OPD Band 7/8a Clinician

Job summary

We are looking to recruit a qualified Clinician (Nurse, Therapist etc.) or a Clinical or Forensic Psychologist to provide clinical input and oversight to our service for offenders with personality disorder who are seen by the Probation Service in Bristol. The post also provides the opportunity for specialist input into which is an innovative multidisciplinary team that has developed psychological approaches to working with high risk offenders with Personality Disorder traits.

Our service covers Wiltshire, Bristol and Gloucestershire and contains 4 functions of service: Core Service, Intensive Intervention Risk Management Service (IIRMS), Approved Premises (APs) and Mentalisation Based Therapy (MBT).

The aims of the core service are to identify people likely to meet our service criteria, provide targeted specialised advice, consultation, and formulation to support probation practitioners and promote the effective engagement, compliance and appropriate monitoring of the individual. People (service users) identified for the OPD pathway enter into and complete planned treatment interventions, which may include IIRMS, MBT or our psychological services available at the Approved Premises

Main duties of the job

Individuals screened into the OPD pathway are able to access psychologically informed support and planned treatment interventions. IIRMS is the newest part of our service; the aim of IIRMS is to work on a voluntary basis with individuals subject to licence conditions following their release from prison who have been identified as likely to benefit from the additional support to ensure that their release plan is successful. Our IIRMS is a multidisciplinary team run by Clinical and Forensic Psychologists, Assistant Psychologists, Probation Officers, Support Workers and Administration who support our back office processes.

The intervention work offered by IIRMS includes three components: Psychologically informed individual case working, Psycho-educational interventions (group or individual) and/or outreach work to support the individual to build community links. This post will provide opportunities to supervise junior members of our IIRMS team, contribute to delivery of IIRMS and may include work within the Approved Premises, and/or Mentalisation Based Therapy Service (based in Bristol).

About us

The Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) service has developed innovative approaches to working with high risk offenders with Personality Disorders who are seen by the National Probation Service in Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. We are a relatively large team who have established ourselves and have a reputation for a high quality, expert clinical service delivered with a practical approach. Service users have complex problems including personality disorder, drug and alcohol abuse and social exclusion; they have usually committed serious violent and/or sexual offences. Much of our work is group based with service users and consultation to the managing teams. Service users are identified through their Offender Manager, National Data teams, screening clinics other core OPD services.

We recognise that diversity in teams improves creativity, quality and performance; it helps improve trust and respect between staff and will enable excluded service users and carers to engage. So, we are aiming to be a great team to work in whatever your background and are seeking to recruit people from Black, Asian and other Ethnic backgrounds as well as people with other protected characteristics. This is part of AWPs positive action plan to ensure the widest and most diverse field of talent. If you have any protected characteristic or are from a BAME background, then we are particularly keen to receive an application from you.