or signs of client harm, abuse or neglect, including poor clinical practice, reporting all such concerns and taking all reasonable steps to protect the client. Responsible for identifying and reporting concerns regarding the safeguarding of children who may be at risk.
Undertakes complex risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and provides highly specialist advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management and the high physical risks inherent in the client group.
Formulates plans for highly specialist psychological therapy and/or management of clients mental health conditions based upon an appropriate conceptual framework and evidence-based practice. Negotiates the implementation of care plans with clients and/or their carers,
Implements a range of highly specialist psychological therapies for individual clients with complex comorbid physical and mental health difficulties, adjusting and refining psychological formulations as required.
Undertakes highly skilled evaluations and assessments, formulates careplans and makes decisions about treatment options including supporting other clinical staff to create appropriate therapy careplans and decision making where referral on is appropriate, including liaising with other services to ensure timely handover.
Provides highly specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other staff including external to the teams contributing directly to clients diagnosis, formulation and intervention plan.
Leads decision-making by planning and mapping processes/interventions with members of the team to determine the most appropriate treatment modality or service for clients including allocation of casework to therapists and careplanning via line management of staff.
Meet frequently with IAPT managers to ensure a smooth and client-centred pathway for service users to receive intervention from the appropriate level of staff
To provide expert consultation about the psychological care of the client group to staff within and outside of the Trust as required.
Communicates in a way which recognises difference and ensures that people feel included and their individual communication needs are met.
Communicates highly complex, highly sensitive and contentious information to clients during the course of psychological therapy where the atmosphere may be highly emotive, there may be barriers to understanding or the client may react in an antagonistic or hostile manner.
Shares information relating to psychological assessment and formulation with clients, carers and families in a responsive, empathic manner, taking into consideration the possible complexities of the familys circumstances and the highly sensitive nature of the information.
Communicates effectively with all professionals involved in the clients care including all members of the multidisciplinary team, general practitioners, Social Services, education providers, voluntary agencies, user/carer groups etc., to maximise the quality of service delivered to clients and their families and carers.
Analyses highly complex client information, derived 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 the client, family members and others involved in the clients care.
Adjusts and refines psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
Evaluates and makes 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.
Assesses, diagnoses and makes clinical judgements involving a range of highly complex factors in the context of inadequate or unavailable information, equivocal research/evidence or where expert opinion differs (e.g. conflict between medical and psychological models).
The post holder may be required to work in locations other than those specified in the job description as required by service need.
Specialist/technical requirements
To provide group supervision to IAPT therapists working with people with comorbid physical and mental health difficulties.
To provide individual supervision for clinical psychologists and psychological therapists (from trainee to 8b level) across Clinical Health Psychology teams and specialist inpatient provision (Spinal Injuries and Intensive Care) and IAPT clinical lead.
Organises own workload on a day to day basis, prioritising work as appropriate.
Creates and monitors through line management job plans and workloads for all therapy staff in Clinical Health Psychology.
Advises senior management on those aspects of the service which may need addressing at a strategic level.
Provides specialist advice and training to other staff within and outside of the team including IAPT service, UHNM staff, Trust-wide, local Universities as appropriate.
Provides, allocates and monitors clinical placements across the team and contributes to competency assessment for trainee doctoral clinical/counselling psychologists, ensuring that trainees acquire the necessary skills and experience to contribute effectively to psychological practice.
Professionally oversees the clinical work of highly specialist applied psychologists including work allocation, checking record keeping and quality of care delivered and providing clinical guidance as required.
Leads in the recruitment and selection of psychology staff as appropriate.
Leads, organises and where appropriate delivers a programme of continuing professional development across psychologists and staff within but not limited to Clinical Health Psychology.
Responsible for ensuring that all staff within area of responsibility adhere to professional practice guidelines and that mechanisms are in place to ensure that performance standards are met.
GENERIC CLAUSES
- To maintain a broad understanding of the work of North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust as a whole, and actively contribute your ideas for the improvement of service provision.
- To ensure own actions contribute to the maintenance of a quality service provision.
- To be responsible for the self-development of skills and competencies through participation in training and development activities and to maintain up to date technical and professional knowledge relevant to the post.
- To participate in the Performance and Development Review and to undertake any identified training and development related to the post.
- To undertake statutory and mandatory training as deemed appropriate by the Trust.
- To develop and maintain effective working relationships with colleagues.
- To adhere to all Trust policies and procedures.
Trust Values:
As an employee and representative of the Trust, you are required to demonstrate and uphold the Trusts Values. These are:
Proud to CARE:
Compassionate
- Caring with compassion, its about how we listen, what we say, what we do.
Approachable
- Friendly, welcoming, sharing ideas and being open
Responsible
- Taking personal and collective responsibility, being accountable for our actions
Excellent
- Striving for the best, for high-quality safe care and continually improving
