Senior Clinical/Counselling Psychologist/Psychological Therapist

Job description

Job responsibilities

To provide a qualified specialist clinical psychology/psychological therapy service to service users of the Community Enhancing Recovery Team and/or Forest Close Inpatient Rehabilitation Service.

To provide specialist psychological assessment, formulation and recovery interventions, at the same time as offering highly specialised advice and consultation on service users psychological care to psychologist/therapist colleagues, non-psychologist colleagues and to other, non professional carers.

In common with all Clinical Psychologists/Psychological Therapists, to receive regular clinical supervision in accordance with good practice.

To provide clinical supervision to less experienced psychologists/therapists, Clinical associate psychologists, assistant(s), trainee(s) or other professionals, as required.

The postholder is responsible for the allocation of clinical work within their own team to less experienced psychologists/therapists, assistant(s), trainee(s) or other professionals.

To take sole professional responsibility and exercise autonomous professional and clinical judgement within the overall framework of Trust, HCPC and BPS policies/guidelines/standards.

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

General requirements

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 psychology/psychological therapy 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/psychological therapy 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 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 Clinical Psychologist with the Health and Care Professions Council.To provide highly specialist psychological assessments of service users at the Community Enhancing Recovery 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 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 including psychosis, complex trauma, PTSD.

To be responsible for implementing a range of specialist psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within the team employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of different 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 and treatment of service users whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.

To provide highly specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals (both psychologists/therapists 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.

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
• 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
• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies in the context of issues associated with complexity.
• 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

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

• 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

Desirable

• Experience of providing supervision
• Experience of the application of clinical psychology/CAT/CBT/DBT or other psychotherapeutic modality in different cultural contexts.

Other

Essential

• 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 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

Forest Close

1-4 Forest Close, Oughtibridge

Sheffield

S35 0JW

Employer's website

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