Clinical Psychologist

Job responsibilities

The principal purpose of the job is to improve the psychological health & wellbeing of people with Autism

This will be achieved in this post by:

1. Providing a high quality psychological service to the DAAIT service as a key component of integrated mental health and wellbeing services to DPT and to community mental health services, as part of an adult autism intervention service

2. Providing local clinical leadership, co-ordination and supervision for staff, trainees and volunteers employed by or attached to the psychology service, under the general direction and supervision of the Lead Principal Psychologist.

3. Carrying a specialist caseload of clients, and providing advice and consultancy to patients, family members, carers and professionals.

4. The post holder will be supported by the Psychology Lead and also by senior colleagues within the DAAIT Services. The post holder will be expected to make good use of the expertise of others within the service to further develop their clinical skills with this client group

5. To work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the DAAIT team.

6. The post holder will receive regular professional and clinical supervision in accordance to Trust policy and to Professional Practice Guidelines set out by the British Psychological Society or appropriate designated Professional Body

7. Observe, and abide by all relevant Professional Codes of Conduct and Practise including the British Psychological Society. The post holder will be fully registered with the Health Professions Council as a condition of employment.

Communication and Working Relationship Skills

Clients, family and carers: To communicate in a highly skilled and sensitive manner with clients who may have specific difficulties in understand and/or communicating and who may be hostile, antagonistic or highly emotionally disturbed.

Multidisciplinary team colleagues: To work closely with colleagues in the multi-professional integrated mental health and wellbeing service on a day to day basis.

Health & social care staff: To communicate with a wide range of health & social care staff in hospital and in community settings in a highly skilled and sensitive manner, complex and sensitive information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under the services care. To provide support & guidance in the application of psychological principles and techniques, and to foster reflective practice.

Senior managers & professional staff: To maintain and build good working relationships with senior professional staff and managers in DAAIT services and in DPT, to foster a positive approach to the integrated mental health and wellbeing service and to enable effective negotiation.

Analytical and Judgemental Skills

• To analyse and interpret complex/highly complex facts or situations and be able to make comparisons of a different range of options.
• To have the level of skill required for assessing clients, relatives and interpreting client, family situations and to make appropriate formulations and/or expert opinion founded on clear evidence.

Planning and Organisational Skills

The psychology service: To plan and prioritise own workload, balancing the demands of patient care, support and guidance of carers and professionals, and service research and development activities.

To contribute to the planning and organising of the psychology service within the DAAIT Services, and to contribute to the development and improvement of provision of psychological services within the commissioned integrated mental health and wellbeing service to DPT, to best meet the organisations strategy and priorities.

The multidisciplinary service: To provide psychology knowledge to the multi-professional planning, development and marketing of mental health and wellbeing services

The directorate: To work as part of the Psychology and Psychological Therapies management structures to contribute to the planning and implementation of service developments.

Responsibility for Patient/Client Care, Treatment and Therapy

Assessment & intervention: To make highly skilled evaluations and decisions about assessment, treatment and discharge, including the management of risk in relation to autistic adultsTo formulate plans for psychological treatment and implementing specialist psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, and to demonstrate awareness of diversity issues.

Consultation & guidance: To provide advice, guidance and consultation on psychological aspects of patient care to colleagues, other service providers, patients, supporters and families.

Responsibility for Policy and Service Development Implementation

The post holder is accountable for their own professional actions, acting within Trust policies and procedures and Professional Practice Guidelines.

Policy & service: To identify and propose changes for policy and for service development. To participate in, and support service development to DANA services.

Responsibility for Finance, Equipment and Other Resources

Careful use of equipment and resources

Responsibility for Human Resources, e.g. Supervision, Training, HR Advice and Management

Leadership & supervision: To supervise the work of assistants &/or trainees as required. To provide supervision & consultancy to health and social care colleagues.

Responsibility for Information Resources and Administrative Duties

To maintain accurate records

To be responsible for using an email account to generate, monitor, and respond to the e-mail traffic by which the Trust conducts much of its internal communication.

Responsibility for Research and Development

To undertake service-relevant research and development activity agreed within DAAIT service, and to organise the R & D activities of assistants &/or trainees as required.

Freedom to Act

Be knowledgeable about a broad range of policies. Shall be accountable for own professional actions, work within professional ethics & trust policies.

Any Other Specific Tasks Required

To ensure all clinical care and treatment provided by psychologists is carried out under appropriate supervision and leadership.

To ensure that all psychologists continuously update the skills and techniques relevant to their clinical work.

Communication and Working Relationship Skills

Essential

• Excellent verbal, nonverbal and written communication skills

Analytical and Judgemental Skills

Essential

• Ability to integrate complex data, make highly skilled evaluations and decisions and take a long term perspective.

Planning and Organisational Skills

Essential

• Organisation and time management skills

Desirable

• Project management

Knowledge

Essential

• Broad knowledge and familiarity of autism services, and of the services in the NHS where autism assessment and treatment are commonly applied.

Experience

Essential

• Experience, and/or training in diversity awareness and social inequality

Desirable

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across a wide range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and in patient settings.
• Experience gained during supervised training of working in autism.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision

Qualifications

Essential

• Qualified Clinical Psychologist D.Clin.Psychol. or equivalent, eligible for Chartered Clinical Psychologist Status in the British Psychological Society.
• Registration with HPC
• Some further training in clinical autism
• Some further training in at least one psychological therapy

Desirable

• Some further training in clinical autism
• Some further training in at least one psychological therapy

Other

Essential

• Ability to work independently and use initiative within a service consisting of a network of teams.
• Ability to work as a member of a clinical team
• Ability to tolerate ambiguity, and maintain own morale and motivation in challenging service delivery contexts.
• Ability to work from home/at alternative work base as required
• Ability to travel be mobile across county

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).