Band 8a Clinical or Counselling Psychologist - Bristol

Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust; Bristol; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking two Practitioner Psychologists to lead and oversee psychological practice within a transformative Mental Health Integrated Network Team. This role involves providing clinical leadership, conducting specialist assessments, and delivering evidence-based psychological interventions. The organization is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workforce, ensuring that all employees contribute to a person-centered approach in mental health care. If you are passionate about making a significant impact in mental health services and thrive in a collaborative environment, this opportunity is for you.

Qualifications

• Doctoral qualification in Clinical/Counselling Psychology is essential.
• Experience in delivering evidence-based therapeutic interventions.

Responsibilities

• Lead and deliver a high-quality clinical/counselling psychology service.
• Provide specialist psychological assessment and therapy to clients.
• Supervise and train less experienced psychology staff.

Skills

Clinical Leadership

Psychological Assessment

Therapeutic Interventions

Multidisciplinary Collaboration

Supervision and Training

Risk Assessment

Communication Skills

Reflective Practice

Empathy Skills

Education

Doctoral Clinical/Counselling Psychology qualification

Chartered Psychologist status

HCPC Registration

Job description

Job overview

We are looking to recruit two Practitioner Psychologists to clinically lead and oversee psychological practice in the Mental Health Integrated Network Team (MINT) in North West Bristol and Inner City and East Bristol. As part of the Community Mental Health Framework, we are delivering an exciting transformation programme to support people with mental health needs to get the help they need efficiently, and close to home. We have been developing a new model, bringing together Primary and Secondary care, Local Authority and Voluntary sector services, into new Mental Health and Wellbeing Integrated Network Teams. We aim to support individuals who can fall through the 'gaps' of current pathways, making sure that they have the personalised support they need with services around them.

Main duties of the job

Skills and Qualities

• The post holder will provide clinical leadership alongside the MINT team manager to the Mental Health and Wellbeing Integrated Network Team (MINT), including (but not limited to) guiding principles of the clinical framework, the delivery of a psychologically informed service, psychological interventions, and Quality Assurance of those interventions.
• The post holder will use specialist psychological knowledge and skills to provide a formulation based care service to inform the effective management of service users, families and carers, within the local MINT.

• To provide highly specialist psychological assessment and therapy to service users and carers as appropriate to the service.
• To provide highly specialist advice and consultation on clients' formulation and psychological management to other non-psychologist colleagues.
• To clinically supervise/line manage trainee clinical psychologists, assistant psychologists, Clinical Associate Psychologists (CAPs) and less experienced psychology staff, and other professionals where indicated.
• To contribute to audit, research, policy and service development within the areas served by the MINT and the Psychological Therapies Service/CPI.
• To develop and deliver training to multidisciplinary staff.

Working for our organisation

We are AWP (Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust): a diverse organisation with over 5,000 dedicated staff providing inpatient and community-based mental health care.

We provide services from a range of locations to approximately 1.8 million people living in Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES), Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, across the county of Wiltshire and in parts of Dorset.

Our outstanding people promote mental health and wellbeing. The expertise and resources within AWP are dedicated to a person-centred approach for those who use our services and for all employees. We recognise that happy and fulfilled employees give better care.

At AWP we actively encourage applicants from all backgrounds; we are particularly keen to encourage applications from people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, those with disabilities and from the LGBTQ+ community. We want people to bring their unique blend of experiences, backgrounds, perspectives and knowledge to AWP, as diversity makes us stronger.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities
• To lead and deliver a high quality and largely autonomous and systematic clinical/counselling psychology service to the MINT in line with best practice and National guidelines.
• To hold clinical responsibility for the MINT service alongside the MINT Team Manager.
• To undertake highly specialist assessments, including neuropsychological assessment, risk assessment and assessment for suitability for specialist psychological therapies with clients and their carers (as appropriate to the role).
• To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of clients' mental health issues, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client's experiences, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
• To be responsible for providing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers 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.
• To provide at least one specialist evidence based psychological intervention as dictated by the needs of the service.
• To provide highly specialist consultation to members of the various teams in the MINT and beyond regarding formulation and psychological management of clients of the MINT
• To be involved in the development and delivery of training to multidisciplinary staff in the MINT and other services in the local area.
• To use highly specialist psychological knowledge and skills to contribute to the more effective management of service users by teams.
• To participate in clinical and caseload supervision arrangements provided by the Service.
• To maintain accurate records and to monitor clinical workload using agreed systems.
• To support the full implementation of Your Team, Your Conversation, Your Plan or equivalent including acting as keyworker as appropriate to the needs of the service.
• To enter data as requested by the Trust in a timely manner.
• Capacity and demand of direct clinical intervention of the Psychologist is expected to work flexibly depending on the need of MINT and access to additional psychological roles (such as CAPs, Assistant Psychologists, etc).
• To develop and facilitate a lead role across BNSSG for MINTs in one of the following areas: Interventions, Evaluation, Supervision, Training, Service User Involvement or External Networks.

Person specification

Education and Qualification

Essential criteria

• Doctoral Clinical/Counselling Psychology qualification or equivalent.
• Eligible for Chartered Psychologist status.
• HCPC Registered.
• Post qualification and further specialist training in specified specialist intervention.

Desirable criteria

• Supervision Training

Experience and Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Experience of working alongside multidisciplinary colleagues.
• Training others in MH services topics
• Clinical supervision/consultation with other professionals.
• Evidence based therapeutic interventions with client group.
• Advanced theoretical and practical knowledge in the specialism. Ability to use this knowledge to think systemically/ organizationally.
• Experience of risk assessment and management.

Desirable criteria

• Relevant R&D or clinical audit work post qualification.
• Clinical supervision of clinical/counselling psychology trainees and/ or assistant psychologists
• Understanding of Critical Community Psychology Framework
• Experience of delivering short term individual or group based interventions.

Skills and Abilities

Essential criteria

• Ability to work effectively and flexibly as an integral member of a team.
• Good communication and liaison skills.
• Ability to utilise reflective practice skills.
• Empathy/engagement skills with the client group.
• Ability to work independently.
• Self-awareness and emotional resilience.

We are proud to be fostering a diverse workforce that reflects our communities. A key commitment to this is improving staff representation from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, those from the LGBTQ+ communities, people with 'lived-experience' of mental health conditions and people living with disabilities,- we are a 'Disability Confident Employer' offering a guaranteed interview to Disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria. This includes people with a variety of disabilities and neurodivergent conditions (for example autism, ADHD, sensory, physical and learning disabilities).

We encourage applications from people who wish to work on a flexible basis, recognising that flexibility may mean a range of different working patterns and hours, we do our utmost to work with our staff to meet their needs and the needs of our service users.

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Please apply to join us, we would love to hear from you. Any personal details you supply to us are kept safe in line with the General Data Protection Regulations.

Adverts normally close for application a few minutes before midnight on the closing date and we will let you know if we are offering you an interview by email via our recruitment system 'TRAC'. We contact all applicants within 4 weeks after the closing date, so please check your emails regularly once you have submitted your application; you are welcome to contact us, via the TRAC system, if you have any queries about your application.

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Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Application numbers

This vacancy may close early if it receives a high number of applications. Please complete and submit your application in good time to avoid disappointment.
Documents to download

• Job description and person specification (PDF, 536.3KB)
• Key Local Information (PDF, 600.3KB)
• Inclusive Top 50 UK Employers List (PDF, 78.9KB)
• Financial Support & Discounts (PDF, 919.6KB)
• Value of the NHS Pension Scheme (PDF, 279.0KB)