The Specialist Community Perinatal Mental Health Team are seeking a Clinical Psychologist Band 8a (22.5 hours per week 0.6 WTE) to join our friendly and compassionate Mid Mersey Specialist Perinatal Team, working within Warrington, Halton, St Helens and Knowsley. This is part of our wider Cheshire and Merseyside Specialist Perinatal Service. This is a temporary post to cover maternity leave until 30th November 2025.

Clinical Psychologists play an integrative role in our service. While this post will be primarily focused on delivering support to individual families (both directly and by supervising and supporting MDT colleagues) there will also be scope for delivering training and consultation to partner agencies, and to being involved with other aspects of service development.We are looking for a clinician who is a strong team player and who has an understanding of the unique nature of the perinatal period, and the need to balance the needs of mum, baby and the wider systems that surround them.The successful candidate will be closely integrated into and meet regularly with the multi-disciplinary team (MDT). They will be joining a supportive and engaged Clinical Psychology team, MDT and wider service, and will receive regular supervision and CPD as well as informal support.

The ability, means and willingness to travel between multiple sites in the course of performing duties is essential in this post.

Main duties of the job

The Cheshire and Mersey Specialist Perinatal Service support women who experience severe and complex mental health difficulties in the Perinatal period (throughout pregnancy and up to baby's second birthday), providing a holistic package of care for mums, babies and families via our passionate and responsive multi-disciplinary team.

Clinical Psychologists play an integrative role in each of the MDTs and are valued and well supported by colleagues.While this post will be primarily focused on delivering support to individual families (both directly and by supervising and supporting MDT colleagues) there will also be scope for delivering training and consultation to partner agencies and to being involved with other aspects of service development.

We are looking for aclinician whois astrong team player and who has an understanding of the unique nature of the perinatal period and the need to balance the needs of mum, baby and the wider systems that surround them.

The applicant will join the Mid Mersey Perinatal Team. Practitioners will be closely integrated into and meet regularly with the MDT although they will be expected to work relatively autonomously across the footprint. They will be joining a supportive and engaged Clinical Psychology team, MDT and wider service, and will receive regular supervision and CPD as well as informal support.

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

Principal Responsibilities: Clinical: 1. To provide highly specialist psychological assessments requiring theoretical and practical knowledge of the full range of moderate to severe perinatal mental health issues, including issues relating to the mothers own mental health and to her relationship with her baby . To provide this service in a variety of locations including acute hospital settings, mental health outpatients or the service users home.2. To complete these assessments 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 interviews with clients, family members and others involved in the clients care.3. To formulate and implement highly specialist psychological intervention plans for the formal treatment and/or management of a patients physical and psychological health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the patients difficulties employing evidence-based methods of efficacy, across the full range of health-care settings.4. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, including members of staff, families and groups, within and across teams, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.5. To evaluate and decide on treatment options utilising physical and psychological theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors, based on past psychological and mental health history and ongoing psychological developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.6. To analyse, interpret and make appropriate judgements regarding a range of highly complex perinatal clinical issues and presentations where there are highly complex facts and situations to consider, and where expert opinion may not concur.7. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based intervention plans according to a professional code of conduct.8. To provide highly specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other MDT professionals contributing directly to clients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.9. To facilitate a psychologically based framework of understanding and care across all settings and agencies serving the patient group. This includes the provision of advice and consultation to external agencies supporting families in the perinatal period.10. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual patients and to provide advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.11. Where appropriate, to act as care co-ordinator, taking responsibility for initiating the planning and review of case conferences, advising on psychological management and reviewing psychological care for the individual with their family, carers, referring agents and others involved the network of care.12. To receive and communicate highly complex information which may be sensitive and/or contentious in a highly developed, skilled and sensitive manner (respectful of patient confidentiality as appropriate) concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of patients and their families/carers. This is to include situations that may present with hostility and high emotion or that involve overcoming major barriers to acceptance, and to monitor and review progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.13. To provide clinical assessment and therapy, involving sitting still for substantial periods of time requiring intense concentration, exposure to aggression and highly emotive or distressing situations. To work face-to-face without staff nearby, with any associated risk of dealing with people with mental health problems such as challenging behaviour and self-neglect. This is in addition to the regular hazards of seeing inpatients, including exposure to infectious agents (such as MRSA, c.diff or norovirus) and offensive odours.

Teaching, Training and Supervision: 1. To receive regular clinical supervision from a senior professional colleague and engage in reflective practice.2. To apply skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training and supervision and to provide supervision to other staffs psychological work as appropriate.3. To provide specialist professional and clinical supervision of other practitioners as appropriate.4. To contribute to the pre- and post-qualification teaching of other Clinical Psychologists. To undertake assessment of learning and competence, providing reports to training bodies as required.5. To provide advice, consultation and training to multi-professional staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.

Management, recruitment, policy and service development: 6. To contribute to the formulation, implementation and evaluation of clinical and operational practices and procedures as appropriate.7. To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.8. To manage the workloads of trainees within the framework of the services policies and procedures.9. Ensure the principles of clinical governance are incorporated in service delivery by maintaining a high quality service based on agreed clinical standards.10. Participate in managerial supervision.

Research and service evaluation: 1. To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice2. To undertake regular audit and evaluation of the teams activity by the derivation, collection and analysis of appropriate data.3. To undertake and participate in appropriate audit, quality assurance programmes and research as directed.4. To propose and support appropriate research and provide advice to other staff undertaking research, in order to advance psychological knowledge and work in this area.5. To co- supervise doctoral research projects with trainee clinical psychologists as required.

Professional / Administrative: 1. To ensure the development, maintenance and dissemination of the highest standards of professional practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the post holders professional and service manager(s).2. To contribute to the development and articulation of best practice in perinatal mental health work, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal and maintaining an active engagement with the development of the evidence base.3. 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. To maintain up to date knowledge oflegislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to both the specific client group and mental health more broadly.4. To work within the Code of Ethics and the relevant professional practice guidelines and the professional guidance framework of the Trust.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology (or its equivalent) as accredited by the BPS, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and Neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology.
• Professional registration with the HCPC

Desirable

• Training in a specialist therapeutic modality appropriate to the clinical population served and service requirements (e.g. DBT, CAT, CBT, EMDR, MBT)
• Supervision qualification

Knowledge/ Experience

Essential

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management, frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Well developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical & /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 groups
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to perinatal psychology and mental health
• Doctoral level knowledge (or its equivalent) of research design and methodology, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the field of clinical/counselling psychology
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS
• Experience of specialist psychological assessment, formulation and intervention with clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and inpatient settings.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client 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.

Desirable

• High-level skills in the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in relation specifically to perinatal and infant mental health
• Knowledge and understanding of the perinatal service context
• Experience of working with women with complex mental health difficulties in the perinatal period
• Experience of working therapeutically with the relationship between parents and their infants
• Experience of delivering therapeutic group work
• Experience of teaching, training & /or supervision.
• Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts

Skills

Essential

• Ability to assess and manage risk.
• Ability to recognise and challenge discrimination
• Ability to identify and employ methods of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour
• Excellent interpersonal skills.
• Appreciation of the interface between personal and professional lives, high level of self-awar
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