An exciting opportunity is available for an enthusiastic clinical psychologist to join our dynamic psychological services team within the Ealing community team for people with learning disabilities.

Ealing CTPLD is an integrated multidisciplinary community team with a focus on family centred outcomes and wider systemic change.

This post offers excellent opportunities for joint working alongside a range of professionals (speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, positive behaviour support specialists, music and art therapy, psychiatry, nursing, and social work) to deliver holistic support to people with learning disabilities, their families and carers.

Main duties of the job

The newly appointed candidate will join our psychological services team comprising of a lead psychologist, 2 qualified psychologists, 2 assistant psychologists, 3 Positive behaviour support specialists, a Music therapist and an Art therapist.

We have a strong interest in helping to influence the lives of people with learning disabilities through systemic and narrative ways of working.

The post holders responsibilities will include delivering specialist psychological assessment and intervention, both to individuals, families and groups; contributing to staff training and providing psychological advice and consultation to professional and non-professional carers.

The post holder will also work alongside colleagues to develop partnerships with self-advocacy and voluntary organisations locally.

We maintain good links with local university training programmes in the North Thames region by offering training placements and teaching.

We would be keen to receive applications from qualified clinical psychologists with a passion for learning about people with learning disabilities and their families. We encourage and welcome applicants from final year trainees due to qualify in September 2022.

Applicants must be registered with the HCPC on appointment.

For further information, please contact:

Helen Devonshire - Principal clinical psychologist

Tel: 0208 566 2360 / 07548 142 618

About us

West London NHS Trust is one of the most diverse providers of mental health, community and social care in the UK.

Our 3,982 staff care for people in hospital and in the community, helping them to recover and go on to lead full and productive lives. We aim to be the best organisation of our kind in the country.

We provide care and treatment for more than 800,000 people living in the London boroughs of Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham and Hounslow, delivering services in the community (at home, in GP surgeries and care homes), hospital, specialist clinics and forensic (secure) units.

We'rerated good overall by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Together, we're committed to promoting hope and wellbeing, working with patients, service users, carers, families and partners across the communities we serve.

We are keen to ensure that our workforce reflects the community it serves, particularly in terms of ethnicity, gender, disability, LGBTQ+ and experience of mental illness.

Job description Job responsibilities

Clinical:

• To provide specialist psychological assessments of service users referred to the team based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex psychological 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 service carers, family members and others involved in the service users care.

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

• 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 service users whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.

• To provide specialist psychological advice, guidelines and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to service users formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.

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

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

• To act as care coordinator, where appropriate, taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans under enhanced CPA including clients, 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 and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.

Teaching, training and supervision

• To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.

• To gain additional highly specialist experience and skills relevant to clinical psychology and/or the service (as agreed with the professional psychology manager) up to an agreed ceiling, but not more than 2 sessions per week (pro rata).

• 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 trainee and assistant clinical psychologists.

• To contribute to the pre- and post qualification teaching of clinical and/or counselling psychology, 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 operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.

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

• To manage the workloads of assistant and trainee clinical psychologists, within the framework of the team/services policies and procedures.

• To be involved, as appropriate, in the short-listing 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 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 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 British Psychological Society and Trust policies and procedures.

• To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to the specific client group.

Person Specification Qualifications Essential

• Good honours degree (2:1 minimum) in Psychology
• Eligibility for graduate membership of BPS
• Post-graduate doctorate in clinical or counselling psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996 or those in lateral transfer) as accredited by the BPS.
• Registration with the Health and Care Professions Council.

Desirable

• Evidence of training in Positive Behaviour Support principles/ systemic therapy/ CBT
• Training in clinical supervision for doctoral, and equivalent, trainees
• Other related academic and postgraduate qualifications

Experience and Knowledge Essential

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and in patient settings.
• Experience of working across the whole life span, with presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity.
• Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Experience of administration, scoring and written interpretation of psychometric / neuropsychological tests

Desirable

• Experience of working with people with Autistic Spectrum conditions
• Experience of working in a multiagency setting
• Knowledge of relevant learning disability legislation and its application in this setting.
• Experience of having facilitated/co-facilitated psychological therapy groups
• Specialist theoretical and practical knowledge of the assessment and treatment of complex behaviour problems

Skills Essential

• The ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, clinically sensitive information to service users, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Able to plan, prioritise and organise own service user caseload, treatment programmes (individual or group) involving other staff, and other aspects of the work such as research activity
• Able to use database, word processing and test administration/scoring software
• Working knowledge of SPSS
• Able to concentrate for lengthy periods of time while demonstrating active listening skills
• Able to function in emotionally distressing circumstances on a frequent basis (e.g. in supporting service users with behaviours that challenge, have mental illness, self - harm, sexual abuse)

Desirable

• Demonstrable experience in co-production with people with learning disabilities.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.

Any attachments will be accessible after you click to apply.

222-LS-ICS-117