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Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologist

Employer
Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust
Location
Southampton
Salary
£48,526 to £54,619 a year Based on full time hours
Closing date
23 Mar 2023

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Profession
Psychologist, CAMHS nurse
Grade
Band 8A
Contract Type
Permanent
Hours
Full Time
We are currently recruiting for a Clinical Psychologist to join Austen House, a 14-bedded Low Secure inpatient unit for young people aged 12-18. The unit sits alongside well-established Medium Secure and General Adolescent Units at Bluebird and Leigh House.

The role will involve the use and development of psychological skills to contribute to the understanding and treatment of psychological distress and risk. There will be opportunities for direct clinical work with young people and their families/carers. You will contribute to a psychologically informed environment via formulation, consultation, teaching, supervision, and reflective practice. The post offers close multi-disciplinary and multi-agency working, opportunities to use research skills and continued professional development. Supervision is provided from the team 8b Clinical Psychologist.

Newly qualified applicants are welcome and would be recruited as a band 7 and supported as part of an established preceptorship process to develop into the 8a role.

Austen House is set on the edge of the New Forest within a few miles of the city of Southampton.

For more information please contact Dr. Jackie Preston, Divisional Director of Psychological Therapies Jackie.preston@southernhealth.nhs.uk or Dr Helena Maher Helena.maher@southernhealth.nhs.uk.

Interview date: 19th April

Main duties of the job

The postholder is a member of the multi-professional team. They will be required to work as an autonomous, independent practitioner responsible for their own work and interventions and for the interpretation of agreed guidelines and policies in providing a highly specialist psychological service to young people referred to Austen House. This may include working with families/carers, or another identified person where appropriate.

The postholder will undertake complex assessments, offer consultancy, and provide expert advice to colleagues, and the wider clinical multi-professional team, other agencies and non-professional carers on formulation, psychological intervention, and risk.

The post holder will provide specialist intervention for complex cases and plan and prioritise their own clinical workload.

The postholder will promote the Psychological Model of Care, enhancing psychologically informed nurse-led approaches.

The post holder will be expected to comment and propose change to policy or service development within the divisional psychological service and team as necessary.

The post holder will provide specialist supervision for trainee psychologists and provide psychological guidance and supervision for multi-professional clinical colleagues. They will engage in research and development, cultivate, and encourage a research ethos within the wider clinical team. The post holder will utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research.

About us

Are you committed to providing remarkable care and service?

Are you passionate about helping people and want to make a difference every day?

We want to meet you!

Southern Health is one of the largest Foundation Trusts in the UK, specialising in mental health, adult and child community health and learning disabilities. We are committed to promoting the welfare and safeguarding of children, young people and adults at risk of abuse and neglect through our 6,500 strong workforce.

Southern Health has over 300 sites across the county and we serve 1.5 million people throughout all stages of their lives. Our aim is to work alongside the people we support (and our health and care partners) to deliver the best possible care and constantly improve.

Here at SHFT we have so much to be proud of:
  • Working as a team and supporting each other, we put patients and our staff at the heart of everything we do.
  • We have a skilled and diverse workforce and are committed to our staff development, offering bespoke training packages, leadership pathways and career opportunities.
  • We offer a variety of benefits such as an amazing pension scheme, generous annual leave, Childcare Choices scheme, many discounts (Blue Light card, The Company Shop, NHS Staff Discounts, cycle to work scheme) and much more.

Come to work with us, together we will provide outstanding treatment and care to improve lives.

Job description Job responsibilities

*To provide specialist psychological assessments for young people who are inpatients in Austen House 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 young people, family members and others involved in the young person's care

*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 formulate and implement highly complex plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of an individual's mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework (i.e. psychological formulation) of the individual's problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings. Where appropriate providing the role of lead professional and all the duties this entails. The post-holder will monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-professional care.

*When appropriate identify repeating patterns of crisis and advise ways of breaking the cycle, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the individual's presenting and underlying problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.

*To be responsible for implementing a range of highly specialised psychological interventions for individual young people, carers, families. This will be employed both within and across teams, individually and in synthesis. The post-holder will adjust and refine psychological formulations, drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.

*To provide a psychological opinion about the diagnosis, treatment needs and risk and to represent these as appropriate to Courts, Mental Health Review Tribunals, Public Protection Conferences and the Home Office.

*Facilitate a systemic understanding of severe and complex mental health problems where particular interpersonal relationships or other factors may lead to repeated crises or relapse.

*Commencing with assessment, clinical work will require the analysis, interpretation and comparison of a range of options and theoretical perspectives, which will in turn facilitate the development of complex formulations in collaboration with the individual. The formulation will inform the most effective evidence-based highly specialised programme of care/ interventions.

*To work as and exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment and recommended treatment of young people whose problems are managed by psychologically informed care plans.

*To provide a range of specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to formulation, diagnosis, and treatment plan. e.g., psychological management of symptoms of psychosis and deliberate self-harm.

*To identify and address factors which may contribute to the team's difficulty in maintaining a consistent approach with individual young people.

*To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all people of the service, across all multi-professional teams, settings and other agencies serving the client group.

*To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual young people and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.

*To liaise with carers and families and organise and provide family work interventions as appropriate

*The post-holder will be required to work with individuals in situations where there may be hostility, abuse and/or a highly charged atmosphere. They will be required to communicate, in a skilled and sensitive manner, highly complex, highly sensitive and/or highly contentious information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of people under their care, where there are significant barriers to acceptance which need to be overcome using the highest level of interpersonal and communication skills. This will include the writing of clinical reports, letters, and notes in line with Trust operational standards, and liaison with senior Psychologists.

*Will be required to sit in a constrained position for client therapy and extended assessment.

*To represent Psychological Services at multi-professional meetings as required and provide highly specialist psychological opinions and recommendations.

*Provide a psychological perspective and psychologically based framework for understanding the young person and their care needs for the team, (including care, staff / service dynamics, staff / service organisational systems, promotional activities) within a wide range of settings including CPA meetings, ward reviews, case discussions, team meetings, reflective practice meetings, and inter-agency to the benefit of all people served by the service.

*To support and inform the leadership team in delivering a psychologically informed service and take a lead clinical role in the development of clinical and service delivery.

*Facilitate reflective practice to support staff in with working with complex and challenging cases.

*To tolerate and manage verbal abuse and occasional physical aggression. Training and critical awareness of physical intervention procedures (e.g., Prevention and Management of Violence and Aggression or equivalent) is required.

Person Specification Qualifications Essential
  • Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology.
  • Training in Clinical Supervision
  • HCPC Registration
  • Non-clinical psychologists must be able to demonstrate competencies in the above.
Experience Essential
  • In depth experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of people across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care, and inpatient settings.
  • In depth 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.


Any attachments will be accessible after you click to apply.

348-SS-I-787F

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