Senior Clinical or Forensic Psychologist

Job summary

Inpatient Forensic Services for people with Autism:

Senior Clinical or Forensic Psychologist - Band 8a - 0.8 (4 days)

An exciting opportunity has arisen for an experienced Clinical or Forensic Psychologist to join an established team of Clinical and Forensic Psychologists in the Secure Services for people with Autism at Brooklands Hospital. We will also accept applications from people due to qualify in late 2024 who will be initially employed at a Band 7 and progress to an 8a via the successful completion of agreed competencies.

Main duties of the job

The successful candidate will provide clinical and forensic input into the Men's Low Secure Autism Service at Brooklands Hospital. The secure service ethos is to help and support people who present considerable risk to others (as well as themselves) to return to a less restrictive environment and/or the community as soon as possible. The contribution of psychological services is highly valued within the teams and service management and is fully integrated within collaborative multi-disciplinary teams. Positive Behavioural Support is a key component of our treatment approach and philosophy and the successful candidate will work closely with others on developing new and existing service projects, develop new and existing group programmes and provide support in training others. There is lots of personal and service development opportunity within this role.

The successful candidate will ideally have post qualification experience of working with forensic populations and/or experience of working with people with autism who present considerable risk to others. You will use your psychological skills and experience to provide assessments, individual and group therapies, team formulations, and reflective practice. You may also supervise others (qualified psychologists and non-psychologists) and be involved in training others, such as ward staff and multidisciplinary colleagues.

About us

Training others and contributing to and leading on service development projects and undertaking audit and research is an important part of this role.

The psychology department at Brooklands is a well-established and supportive service and the successful applicant will receive support to further develop their skills and knowledge, through good quality supervision and training opportunities. The teamwork from a number of different therapeutic approaches including CBT, CAT, CFT, EMDR and Schema Therapy. We also have a full DBT programme operating successfully and provide a number of well-established and structured offence group programmes as part of the service user's comprehensive treatment pathway.

All members of the psychology team receive excellent support, good supervision and opportunities for continuing professional development. There would be support and training provided to the post holder to support the development of their forensic assessment skills and/or therapeutic skills in a model applicable to the service user population.

The service has strong links with local clinical and forensic training doctorate courses and regularly provides placements for trainee clinical and forensic psychologists, supervision for research, and teaching on the courses. There are also strong links with community learning disability teams across Coventry, Warwickshire and Solihull.