Part-time - 22.5 hour per week

An exciting opportunity is being offered within the Liaison and Diversion service for a Clinical/Counselling Psychologist (Band 8a) to join the team part time (22.5 hrs) .

The role will over see and provide supervision to the assistant psychologists who will be assessing and delivering Primary Level Mental Health Treatment Requirements within the Cambridgeshire area for individuals over the age of 18 years old.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will provide supervision to the assistant psychologist completing structured assessments of offenders who the courts are considering placing on a MHTR order. Supervision will typically take place over the phone following the assistant completing the assessment.

The post holder will need to consider the appropriate use, interpretation, and integration of complex data from a variety of sources to help the assistant determine suitability for the offender to be offered a MHTR and to commence a manualised psycho-educational treatment programme provided by the assistant psychologist.

Also undertake risk assessment and risk management of offenders prior to them commencing manualised treatment programmes with an assistant psychologist.

To exercise full responsibility and autonomy for the treatment of and discharge of offenders receiving manualised treatment under MHTRs, ensuring appropriate assessment, formulation and interventions are communicated with the assistant psychologist providing the treatments.

About us

Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust is a health & social care organisation dedicated to providing high quality care with compassion to improve the health & wellbeing of the people we care for, as well as supporting & empowering them to lead a fulfilling life.

Our clinical teams deliver many NHS services not only via inpatient and primary care setting but also with the community. These services include Children, Adult & Older Peoples mental & physical health, Forensic & Specialist mental health, Learning Disabilities, Primary Care & Liaison psychiatry, Substance misuse, Social care, Research & Development.

To achieve our goal, we look to recruit high calibre candidates that share our vision & values. As an equal opportunities employer, we encourage applications from all sectors of the community, particularly from under-represented groups including disabled people & members of our ethnic minorities & LGBTQ+ communities.

Job description Job responsibilities

Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details of responsibilities

• To formulate risk and clinical need in collaboration with team members.
• To formulate plans for the psychological treatment and/or management of offenders based upon appropriate conceptual frameworks of risk management, mental health, family systems and individual psychological functioning.
• To make highly skilled evaluations and decisions about risk management and treatment options considering both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical, developmental, and systemic processes that have shaped the offender.
• To provide expertise and specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to offenders formulation, diagnosis, and treatment plan.
• To provide clinical expertise to the Liaison and Diversion Service, providing a high quality, specialist applied psychology service to offenders
• To manage risk and improve outcomes for offenders by providing weekly supervision to an assistant psychologist who will be working with offenders to offer them a manualised treatment under Mental Health Treatment Requirements (MHTRs) ordered by the courts as a part of a Community Order.
• To be available on the phone to discuss referrals for MHTRs with an assistant psychologist on three to four days a week, ideally between the hours of 12:30 to 1:30pm.
• To provide consultation and clinical expertise to colleagues in the Liaison and Diversion service to encourage a psychological approach in their work and to facilitate their professional development, reflective capacity and the effective and safe delivery of Liaison and Diversion Services.
• To utilise research skills for audit, service development and research, particularly with respect to evaluating the MHTRs and monitoring outcome for the interventions provided by the assistant psychologist.
• To work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the Liaison and Diversion Service.
• To help implement policy and service development changes.
• Effectively manage highly complex and sensitive situations and communicate condition related information to service users, other professionals, and external agencies, where there may be barriers to understanding or a hostile and antagonistic working environment.
• To be responsible for the interpretation of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect observations, and semi-structured interviews.
• Be responsible for communication of decisions with referrers, the team and service team lead.
• To develop and use complex materials for presentations for large groups of staff, the public, other professionals, and external stakeholders, including in an academic setting.
• To ensure all systems (electronic and hard copy), records, data, and information (stored and transferred) within the area for which the post holder is responsible are of high quality, meets Trust and professional requirements and will withstand inspection of their effectiveness and appropriateness to support the delivery of safe services.
• To communicate change clearly, reassuringly, and effectively.
• To participate in the development and implementation of communication, engagement and involvement strategies that are of benefit to service stakeholders, in particular service users and staff.

To ensure communications are clear, understood and channels to communicate are effective for the service to be able to engage, involve and motivate all service stakeholders.

Person Specification Education/Qualifications Essential

• Registered with the HCPC
• Undertaken training in the supervision of trainee clinical psychologists.
• Doctoral level training in clinical psychology, or counselling psychology including specifically, models of psychopathology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology as accredited by the BPS, or a BPS Statement of Equivalence.

Desirable

• Chartered Clinical Psychologist
• Undertaking relevant post-doctoral training
• Post-qualification training in one or more additional specialised areas of therapeutic practice

Experience Essential

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment, formulation, and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care, and in-patient settings.
• Experience of psychological assessment, formulation and treatment using a cognitive behavioural model.
• 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
• Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care coordinator and within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan.
• Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different contexts. Experience of working with adults who have complex and serious mental health problems.
• Demonstrate further specialist training/experience through having received a minimum of 50 hours clinical supervision of working as a specialist clinical psychologist over a minimum of 2 years, or an alternative agreed by the Head of Speciality

Desirable

• Experience of presenting psychology within the context of multi-disciplinary care.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision
• Experience of working within a multicultural framework.
• Experience working with adults with mental health issues and complex trauma within the criminal justice system

Skills & Abilities Essential

• Positive problem solving approach
• Ability to critically evaluate and review developments made by others to determine if and how they could be applied within own area of work.
• Ability to apply psychological practice in different cultural contexts
• Ability to establish and maintain professional relationships and boundaries with clients from diverse backgrounds.

Desirable

• Highly Specialist skills for offering live supervision of multi-disciplinary colleagues.
• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations in public, professional and academic settings.

Knowledge & Understanding Essential

• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and its implications for both clinical practice and professional management in relation to the client group
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology
• Ability to apply psychological practice in different cultural contexts

Desirable

• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g., personality disorder, 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 adults and mental health.
• Knowledge or experience working with relationships, attachment issues or complex trauma.
• Personal Experience of coping with life stressors.

Physical Requirements Essential

• Sustained periods of sitting.
• Ability to travel and work flexibly across different locations in Cambridgeshire
• Advanced keyboard skills.

Any attachments will be accessible after you click to apply.

310-ASMH-4464485-I