Due to the expansion of the Building Attachment & Bonds Service (BABS) we are looking to recruit additional experienced Specialist Clinical Psychologists/ Child Psychotherapists.

0.6 FTE- Fixed Term

The service sits within Mersey Care Community Health Directorate but is hosted in the community in Children Centres/ Family Centres.

The post will involve providing specialist therapeutic parent-infant mental health support to vulnerable families in the antenatal/postnatal period. The main focus of the BABS work is supporting parents and infants to build secure bonds and attachment relationships, and good parent infant mental health. It would be an advantage if the post holder has previous experience and/or an interest and passion for working in the specialist field of parent infant mental health in particular, experience of working on an outreach, community-basis supporting vulnerable families in the community.

The successful applicant must be confident and skilled to work independently, and in collaboration/partnership with other professionals. The successful applicant must be confident and comfortable working with safeguarding issues/concerns and the multitude of risks presented in the parent infant relationship. Most importantly, the successful applicant must have good interpersonal skills and qualities to build a good relationship and engage families with complex lives.

Main duties of the job

The successful applicant will work collaboratively with the following professionals and teams to support vulnerable parents and infants:

• Community and Specialist/Public Health Midwives
• Mersey Care teams within the Child Health Directorate (Health Visitors, Family Nurses, Breastfeeding Team)
• Children Centre and Early Years Staff
• Perinatal Mental Health Teams
• Children's Social Care staff (Social Workers, Early Help and Family Support Workers Staff)

The post will involve providing specialist therapeutic parent-infant mental health support to families in the antenatal/postnatal period via Parent Infant Mental Health Assessments, psychological formulation and various parent-infant interventions.

About us

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.

We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.

At the heart of all we do is our commitment to 'perfect care' - care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We're currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

Job description

Job responsibilities

To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the team 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 psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the clients problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.

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, monitor progress and make highly skilled evaluations and 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 whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.

To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment and treatment of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based enhanced care plans.

To provide specialist psychological advice guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plans.

To ensure that all members of the clinical team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of clients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.

To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide both general and specialist advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.

To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, highly complex information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care where there may be conflicting views, high emotion and significant barriers to understanding and change, and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.

To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.

The candidate would be expected to provide staff support in the form of 1:1 supervision, peer support and reflective practice group on a regular basis

Person Specification

Essential & Desirable

Essential

• Doctoral level training in Clinical Psychology/ Child Psychotherapy accredited by the BPS or its approved equivalent,
• Expertise in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, formulation, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration
• Well developed and effective communication skills, oral and written, to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and nonprofessional groups.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS
• Formal training in supervision
• Ability to identify provide and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and severely challenging behaviours
• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials for presentations in public, professional and academic settings.

Desirable

• Experience of assessing and treating clients across the full range of care settings.
• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.
• Experience of working with vulnerable/ complex families

Employer details

Employer name

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust

Address

Sutton Family Centre

St Helens

WA9 3PY

Any attachments will be accessible after you click to apply.

350-CC6435643