Specialist Clinical/Counselling Psychologist

Job description

Job responsibilities

KEY RESPONSIBILTIES

1. To provide specialist psychological assessment, formulation and therapy at the same time as offering advice and consultation to non-psychology colleagues and other non-professional carers, working autonomously within professional guidelines and Trust policies and procedures.
2. To use research skills in audit and policy development within the area covered by the service.
3. To further contribute to the service by teaching, publishing research and providing clinical supervision to Psychologists undertaking doctoral clinical and/or counselling psychology training, assistant psychologists, community nurses and other members of the multi-disciplinary team as required.

Clinical

1. To provide specialist psychological assessments of service users referred to the CLDT based on the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources. Clinical work will take place across all settings and agencies serving service users served by the team, including team bases, family homes, day or educational and residential facilities and may be at an individual or group level.
2. To formulate and implement plans for the psychological treatment and management of people with learning disabilities who may have mental health problems and/or complex behavioural needs and/or Autistic Spectrum Diagnoses. There will be a need to; adjust and refine psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
3. To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings. This may involve working in hostile challenging and highly emotive environments and require the highest levels of interpersonal and communication skills. The post holder exercises autonomous professional responsibility within the CLDT for their psychological practice.
4. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to service users care; and to contribute to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care, to the benefit of all users of the service.
5. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for service users, and provide advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk.
6. To undertake any additional clinical risk assessment training relevant to the role.
7. To provide a psychological perspective to case discussion and Care Co-ordination and contribute to the decision making processes of the team for service users across all settings and agencies. To liaise with professionals, families and carers coordinating the delivery of psychological services for service users of the team.
8. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment formulation and treatment plans of service users in their care and monitor progress during the course of intervention.
9. To undertake complex behavioural work with people whose behaviour challenges services following the Directorates PBS pathway and undertake additional PBS training in order to act as a mentor for PBS approaches as required and agreed.

Teaching and Training

1. In addition to routine CPD and clinical supervision to undertake further therapeutic training determined by the needs of the service user group.
2. To keep up to date on current developments in the literature in this field through reading and attendance at appropriate training courses. To ensure a CPD log is kept to record this in line with current HCPC CPD requirements.
3. To receive regular clinical supervision from a senior psychologist and where appropriate, other senior professionals.
4. To offer consultancy, training and supervision to non-psychology staff working in a range of settings and agencies.
5. Supervision, teaching and training of clinical psychologists in training from Birmingham and Staffordshire/Shropshire University Courses and /or counselling psychologists in training from Wolverhampton University and supervision of assistant psychologists as appropriate.
6. To provide psychological supervision to other members of the MDT (who have received training in talking therapies and are using psychological interventions in their work) if/when appropriate and as agreed locally; including to assistant psychologists where required.
7. To participate in mandatory training specified by the Trust.

Service Development & Recruitment

1. To propose and contribute to service development specifically within the Learning Disabilities Service under the guidance of the Professional Lead and Local Lead Consultant Clinical Psychologist.
2. To attend team meetings (for psychological service) and participate in discussion on the local interpretation and implementation of new legislation and national guidance under the guidance of the Professional Lead and Local Lead Consultant Clinical Psychologist.
3. To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the teams operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.
4. To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing
5. To be involved, as appropriate, in the shortlisting and interviewing of psychologists and other members of the CLDT as required.

Research & Development

1. To continue to conduct, develop and execute relevant research with the advice of professional colleagues and seek further publications to promote the work conducted in the learning disability specialty.
2. To utilise theory, evidence based-literature and research to support evidence based clinical practice.
3. To facilitate clinical and / or counselling psychologists in training, in the supervision of their research for their doctoral training.
4. To promote the value of research for assistant psychologists and its contribution to clinical psychology.
5. To undertake research and audit where it is agreed with the Local lead and Professional Lead for Learning Disability Psychological Services.
6. To contribute to methods of evaluating psychology activities and service provision, promoting the scientist practitioner model and seek publications where appropriate.
7. To contribute to the development of clinical outcome measures and evidence based practice. This will involve attending and contributing to the Directorates Clinical Effectiveness Groups as appropriate.

General

1. To contribute to the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the post holders professional and service manager(s).
2. To contribute to the development and articulation of best practice in psychology across the service, by continuing to develop the skills of a reflexive and reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the field of clinical psychology and related disciplines.
3. To maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry and recording, report writing and the responsible exercise of professional self-governance in accordance with professional codes of practice of the British Psychological Society, HCPC and Trust policies and procedures.
4. To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to both the specific service user group and mental health.
5. To participate in the Trusts annual staff appraisal process.
6. To participate fully in the Clinical Governance Policies of Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.
7. To maintain working practices and relationships according to the standards laid down by Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.
8. To maintain and adhere to the professional codes of conduct and ethics laid down by the British Psychological Society and HCPC.
9. To undertake any other duties of a similar nature consistent with the responsibilities of this position in order to provide quality psychological services.
10. This job description may be subject to change, according to service needs, in consultation with the post holder.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical or counselling psychology
• Trained in clinical supervision of doctoral trainees.
• Currently registered with the HCPC.
• Eligible for BPS Chartered Status. Eligible for full membership of the Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP)

Desirable

• Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice relevant to working with people with learning disabilities

Experience

Essential

• Working as part of a multi-disciplinary team, seeing service users presenting with a wide variety of mental health and behavioural needs in a range of settings. Offering evidence-based psychological interventions and adhering to appropriate best practice and professional guidance as a qualified clinician.
• Working as part of a multi-disciplinary team, seeing service users presenting with a wide variety of mental health and behavioural needs in a range of settings. Offering evidence-based psychological interventions and adhering to appropriate best practice and professional guidance as a qualified clinician. Experience of working therapeutically with services users with a learning disability and with people on the autistic continuum; including those presenting with behavioural needs which challenges services.
• Exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care as a care coordinator within the context of a multidisciplinary team.
• Providing psychological advice and consultancy to others as part of a community learning disability team
• Teaching, training and clinical supervision and field supervisor for doctoral theses.
• Research and development
• Undertaking multi-dimensional risk assessment, developing and implementing risk mitigation strategies.
• Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Experience of clinical supervision of others.

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.

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).

Employer details

Employer name

Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

Address

The Redwoods Centre

Somerby Drive, Bicton Heath

Shrewsbury

SY3 8DS

Employer's website

https://www.mpft.nhs.uk (Opens in a new tab)