Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologist

Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust

This job is now closed

Job summary

If you are someone who wants to deliver the best possible care and be part of a team committed to supporting its staff, patients and carers, then we are the job opportunity you are looking for. We are looking for an enthusiastic and experienced clinician who has experience and expertise working with complex cases within the area of acute mental health care. Applications are invited for a full time (1.0 WTE) Band 8a Specialist Psychologist. We will also consider applicants who are looking for a Band 7 post, with potential for preceptorship to Band 8a.

The post holder will provide specialist psychological assessment and therapy individually and through group programmes as well as offering advice, consultation and training to staff in the team. Evaluation of interventions and the impact of the service in terms of benefit to clients is an important component of what we strive to do.

North and Mid Hampshire have adopted the innovative model of Comprehend, Cope and Connect (CCC) in providing psychological therapies within acute care. This involves the delivery of groups and individual work within the recovery model, focussing on skills acquisition and self-management. The CCC is aimed at those who are in the midst of an acute crisis and/or suffer from a severe mental health problem, including those with personality disorders and psychosis.

Main duties of the job

To provide a qualified highly specialist clinical psychology service to clients of the acute care service (in hospital wards and at home); providing highly specialist psychological assessment and therapy at the same time as offering advice and consultation and supervision on clients' psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues and to other non-professional carers, working autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the team's policies and procedures. To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the area served by the team/service. To undertake a personal research and development programme and develop and encourage a research culture within the clinical team.

About us

Are you committed to providing remarkable care and service?

Are you passionate about helping people and want to make a difference every day?

We want to meet you!

Southern Health is one of the largest Foundation Trusts in the UK, specialising in mental health, adult and child community health and learning disabilities. We are committed to promoting the welfare and safeguarding of children, young people and adults at risk of abuse and neglect through our 6,500 strong workforce.

Southern Health has over 300 sites across the county and we serve 1.5 million people throughout all stages of their lives. Our aim is to work alongside the people we support (and our health and care partners) to deliver the best possible care and constantly improve.

Here at SHFT we have so much to be proud of:

Working as a team and supporting each other, we put patients and our staff at the heart of everything we do.
We have a skilled and diverse workforce and are committed to our staff development, offering bespoke training packages, leadership pathways and career opportunities.
We offer a variety of benefits such as an amazing pension scheme, generous annual leave, Childcare Choices scheme, many discounts (Blue Light card, The Company Shop, NHS Staff Discounts, cycle to work scheme) and much more.

Come to work with us, together we will provide outstanding treatment and care to improve lives.

Date posted

01 March 2023

Pay scheme

Agenda for change

Band

Band 8a

Salary

£48,526 to £54,619 a year

Contract

Permanent

Working pattern

Full-time

Reference number

348-MNH-I-942A

Job locations

Parklands Hospital

Aldermaston Road

Basingstoke

Hampshire

RG24 9RH

Job description

Job responsibilities

1.To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients within the acute care pathway 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 client's care.

2.To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client's mental health problems, in particular identifying repeating patterns of crisis and advise ways of altering these, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client's problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.

3.To be responsible for individual casework implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.

4.Be responsible for supplying a systemic understanding of severe and complex mental health problems where particular relationships or factors provoke repeated crises.

5.To evaluate and make 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.

6.To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.

7.To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients' formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan, eg: psychological management of symptoms of psychosis and deliberate self-harm.

8.To identify and address factors leading to the team having difficulty in maintaining a consistent approach with individual clients.

9.To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.

10.To liaise with carers and families and organise and provide family work interventions as appropriate

11.To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.

12.To deal appropriately with the intense emotional atmosphere surrounding therapy contacts on a daily basis and to work with frequent intense concentration for the clinical sessions of assessment and therapy.

13.Facilitate reflective practice and debriefing (as required) in working with complex and challenging cases.

14.Will be required to sit in a constrained position for client therapy and extended assessment.

15.Will be required to tolerate and manage occasional verbal abuse and the possibility of physical aggression.