Job summary
Consultant Psychologist / Psychological Therapist, Band 8c
Permanent0.6 WTE / 22.5 hours per weekThis role would suit an experienced psychologist who has the skills to introduce a new model of trauma-informed care across a complex prison estate.
You would be providing senior leadership and oversight of a range of psychological therapies across three prisons, ensuring these are safely and effectively delivered by you and your team of specialist psychologists and multi-professional mental health in-reach colleagues.
The post is based within the mental health in-reach services in HMPs across Dorset. The role is dynamic, challenging and rewarding.
The successful applicant will be able to demonstrate a keen interest in working with people who have led chaotic lives and present with complex emotional needs and forensic histories as part of a multi-disciplinary team, consulting on and promoting psychological and trauma informed approaches to understanding and working with this population.
You will contribute actively to service development, including culturally appropriate services for people of differing ethnicity and socio-economic status.
Candidates will be qualified psychologists with post-qualification experience. Previous experience in forensic settings would be beneficial.
Please refer to the attached document (information links) for further reading.
Main duties of the job
Oxleas Forensic Psychological Therapies department is an unusually large, long established and nationally well-regarded specialty. Psychologists are highly valued within the wider directorate and trust and occupy a variety of leadership roles.
Staff in the Forensic Directorate report the highest levels of job satisfaction in a Trust recognised for positive employee feedback. The Psychological Therapies team is warm and friendly, dynamic and innovative, and offers a vast range of opportunities for personal and professional development and career progression. We are meaningfully invested in making our workforce diverse and inclusive.
Core responsibilities will include close working with director-level colleagues, commissioners and prison governors to design and implement a trauma informed model of care.
You will supervise qualified psychologists who will supervise other psychological therapists to provide therapies and lead trauma informed consultation activity with operational and clinical staff. There is a focus on attachment, trauma and systemic approaches with expert supervision provided for several evidence-based therapy modalities such as Cognitive Analytic Therapy, Mentalisation based Therapy (MBT) and Eye Movement Desensitisation therapy (EMDR). The postholder would carry a small caseload and carry out psychological assessment and therapy with complex individual and groups of prisoners.
About us
Oxleas - About Us
Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community physical and mental health care and care for people with learning disabilities. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS and other agencies and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children's centres, schools and people's homes. We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England including Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Buckinghamshire and Kent as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs.
We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our successful delivery of trauma informed care in prisons, secure hospitals and the community across southwest England, London and Kent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJFNoOBbzsw
Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:
- We're Kind
- We're Fair
- We Listen
- We Care
Job description
Job responsibilities
- To provide highly developed specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the team, based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex 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 clients care. The use of neuropsychological tests involves the use of specific highly developed skill requirements for accuracy.
- To formulate plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a clients mental health problems based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the clients problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
- To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining 2 psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
- To make highly skilled evaluations and 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.
- To exercise full responsibility and autonomy for the treatment of and discharge of clients whose problems are managed as a psychologically based standard care plan, ensuring appropriate assessment, formulation and interventions, communicating with the referral agent and others involved with the care on a regular basis.
- To provide expertise and specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
- To ensure that all members of the clinical team have access to a psychologically based framework for the understanding and care of clients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological knowledge, research and theory.
- To undertake risk assessment and risk management for relevant individual clients and to provide both general and specialist advice for psychological therapists and other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.
- To act as Care Co-ordinator where appropriate, ensuring the provision of a care package appropriate for the clients needs, co-ordinating the work of others involved with care, arranging clients care reviews as required and communicating effectively with the client, his/her family and all others involved in care; and to monitor progress during the course of multi-disciplinary interventions.
- To communicate in a highly 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.
- To provide expertise and advice to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the team and wider services within Oxleas.
- To provide expert consultation about the psychological care of the client group to staff and agencies outside the Directorate and Trust.
You will be part of a department that offers a wide breadth of clinical opportunities in the community across London, in prisons across south London and Kent and in low and medium secure wards at the Bracton Centre and Memorial Hospital. There are a variety of opportunities for career progression, and personal professional development is actively encouraged within the Department.
Job description
Job responsibilities
- To provide highly developed specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the team, based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex 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 clients care. The use of neuropsychological tests involves the use of specific highly developed skill requirements for accuracy.
- To formulate plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a clients mental health problems based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the clients problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
- To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining 2 psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
- To make highly skilled evaluations and 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.
- To exercise full responsibility and autonomy for the treatment of and discharge of clients whose problems are managed as a psychologically based standard care plan, ensuring appropriate assessment, formulation and interventions, communicating with the referral agent and others involved with the care on a regular basis.
- To provide expertise and specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
- To ensure that all members of the clinical team have access to a psychologically based framework for the understanding and care of clients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological knowledge, research and theory.
- To undertake risk assessment and risk management for relevant individual clients and to provide both general and specialist advice for psychological therapists and other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.
- To act as Care Co-ordinator where appropriate, ensuring the provision of a care package appropriate for the clients needs, co-ordinating the work of others involved with care, arranging clients care reviews as required and communicating effectively with the client, his/her family and all others involved in care; and to monitor progress during the course of multi-disciplinary interventions.
- To communicate in a highly 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.
- To provide expertise and advice to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the team and wider services within Oxleas.
- To provide expert consultation about the psychological care of the client group to staff and agencies outside the Directorate and Trust.
You will be part of a department that offers a wide breadth of clinical opportunities in the community across London, in prisons across south London and Kent and in low and medium secure wards at the Bracton Centre and Memorial Hospital. There are a variety of opportunities for career progression, and personal professional development is actively encouraged within the Department.
Person Specification
Essential
Essential
Essential
Essential
- 4 Years post qualification experience
Person Specification
Essential
Essential
Essential
Essential
- 4 Years post qualification experience
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see
NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).
Additional information
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see
NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).
