Psychology is expanding in CNWL Harrow Adult Mental Services and we are excited to offer this new post for a Band 8a Psychologist to join our team. The post will be primarily linked to our Psychiatric Liaison Service (PLS) but also work closely with our other acute and community mental health teams to support continuity of care.

The post holder will be required to support service users of the PLS presenting with a range of mental health difficulties and admitted to the acute physical health wards of Northwick Park Hospital (NPH).

In line with the NHS 10-year Long Term Plan (2019), CNWL Harrow is pioneering in its development of a Trauma-Informed Approach (TIA) to their mental health services, which draws upon the DCP's Power Threat Meaning Framework (Johnstone & Boyle, 2018). Our work has been presented at national conferences, nominated for a Positive Practice in Mental Health Award (2022) and is in the process of being written up for publication. The successful candidate will be integral to the further development of this work.

CNWL website on mental-health-services/cnwl-trauma-informed-approaches-tia

Good Practice Examples: Professional Practice | BPS

If you are motivated and passionate about delivering high quality psychological care, come and join our well-established team of psychological therapists with a diverse range of special interests.

We would welcome informal visits and the opportunity to show you our services.

Main duties of the job

The PLS is an integrated multi-disciplinary team that supports inpatients of the NPH physical health wards, experiencing difficulties with their mental health and/or cognitive function. The post-holder will work closely with this team as well as a range of multi-disciplinary staff from the physical health wards. They will join an expanding acute psychological therapies team, committed to providing highly specialist, integrated and trauma-informed care.

The post-holder will play a key role in the assessment of service users on the physical health wards of NPH, the development of formulation-driven care plans to support discharge and onwards care, and the provision of psychological intervention that follows service users across the system. They will be expected to work as a senior member of the multi-professional team; and provide consultation, co-working, teaching, training, supervision and research. They will make a leading contribution to the learning culture of the team and wider service and play an integral role in the further development of trauma-informed care.

You must have a strong commitment to teamwork, an ability to facilitate ongoing development of the psychology service and to work sensitively within a culturally diverse environment. Research and further professional development are encouraged.

About us

Vaccination: The successful applicant may have contact with patients or service users and we will therefore be seeking proof of vaccination or medical exemption during the recruitment process. As an NHS Trust we strongly encourage and support vaccination as this remains the best way to protect yourself, your family, your colleagues and of course patients and service users when working on our healthcare settings.

Mental health care across the Harrow system is delivered by multi-disciplinary teams with a shared sense of ownership for clinical care. The psychology service is well integrated and highly valued, with excellent MDT working relationships.

The Psychiatric Liaison Service, adult inpatient mental health wards and Home Treatment Team are all located in the CNWL Harrow Mental Health Centre. This is a separate unit based on the Northwick Park Hospital site. The location of all these services on one site enables cohesive working across the acute teams, who work closely ensuring a streamlined transition pathway for service users. The three Harrow Community Mental Health Hubs are located close by (Headstone Drive, Harrow) and all teams (acute and community) work together as one system to provide fully integrated and cohesive care.

The psychology department has close links with UEL, UCL and Royal Holloway DClinPsych courses.

Job description Job responsibilities

MAIN DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Clinical:1. To provide specialist psychological assessment and formulation 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 structuredobservations and semi-structured interviews with clients, family members and others involved in the clients care.2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a service users mental health difficulties, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of theservice users difficulties, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.3. 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.4. 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.5. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of service users whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.6. To integrate with the psychological formulation specialist knowledge of complex mental health presentations.7. To understand the impact of acute mental health presentations, and to offer appropriate advice to the patient, carers and clinicians in the light of such understanding.8. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to staff contributing directly to service users formulations and treatment plans.9. To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all service users, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.10. 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.12. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment of service users under their care and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.13. To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team, where appropriate.

Teaching, training, and supervision:1. To receive regular clinical professional supervision from the Principal Clinical Psychologist and CoLead in Trauma Informed-Approaches and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.2. To gain additional highly specialist experience and skills relevant to clinical psychology in acute settings, as agreed.3. To develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training and supervision.4. To provide supervision to other multi-disciplinary staffs psychological work, as appropriate.5. To provide clinical placements for trainee clinical psychologists, ensuring that trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good mental health care and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.6. To provide professional and clinical supervision of trainee and assistant clinical psychologists, and more junior qualified psychologists.7. To contribute to the pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical psychology as well as other disciplines, as appropriate.8. To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the service user group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.

Management, recruitment, policy and service development:1. To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the Acute Psychology service operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.2. To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.3. To facilitate and assist in Acute Psychology service development and provision e.g. information systems.4. To manage the workloads of assistant and trainee clinical psychologists as well as more junior qualified psychologists within the framework of the team/services policies and procedures.5. To be involved, as appropriate, in the shortlisting and interviewing of assistant/graduate psychologists as well as more junior qualified psychologists.6. The post holder will be required to attend and contribute to the regular professional meetings of the PLS as well as the Acute Psychology Service

Person Specification Training & qualifications Essential

• Doctoral level training in clinical or counselling psychology or its equivalent, including specifically models of mental health, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology as accredited by the BPS.

Desirable

• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.
• Experience of using family/systemic interventions

Experience Essential

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of service users across the full range of care settings, including; community, primary care and in service user settings.
• 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.
• Demonstrate further specialist training/experience through having received a minimum of 50 hours clinical supervision of working as a clinical psychologist, or an alternative agreed by the Trust Chief Psychologist.

Desirable

• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
• Experience of the application of clinical or counselling psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Experience working as a specialist clinical psychologist under supervision.

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 skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to service users, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS.
• Formal training in supervision of other psychologists, including trainees.

Desirable

• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. complex emotional needs, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc).
• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the service user group and mental health.
• Experience of working as part of a multidisciplinary team.

Other Essential

• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations withi
  
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