We are pleased to offer this opportunity for a 1 year fixed term 8b Principle Clinical Psychologist to experience leading our Maternity Trauma and Loss Care Team. This is a therapy led team of qualified therapists, trainees/assistant therapists and midwives who work together to support women and birthing people during the perinatal period who are experiencing symptoms related to trauma, loss or tokophobia. This post offers a balance between clinical work, supervision, service development, senior management team working, leadership, line management and areas of specialist interest for the service.

We are a close team who work supportively of each other. The successful candidate would be warmly welcomed and supported in this role by both the team and the professional leads and senior managers of the CNWL Perinatal Mental Health Services. We would see this both as a much welcomed support to our MTLCS service for the year contract and an opportunity for a Clinical Psychologist to develop their skills and experience in an 8b leadership post.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will be responsible for the provision of a specialist clinical/counselling psychology service for patients under the care of the Maternal Mental Health Service. Responsibilities will include the provision of specialist psychological assessments and therapies, the provision of specialist risk assessments, and the provision of psychological advice and consultation to others involved in patient care. They will also be responsible for ensuring the systematic provision and governance of psychology services within the service.

The role will encompass managerial, clinical, professional, financial and developmental aspects, requiring the post holder to work in collaboration with local maternity services and the directorate clinical and management team and others to use resources in the most effective way, to free up capacity for clinical work and ensure an optimum level of care is achieved.

As an autonomous practitioner the post holder will be responsible for their own clinical and non-clinical work and interventions and for the interpretation of agreed guidelines and policies.

Please see attached documentation for a broader overview of the main duties of this role.

About us

The Maternity Trauma and Loss Care Service launched in 2021 to offer a perinatal mental health service that specifically focuses on supporting women and birthing people who have and are experiencing trauma, loss, complex grief and anxiety related to tokophobia in relation to the perinatal period. The service recently celebrated their third birthday and are now a well established and supportive team of therapists and midwives.

Our services operate Monday-Friday 9.00am-5.00pm and we are looking for someone to join our MTLCS service full time.

Values

COMPASSION: contribution to a caring and kind environment and recognition that what you do and say can help to improve the lives of others.

RESPECT: acknowledge, respect and value diversity of each individual, recognition of uniqueness.

EMPOWERMENT: continually try to provide information, resources and support to help others make their own decisions and meet their own needs. The Trust endeavours to support all staff to enable them to develop and grow.

PARTNERSHIP: work closely with others and behave in a way that shows that you recognise that commissioners and users of our services are the people who generate and fund our work.

Job description

Job responsibilities

The post-holder will:

Hold clinical responsibility for the women under the care of the Maternity Trauma and Loss Care Service (MTLCS).

Oversee and lead the delivery of psychological interventions within the MTLCS, ensuring adherence to the evidence base.

Provide operational leadership and management to the staff within the MTLCS, in collaboration with the MTLCS Lead Midwife for NWL.

Provide psychological leadership within the MTLCS, in collaboration with their counterpart in CNWL, including clinical supervision for all clinical staff in the service.

Provide clinical and line management supervision to the psychological therapists and non-clinical staff within the MTLCS.

Ensure psychological and trauma informed perspectives form part of service development and delivery.

Ensure that psychological interventions are in line with local and national guidance for the client group.

Provide data reporting on psychological interventions and their outcomes within the service to managers, commissioners and to NHSE at regular intervals as required.

Develop and sustain the psychological therapy pathways between the MTLCS and Perinatal Mental Health Services, third sector organisations and other local services including IAPT, Primary Care and Recovery Services.

Lead on the provision of training to Maternity colleagues in trauma informed approaches to maternity care.

Lead on research, audit and clinical governance tasks for the service.

Co-lead, in collaboration with their counterpart in West London and MTLCS Lead Midwife for NWL and any relevant others, in formulating a report of the formal evaluation of the MTLCS.

Person Specification

Training and Qualifications

Essential

• Educated with a psychology degree awarded with a minimum 2:1. Eligibility for graduate membership of BPS (A)
• Post-graduate doctorate in Clinical Psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996 or those in lateral transfer) as accredited by the BPS (A)
• Post-doctoral qualification or training in an evidence-based treatment for trauma such as CBT for PTSD or EMDR (A)

Desirable

• Evidence of post-doctoral training in training related to tokophobia, complex grief/loss, birth trauma or similar related area.

Experience

Essential

• Experience of working with grief, trauma and phobias.
• Experience of having facilitated/co-facilitated psychological therapy groups (A/I)
• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision (A/I)
• Experience working as a qualified (specialist) Psychologist for a minimum of three years, including at least one year's post qualification experience as a qualified Psychologist within a Clinical Psychology setting (or equivalent) (A/I)
• Experience in the clinical supervision of trainee Clinical Psychologists, Assistant Psychologists and/or qualified Psychologists (A/I)
• Experience of working with women in the perinatal period as a qualified clinician (A/I)
• Experience or working with diversity, promoting inclusion and diversity and enhancing equity and access to services

Desirable

• Experience of working in PMHS services
• Experience of having facilitated/co-facilitated psychological therapy with families and couples (A/I)
• Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts (I)
• Experience of line management (A/I)
• Experience of delivering psychological interventions to people experiencing trauma (A/I)
• Experience of supporting or leading a QI project
• Experience of working within a Trauma Informed Care framework

Knowledge and Skills

Essential

• Advanced specialist knowledge, both theoretical and practical, of psychology applied to clinical practice (I)
• Specialist theoretical and practical knowledge of the assessment and treatment of people experiencing complex trauma, grief, loss and phobia
• Able to provide and receive highly complex, highly sensitive or highly contentious information, where there are significant barriers to acceptance which need to be overcome using the highest level of interpersonal and communication skills such as would be required when communicating in a hostile, antagonistic or highly emotive atmosphere (I)
• Able to make judgements involving highly complex facts or situations, which require the evaluation of a range of options (e.g. the assessment of specialist clinical conditions and the determination of treatment options), where expert opinions may differ (I)
• Advanced level use of databases, word processing and test administration/scoring software. Good experience of using Excel.

Desirable

• Specialist theoretical and practical knowledge of the assessment and treatment of families and partners of women in the perinatal period (A/I)
• Knowledge of the experiences of women during the maternity journey including the socio-political narratives around childbirth and motherhood (A/I)
• Knowledge of recent research and papers of influence related to the perinatal journey and trauma and loss during this period e.g. MBRRACE report and the birth trauma report

Employer details

Employer name

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust

Address

St Charles Centre for Health and Wellbeing

Exmoor Street

London

W10 6DZ

Any attachments will be accessible after you click to apply.

333-J-PERI-0151