Clinical or Forensic Psychologist - Youth Justice Service

NHS; Taunton; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 55,000; Full time

Job summary

Join the Somerset Youth Justice Service as a Clinical or Forensic Psychologist, providing essential psychological support to young offenders. Collaborate with a multidisciplinary team to promote wellbeing and implement trauma-informed practices. Enjoy flexible working, generous leave, and opportunities for career development in a supportive environment.

Benefits

Flexible working options

NHS pension scheme

Generous annual leave allowance

Career development focus

Blue Light Card discounts

Qualifications

• Experience working with children and young people in various care settings.
• Evidence of continuing professional development.
• Current registration with the HCPC.

Responsibilities

• Provide psychological assessments and interventions for youth offenders.
• Work autonomously within professional guidelines.
• Evaluate treatment options considering complex factors.

Skills

Clinical Psychology

Forensic Psychology

Trauma-informed Practices

Research Skills

Education

Post-graduate doctoral level training in Clinical or Forensic Psychology

Job description

Clinical or Forensic Psychologist - Youth Justice Service

We have an exciting opportunity to join our Somerset Youth Justice Service as a Clinical or Forensic Psychologist.

Somerset Youth Justice Service (YJS) aims to reduce youth offending through early intervention and providing holistic, multi-agency support. Most of the work of the team is with children and young people aged 10 to 18 who have been arrested by the police for a crime. Psychologists play a key part in offering professional consultation, embedding trauma-informed practices, and working with Youth Justice and partner agencies to formulate complex presentations and underlying needs.

The team includes social workers, police, a probation officer, restorative justice workers, an education worker and volunteers. We work in a child centred approach, recognising young people as children first and offenders second. You will also work very closely with Forensic CAMHS and the wider Psychology CAMHS networks for peer support, supervision and service development needs.

We are committed to working with all children, young people, their parents and carers and victims without discrimination through race, gender, sexual orientation or disability.

We want to help support each child and young person living in Somerset to have the best possible chance of achieving their potential. What we know is that our children and young people are some of the most socially and educationally vulnerable in the county.

Somerset YJS is a high performing service with a low custody level.

Main duties of the job

To provide a qualified clinical or forensic psychology service to the Youth Justice Service (YJS). This will involve:

Working with children and young people (and their families) who come to the attention of the YJS and are subject to court or out of court disposals, or preventative / diversionary programmes;

Working to embed trauma-informed ways of working and promote psychological formulation to support the wellbeing needs of young people accessing Youth Justice and those who support them;

Providing specialist assessment, formulation and direct therapeutic intervention;

Offering advice and consultation on the children and young people's psychological care to multi-disciplinary colleagues;

Working autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the team's policies and procedures;

Using research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the area served by the YJS.

About us

At Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, we're committed to supporting our employees with a range of benefits designed to enhance your professional and personal life. We offer:

• Flexible working options to help you balance work and life
• NHS pension scheme for long-term financial security
• Generous annual leave allowance to recharge and relax
• A strong focus on career development to help you grow and achieve your potential

Additionally, you'll gain access to our Blue Light Card, unlocking exclusive discounts on shopping, dining, and leisure activities, as well as NHS-specific perks to support you both inside and outside of work.

We are proud to foster a diverse, skilled, and inclusive workforce, and we encourage applications from all backgrounds.

Why Somerset? Somerset offers the perfect blend of idyllic countryside, outstanding areas of natural beauty, and breathtaking coastlines, with vibrant cities like Bristol, Bath, and Exeter just a short drive away - and only two hours to London.

The region is home to excellent educational facilities, and with affordable housing compared to other parts of the country, it's a great place to build both your career and your future.

Somerset truly has it all - the peaceful countryside and cosmopolitan city life, with something for everyone to enjoy.

Job responsibilities

Clinical responsibilities

To provide specialist psychological assessments of children, young people and their families referred to the Youth Justice CAMHS Psychology Service. This will involve the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological tests (and neuropsychological tests, if appropriately trained), self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with children, young people, family members and others involved in the client's care.

To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a child or young person's mental health or forensic problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client's problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings including custodial placements.

To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individual children and young people, 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.

To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options considering both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.

To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment, and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.

To provide specialist psychological advice guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to the formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan for children and young people.

To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all client children and young people of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.

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

To be an active core panel member of YJS led Multi-Agency Panels, including other risk panels.

To offer psychological support to staff when a distressing or traumatic event has occurred at work.

To act as a keyworker, where appropriate, taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans including client children and young people, their carers, referring agents and others involved the network of care.

Management, Recruitment, Policy and Service Development

To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the team's operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.

To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.

To manage the workloads of assistant and graduate psychologists, within the framework of the YJS and CAMHS policies and procedures.

To be involved, as appropriate, in the shortlisting and interviewing of assistant / graduate psychologists.

Research and Service Evaluation

To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other team members.

To undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research.

To undertake project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within the service to help develop service provision.

Teaching, Training, and Supervision

To receive regular clinical/forensic professional supervision from a more senior psychologist and, where appropriate, from other senior professional colleagues.

To develop skills in professional post-graduate teaching, training and supervision and to provide supervision to other MDT staff's psychological work as appropriate.

To provide, professional and clinical forensic supervision of trainee and assistant clinical/forensic psychologists.

To contribute to the pre- and post-qualification forensic teaching of clinical, forensic and/or counselling psychology, as appropriate.

To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• Post-graduate doctoral level training in Clinical or Forensic 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.
• Current registration with the HCPC under the appropriate domain specific title.
• Evidence of regular post- qualification development.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS/HCPC.
• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.
• Formal training in supervision of other psychologists.

Experience

• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, particularly children and young people, across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care, in-patient and residential care settings.
• Experience of delivering NICE adherent interventions for psychological problems.
• Experience of maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems and verbal and physical abuse.
• Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
• Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Post qualification experience of working with BME children, young people and their families.
• Experience of working within a multicultural framework.

Additional Criteria

• To have a full driving licence and vehicle to be willing to drive to localities appropriate for work purposes.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical or forensic fields of psychology.
• Knowledge of the Criminal Justice System and of legislation in relation to the health, education and welfare services to children and young people with mental health needs.
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific groups (e.g. children and young people with complex needs, sexual and violent conduct, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc).
• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies (e.g. CBT, DBT, systemic, TF-CBT, EMDR, CAT).
• Knowledge and experience of using structured professional judgement risk assessment tools (e.g. AIM, SAVRY or HCR-20).
• Knowledge of the academic literature concerning forensic presentations in children and adolescents.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.