Assistant Psychologist

Job description

Job responsibilities

Clinical and Client Care

Manage an active caseload providing structured brief interventions and other psychosocial, psychological and pharmacotherapy interventions in compliance with RWCDAS delivery model.

To carry out psychological assessments and interventions for clients under the supervision of practitioner psychologists who are engaging with a community drug and alcohol service.

To provide individual psychological interventions for clients based on a psychological formulation and using evidenced based addictions psychosocial interventions.

To organise and facilitate group psychological interventions for clients, including the management of waiting lists and development of group materials where appropriate.

To assist the team in the development of individual or group clinical materials or training materials, and in addition to develop such materials independently as falls within own degree of competence.

Contributing to team or service clinical functioning

To contribute to the effective working of RWCDAS and to a psychologically informed framework for the service.

To support the team or services delivery of accessible and acceptable services to diverse local communities.

Policy and service development

To implement policies and procedures in own area of work, and to comment on proposed improvements or beneficial changes.

To contribute to service development through undertaking and participating in appropriate projects.

To contribute to the consultation and engagement of service users in planning and delivering services which meet the needs of local communities.

Teaching and Training

To demonstrate work methods to newly recruited Assistant Psychologists and to support their development of necessary skills.

To contribute to team training, supporting the wider teams development.

To disseminate research and service evaluation findings through presentations or published articles.

Record-keeping and Information Governance

To ensure that all information generated by own work is recorded as required by Trust policies, local procedures and research ethics.

To maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping and report writing, according to professional and Trust guidelines, including electronic data entry.

To create and maintain databases and enter data and perform analyses and produce reports.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• A First-class or Upper-second-class Bachelor's degree with Honours in Psychology that is accredited by the British Psychological Society and confers the Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership of the British Psychological Society.

Desirable

• Post-graduate CBT training and delivery of formulation-based treatments.
• Additional training in Motivational Interviewing (MI)

Experience

Essential

• Experience of working with people with drug and alcohol problems and co-occurring psychological difficulties.
• Sufficient post-graduate experience of psychological assessment and treatment of clients with a range of psychological needs in addictions to be able to work clinically without direct supervision.
• Ability to work effectively within a multidisciplinary team, contributing to effective team functioning and holding team roles.
• Experience of organising and facilitating groups.

Desirable

• Keywork or case management work in a community addiction team.
• Experience of delivering low-intensity protocol-based interventions to alcohol, opiate and non-opiate clients.
• Ability to engage and work with clients with complex needs, including severe and enduring mental health problems.

Knowledge

Essential

• Good theoretical knowledge of the problems experienced by and needs of people with addiction problems and of methods of assessment and treatment.
• Graduate level knowledge of psychological research methodology and statistical analysis.
• Awareness of racial and diversity issues through attendance of relevant training.

Desirable

• Understanding of the needs of clients with substance use disorders.

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).

Employer details

Employer name

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust

Address

Wandsworth Community Drug and Alcohol Service

St John's Therapy Centre

London

SW11 1SW

Employer's website

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