Job responsibilities
Clinical:
- To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the Primary Care Mental Health Transformation Programme 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 clients care.
- To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a clients mental and physical health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the clients problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings served by the teams.
- To be responsible for 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.
- 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 clients on their own caseload.
- To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
- To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.
- 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.
- 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.
- To work on a daily basis, in fact to face individual, family and/or in group therapy settings with adult and older adult service users presenting with complex and distressing psychological problems, including needs associated with a diagnosis of personality disorder/emotional sensitivity and trauma across life span.
Teaching, training, and supervision
1. To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a more senior clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.
- To continue to gain wider post-qualification experience of clinical psychology over and above that provided within the principal service area where the postholder is employed.
- To develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training and supervision and to provide supervision to other MDT staffs psychological work, as appropriate.
- To provide professional and clinical supervision of assistant clinical psychologists/clinical associate psychologist, and less senior clinical psychologists
- To contribute to the pre-qualification and post-qualification teaching of clinical psychology and clinical associate psychologists, as appropriate.
- To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate
Management, recruitment, policy and service development
To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the teams psychology divisions operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.
To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
To manage the workloads of assistant/graduate psychologists, within the framework of the team/services policies and procedures.
To be involved, as appropriate, in the shortlisting and interviewing of assistant/graduate psychologists.
Research and service evaluation
To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
To undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research.
To undertake project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within the service to help develop service provision.
General
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 postholders professional and service manager(s).
To contribute to the development and articulation of best practice in psychology 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 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 Health Professional Council and Trust policies and procedures.
To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to both the specific client group and mental health.
To contribute to the work of Psychological Services Directorate.
Safeguarding Children and Adults
The Trust is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people (anyone under the age of 18) and adults. It expects all staff, volunteers and contracted staff to share this commitment and act in such a way that safeguards and promotes the health and wellbeing of children, young people and adults.
Staff must ensure that they are familiar with the signs and symptoms of abuse and know what to do if any such concerns are raised.
Staff are expected to know about and follow the Trusts safeguarding children and safeguarding adult policies which can be found on the Trust intranet, and participate in related mandatory/statutory training.
Risk Management
Staff should be aware of the principles of risk management and adopt appropriate practice to reduce the risk to themselves and others. In particular, staff should observe the Trusts Risk Management Strategy, Risk, Incident & Serious Incident reporting and management policies, Health & Safety regulations and the risk management training requirements for all staff.
