Principal Applied Psychologist (Clinical/Counselling/Forensic)

Job responsibilities

Please refer to the attached job description and person specification to view the full details for this opportunity at Birmingham Womens and Childrens NHS Foundation Trust.

When completing your application, please ensure you have evidenced how you meet the job description and person specification to include transferable experience, qualifications, skills along with professional registration details (if applicable).

Occasionally we receive a large number of applications for our roles and when that happens we sometimes bring the closing date forward, so please apply promptly to avoid disappointment.

Qualifications

Essential

• Experienced Qualified Clinical/Counselling/Forensic Psychologist eligible for chartered status
• HCPC registered with Doctorate in Clinical/Counselling/Forensic Psychology
• Highly specialist skills in meeting the needs of children, adolescents and young adults with highly complex mental health needs.
• Post qualification training leading to highly developed specialist knowledge of issues relevant to core and specialist clinical populations e.g DBT, SCM, ADOS, CBT, ADI-R, and organisational change

Desirable

• Formal Leadership/Management training
• Risk management training for those with highly complex mental health problems

Experience

Essential

• Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice including recovery, trauma, models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics , neuropsychology or two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology.
• A positive approach to working with clients with highly complex mental health needs and/or co-occurring neurodiversity and their families, exercising clinical responsibility for clients psychological care
• Highly developed knowledge across relevant clinical areas e.g. working with personality difficulties and complex risk of harms, complex neurodiverse presentations co-occurring with mental health difficulties, recovery practice and trauma-informed practice.
• Significant experience of providing clinical supervision and consultation, with psychologists and other professional groups.
• Experience of contributing to planning and evaluation of services and innovation and improvement
• Ability to work as part of a team and independently.
• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professionals and academic settings
• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
• Experience of maintaining working relationships and a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical aggression.
• 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.
• Well organised and an effective team player.
• Experience of maintaining effective communication when there are barriers to understanding and in circumstances where hostility, manipulation, conflict and antagonism are present
• Experience of teaching, training, staff support, research
• Experience of assessing and treating highly complex clients across the full range of care settings.
• Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Ability to develop and use complex multi-media materials for presentations in public, professional and academic settings.
• Experience of representing psychology within the context of multi-disciplinary care.
• Significant experience of providing expert psychological assessment and treatment for clients across the full range of mental health settings to include outpatient, community, day services and in-patient settings.
• Significant experience of assessing and treating children, young people and/or young adults with core needs of service area in the community
• Significant experience of assessing and managing risk clients in the community that involves judgements involving highly complex facts or situations, which require the analysis, interpretation and comparison of a range of options
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting with 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.
• Significant experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care coordinator and also within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan

Desirable

• Experience of contributing to strategic, clinical or organisational development and/or service development or service redesign.
• Experience of leading and managing teams with NHS targets and performance.

Professional/Managerial/Specialist Knowledge

Essential

• Interest in developing trauma-informed and recovery-promoting services for clients with a highly complex problems / personality disorder in the community.
• Well-motivated to be part of a 0-25 mental health service. Enthusiasm for working with this client group and their families.
• Skills and knowledge of using Microsoft office for use with audits, research and presentations to wider audiences

Desirable

• Skills in managing teams, professional groups and can demonstrate experience and knowledge of being responsible for budgets.
• Ability to formulate long-term strategic plan for services over a period of time

Analytical and Judgement Skills

Essential

• Emotional robustness to frequently work with the intense distress of others.
• Empathic towards and able to engage effectively with the client group.
• Ability to cope with workload pressure.
• Self-aware and emotionally resilient to be able to work within an emotive area.

Other Requirements

Essential

• Effective use of psychological equipment
• Flexibility regarding working hours, including the ability to work some evenings and weekends as necessary
• Ability to travel across the city of Birmingham, between bases and within the community for work purposes.
• Valid driving License and car owner

Personal Skills/Abilities and Attributes

Essential

• Excellent communication skills both verbal and written and evidence of being able to adapt these for patient needs:
• Excellent organisational and time management skills, ability to plan and prioritize own and others workload.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills to key stakeholders
• Excellent communication skills (oral and written) to internal and external agencies
• Ability to provide and receive highly complex, highly sensitive or highly contentious information due to the population worked

Certificate of Sponsorship

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).