Senior Clinical Psychologist /Senior Psychotherapist

Job description

Job responsibilities

Main Responsibilities

To provide a qualified specialist clinical psychology/psychotherapy service to service users of the Team, with particular regard to the provision of Psychological formulation, consultation and therapies.

To provide specialist psychological assessment and therapy at the same time as offering highly specialised advice and consultation on service users psychological care to psychologist/therapist colleagues, non- colleagues and to other, non-professional carers. In common with all Clinical Psychologists/Psychological Therapists, to receive regular clinical supervision psychologist in accordance with good practice.

To provide clinical supervision to less experienced psychologists/psychological therapists, assistant(s), trainee(s) or other professionals. The postholder is responsible for the allocation of clinical work within their own team to less experienced psychologists/psychological therapists, assistant(s), trainee(s) or other professionals and supporting specialist placements to trainees undertaking D.Clin Psychology/Psychotherapy and/or medical psychotherapy training as appropriate.

To take sole professional responsibility and exercise autonomous professional and clinical judgement within the overall framework of Trust, HCPC/BPS/BABCP/RCN or other accrediting organisation as appropriate and other policies/guidelines/standards.

To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the team.

To contribute to the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the post-holders professional and service manager(s).

To contribute to the development and articulation of best practice in Psychological practice and psychotherapy across the service, by continuing to develop the skills of a reflexive and reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal, and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the field of clinical psychology/psychotherapy and related disciplines.

To maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry and recording, report writing and the responsible exercise of professional self-governance in accordance with professional codes of practice of the HCPC, BPS and other accrediting organisations (e.g. ACAT) as appropriate, and Trust policies and procedures.

To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies, and issues.

To attend and contribute to relevant professional meetings.

To develop and maintain good working relationships with colleagues within Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust and in the statutory and voluntary services with the aim of promoting high standards of care and clinical practice

To maintain professional registration as a Psychological Therapist/Clinical Psychologist with the Health and Care Professions Council and to maintain accreditation as required/appropriate with other accrediting organisations

Experience of an commitment to working with a diverse population that are experiencing one or a range of factors including, homelessness, domestic abuse, criminal justice system, substance misuse and chronic mental health issues.

To provide highly specialist psychological/psychotherapy assessments of service users referred to the Team, based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological and psychometric tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with service users, family members and others involved in the persons care.

To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment/ psychotherapy implementation and/or management of a service users problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the persons problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across a full range of care settings.

To work on a daily basis in face to face individual, family and/or in group therapy settings with service users presenting with highly complex and distressing psychological problems.

To be responsible for implementing a range of specialist psychological/ psychotherapeutic 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 different provisional hypotheses e.g. with regard to the developing implementation of DBT and/or other modalities as appropriate.

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.

To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of service users whose problems are managed by psychotherapy based standard care plans.

To provide highly specialist psychological/psychotherapeutic advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals (both psychologists/psychotherapists and non-psychologists) contributing directly to service users formulation, diagnosis and treatment plans.

To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all users of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the service user group.

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

To coordinate, where appropriate, complex intervention plans, taking responsibility for initiating planning and reviews of plans, and including service users, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.

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

To be responsible for implementing a range of specialist psychotherapeutic 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 different provisional hypotheses e.g. with regard to the developing implementation of DBT and/or other modalities as appropriate.

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.

To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of service users whose problems are managed by psychotherapy based standard care plans.

To provide highly specialist psychological/psychotherapeutic advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals (both psychologists/psychotherapists and non-psychologists) contributing directly to service users formulation, diagnosis and treatment plans.

To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all users of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the service user group.

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

To coordinate, where appropriate, complex intervention plans, taking responsibility for initiating planning and reviews of plans, and including service users, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.

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

To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of aspects of the teams clinical practice through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.

To contribute to the governance of psychology and psychotherapy practice within their own team by developing and collecting relevant measures of outcome and audit and to provide consultation to other health and social care professionals to enable them to develop their own effective systems of governance.

To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.

To be involved, as appropriate, in the shortlisting and interviewing of assistant psychologists and other more junior staff and other recruitment where appropriate

To manage any waiting lists within the team and participate as a senior clinician in the allocation of cases taking into account skill mix and caseload. To respond to referrals, making autonomous professional and clinical judgements based upon complex information, prioritising accordingly and contributing to multidisciplinary decision making.

To implement the policies and propose changes to working practices/procedures concerning professional good practice for the provision of psychological therapy services as applicable to the Team in order to ensure the highest standards of service to the service user group.

To propose policy or service changes which impact beyond own area of activity by participation in Trust working parties and other local development groups.

Person Specification

Technical Skills- Knowledge and skills

Essential

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Well-developed, high-level skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, highly complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to service users, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS
• Well-developed, high-level skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, highly complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to service users, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology, including use of computerised statistical packages (eg SPSS).
• Evidence of continuing professional development as required by the HCPC and BABCP or other accreditation body as appropriate.

Desirable

• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific complex presentations (e.g. issues associated with diagnoses of BPD/EUPD).
• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies in the context of issues associated with diagnoses of BPD/EUPD e.g. DBT.
• Knowledge of relevant legislation

Training and qualifications

Essential

• Post-graduate, doctoral level training in clinical psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996), including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology as accredited by the HCPC and/or BPS
• Registration as a Clinical Psychologist with the HCPC
• Professional qualification (e.g.) RMN/OT/Social Worker
• Post-graduate diploma or qualification in another recognised NHS psychotherapy model such as DBT or CBT

Desirable

• Qualification in another recognised NHS psychotherapy model such as DBT, EMDR, CAT or CBT
• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.
• Additional, post-qualification short courses.
• Formal training/qualifications as a clinical supervisor

Experience

Essential

• Significant experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of service users across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, and primary care.
• Ability to work with service users presenting with complex psychological difficulties. Ability to work with the potential of individuals or their carers becoming abusive and aggressive
• Experience of working with a wide variety of service user groups, across the whole life course presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.
• Evidence of being able to work effectively in multi-disciplinary settings and teams
• Demonstrates further training/experience normally through having received a minimum of 50 hours clinical supervision of working as a psychological therapist or clinical psychologist.

Desirable

• Experience of teaching and/or training
• Experience of providing supervision
• Experience of the application of clinical psychology/CAT/CBT/DBT or other psychotherapeutic modality in different cultural contexts.
• Experience of working with people who are experiencing physical health conditions, substance misuse, domestic abuse, criminal justice system, homelessness and chronic mental health issues

Other

Essential

• Ability to plan, prioritise and organise own workload and that of others
• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials including Powerpoint suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings
• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain own clinical practice and to contribute to that of others
• Ability to deal with exposure to highly distressing or highly emotional circumstances
• Ability to maintain intense concentration on a frequent basis
• Ability to exercise judgement when presented with highly complex facts or situations requiring the analysis, interpretation and comparison of a range of options

Desirable

• Experience of working within a multicultural framework.

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).

Employer details

Employer name

Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust

Address

Hanover Medical Centre

100 William Street

Sheffield

S10 2EB

Employer's website

https://www.shsc.nhs.uk/working-us (Opens in a new tab)