HCPC registered Highly Specialist Clinical or Counselling Psychologist

East London NHS Foundation Trust; London; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player in mental health care is seeking a dedicated Clinical or Counselling Psychologist to join their dynamic team. This role offers the opportunity to provide essential psychological services, including individual and group therapy, to vulnerable populations facing complex emotional needs. You will work collaboratively with diverse teams, ensuring high-quality care and contributing to service development initiatives. If you are passionate about making a positive impact on people's lives and have a strong background in psychodynamic therapy, this position is perfect for you. Join a forward-thinking organization that values inclusivity and excellence in mental health care.

Qualifications

• HCPC registered Clinical or Counselling Psychologist with psychodynamic experience.
• Significant experience in NHS secondary care with severe psychological problems.

Responsibilities

• Deliver individual and group therapy for severe psychological difficulties.
• Supervise psychological therapists and provide consultation and training.

Skills

Psychodynamic Therapy

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Clinical Supervision

Group Therapy

Risk Assessment

Multidisciplinary Collaboration

Cultural Competence

Education

Postgraduate Doctorate in Clinical Psychology

Postgraduate Doctorate in Counselling Psychology

Job description

ELFT has long been recognised as a centre of excellence for mental and health care, innovation and improvement. So it is a very exciting time for you to come and work for us. Our mission is to make a positive difference to people's lives by improving quality of life for all we serve. Our values are: We Care, We Respect, We are Inclusive - so we are looking for people who live and breathe these qualities when supporting service users and carers, and in their relationships with colleagues in the Trust and our partner organisations.

Job overview

The Newham Community Integrated Psychological Services comprises a range of psychological services including modality teams in a vibrant psychotherapies service. This post is split across the Integrative and Psychodynamic Teams, which offer a range of individual and group interventions. The successful candidate will also work closely with colleagues from other teams in the service, including the arts therapies, cognitive-behavioural and systemic psychotherapies teams.

The post holder will be an HCPC registered Clinical or Counselling Psychologist with experience of working psychodynamically. They will be responsible for the provision of psychological input to service users in secondary mental health services and the community, particularly those vulnerable to poor health outcomes through poverty and social inequalities, disabilities and physical health conditions. They will supervise other psychological therapists and trainees.

They will be responsible for offering assessments and delivering individual and group therapy to service users with severe and enduring difficulties, in particular Complex Emotional Needs and Complex Trauma. They will be flexible to see service users from a range of potential locations, including 409 High Street as well as community settings. They will provide reflective practice and highly specialist consultation to teams and contribute to service development initiatives and broader level programs and interventions promoting population health.

Main duties of the job

To hold a caseload of both individual and group work, to deliver both Integrative psychotherapy and Psychodynamic psychotherapy or other psychodynamically-informed interventions (eg. MBT, DIT etc.). To provide supervision where appropriate to other psychological therapists and therapists in training. To deliver consultation and training and to liaise, where necessary, with the wider network of care across the borough in both primary and secondary care. To conduct assessments for a wide range of therapies in the service, including systemic, CBT, Psychodynamic, Integrative and Arts therapies. To attend meetings in the service and interface with systems and teams across the borough. To maintain high standards of record keeping and governance. To work effectively with diversity and intersectionality. To engage and work effectively with service users presenting with severe and enduring psychological difficulties, including complex emotional needs, complex trauma and/or psychosis. To manage risk and complexity and to communicate effectively with colleagues and other agencies.

Working for our organisation

Our mission is to make a positive difference to people's lives by improving the quality of life for all we serve. Our values are: We Care, We Respect, We are Inclusive - so we are looking for people who live and breathe these qualities when supporting service users and carers, and in their relationships with colleagues in the Trust and our partner organisations.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Main Duties and Responsibilities

Patient Care

1. Provide expertise and psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other multidisciplinary professionals in the NHS, interagency and service user networks contributing directly to service users' formulation, diagnosis and service planning. Ensure that multidisciplinary and community colleagues have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding the care of service users including the Recovery Approach.
2. Take delegated responsibility for developing working relationships with relevant statutory, voluntary and community groups and organisations to enhance care provision. Provide expert consultation about the psychological care of the service user group to external staff and organisations.

Clinical

1. To assess Service Users, prepare a psychotherapy care plan and deliver specialist therapy to individuals and to groups of service users.
2. To support other clinicians in the delivery of individual and group psychotherapy.
3. To hold your own caseload and respond to Service User crises as appropriate.
4. To undertake developed risk assessment and management for individual patients and/ or groups as appropriate; to provide highly specialist advice on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management holding in mind the relevant legal frameworks.
5. To provide developed co-produced highly specialist psychological assessments, based on the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources (including psychological tests, measures/rating scales including Recovery Measures and Quality of Life measures, direct and indirect observation and semi-structured interviews with clients, family members and involved others.)
6. To formulate developed plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of mental health problems across a range of care settings, at population, systemic and individual levels, based upon a theoretical knowledge base to analyse, interpret and compare complex information in order to design specialist programmes of treatment for individuals, groups, families, care systems and populations tailored to individual need.
7. Be responsible for providing and receiving highly complex, sensitive, distressing and emotional information in relation to health issues where there are often barriers to acceptance.
8. To spend sustained amounts of time with service users who may be aggressive and hostile, who may have poor communication skills and self-care and special physical and/or mental needs.
9. To Be mindful of the needs of individuals and families from a wide range of racial, cultural, sexual, religious and social backgrounds and, with service users and colleagues, co-produce innovative ways of communicating and working across language and cultural barriers.
10. To communicate across language and cultural barriers, including working for sustained periods of time by communicating with service users, carers or groups through professional interpreters or advocates.

Administration

1. Be responsible for recording, monitoring and reporting on clinical work and communicating complex clinical information to a variety of recipients, e.g. service users, families and carers, other professionals, formal panels and statutory and voluntary organisations, orally, in writing making use of Trust provided Electronic Health Record and data analytics systems.
2. Make full use of available teleconferencing, video calling and electronic diary scheduling facilities.
3. Use information technology in line with Trust and NHS information governance requirements, and maintain up to date knowledge of systems and governance requirements.
4. Collate and report on information across service area using Trust Information systems to a high standard.

Management

1. Exercise delegated line management and clinical supervision responsibility for other psychologists, psychological therapists, trainees and assistants in the service as agreed with team manager.
2. Be responsible for using a theoretical knowledge base and specialist clinical skills to ensure the maintenance and development of the psychological skills of others (assistant, trainee and other psychologists, members of other staff groups) via the development and delivery of teaching, training, supervision, support and consultation across the care system.
3. Comply with governance systems in place for the provision and monitoring of clinical and professional supervision of qualified and unqualified psychological practitioners across the directorate.
4. Ensure practice within relevant guidelines for professional practice (e.g. BPS/HCPC/BABCP etc).
5. Provide highly skilled consultation, teaching, training and (where agreed) clinical supervision to other multidisciplinary professionals across the care system for their provision of psychologically-based interventions for service users.
6. Maintain up to date knowledge of relevant legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to the provision of services.
7. Attend regular psychology meetings to develop and maintain high standards of professional knowledge and practice in services.

Human Resources

1. Participate in appraisal and development planning, identifying and agreeing training needs.
2. Ensure the personal maintenance and development of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes.
3. Support HR investigations held under the Complaints, Disciplinary, Competency policies.

Performance and Quality

1. Support systems for evaluation, monitoring and development of the directorate's psychological therapies services to ensure services are delivered in line with Trust policies, national guidance and evidence based practice.
2. Use skills in undertaking research, audit and evaluation analyse and interpret complex data, identifying trends and opportunities for improvement.
3. Participate as a senior clinician in service development and quality improvement initiatives within the directorate, in line with directorate priorities and in response to identified local need.
4. Develop and implement service related Quality Improvement and/or academic research or service evaluation projects, and advise/support other staff undertaking research and evaluation activities. Ensure that relevant clinical research, service evaluation and audit are undertaken in accordance with national and local NHS and professional requirements.

Financial and Physical Resources

1. Contribute to the responsible management of equipment and resources required for the ongoing provision of a high standard of psychological service to the directorate.

Person specification

Education/ Qualification/ Training

Essential criteria

1. Clinical /Counselling Psychologist: Postgraduate Doctorate in Clinical Psychology or (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS. OR Postgraduate Doctorate in Counselling Psychology.
2. Registered with the HCPC as a Practitioner Psychologist.

Desirable criteria

1. Formal qualification in another model of psychotherapy, preferably psychodynamically informed (eg Psychodynamic, DIT, CAT, MBT, Schema)
2. Formal basic training in teaching, lecturing or clinical supervision.

Experience

Essential criteria

1. Significant experience working with a wide range of severe and enduring psychological problems within therapy in NHS secondary care.
2. Experience of working psychodynamically/psychoanalytically.
3. Experience working within a diverse cultural setting and engaging patients with different language and cultural needs including working with interpreters.
4. Experience of combining or integrating more than one therapeutic model in treatment.
5. Experience of delivering longer term (over 20 sessions) interventions in a secondary care psychological therapies service.
6. Experience of providing clinical supervision.
7. Experience providing group treatments.

Knowledge and Skills

Essential criteria

1. Knowledge of generic and specialist psychological assessments and range of therapeutic interventions required for people with mental health problems.
2. Knowledge pertinent to effective risk assessment and management.
3. Skills in working in multidisciplinary settings and working knowledge of the practices and approaches of other key disciplines, professions and agencies involved in the care and management network, including medical, employment, social, educational and criminal justice systems.
4. Knowledge of adapting standard models using individualised formulations.

Desirable criteria

1. Advanced knowledge of more than one area of clinical practice, e.g. work with complex and persistent anxiety or depression, psychosis or personality disorder, substance misuse.

Other

Essential criteria

1. Excellent verbal and written communication skills relevant to a wide range of audiences.
2. Ability to contain and work with organisational stress and able to contain the stress of others.
3. Being able to independently move between sites in the borough, as necessary for patient care.

Desirable criteria

1. Speaking a local community language.

Making Things Better

Quality Improvement is a key part of our work to improve our services and refine how we do things. We have a global reputation for our quality improvement work and we don't stand still! So we offer a fantastic opportunity for our staff to learn, lead and contribute towards improving our services.

We launched our Five Year Strategy in April 2018, which identified four main strategic outcomes to improve: population health outcomes, experience of care, staff experience and improve value. This complements the NHS Long Term Strategy and sets out our direction of travel.

Our Community

We provide a wide range of community health and mental health inpatient services to children, young people, adults of working age, and older adults in The City of London, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Bedfordshire and Luton. We also provide psychological therapy services to the London Borough of Richmond, and provide Forensic services to the whole of North East London. We provide services in urban and rural settings, sometimes in our inpatient units, but mostly in the community close to where people live. Integrated care is key in making the best use of resources and providing effective care.

Aiming High

We were rated 'Outstanding' by the CQC in 2016, were proud to be rated 'Outstanding' again in 2018 and continue to be rated 'Outstanding' in 2021. We were named in the HSJ's Top 10 best places to work in healthcare and were voted Provider Trust of the Year in 2018.

Staff and Service Users United

We strive to ensure that staff feel valued by the Trust and as they are truly pivotal in delivering better outcomes for our patients and service users. Our aspiration is to help to make ELFT the best place to work. This Trust is clinician-led and provides the highest possible level of clinical expertise throughout its services. We pride ourselves on our service user involvement. A service user will be on your assessment centre and interview panel if you are invited to meet us.

We especially welcome people with lived experience of health difficulties, with insight and understanding of different backgrounds, cultures and lifestyles in our population as we believe that this will equip staff to deliver a high standard of care to our service users and patients.

Diversity

ELFT Is committed to being a diverse organisation and our workforce is reflective of the population and communities we serve. We believe that having colleagues with a range of backgrounds and life experiences enriches and adds value to the outcomes we have set out to achieve. Having partnered and endorsed by organisations who are representative and experts in various areas of equality and diversity, we can ensure we are meeting the pre-set standards all the way from recruitment stage throughout the career journey of our employees by being accessible, having fair inclusive practices and a host of staff networks to support, nurture and celebrate our valued staff in the workplace.

Other reasons to apply

As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that's job share, part time or another flexible pattern.

As part of the relocation scheme we presently have, the Trust could support you with offering up to £10,000 for removal and associated expenses. This is subject to change and terms and conditions apply.

What Next?

If you like the sound of ELFT, don't waste a moment. We sometimes close adverts early if there is a high response, so apply now!

As part of our recruitment process we may be required to share information you provide on the application form with NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA) and/or other organisations for the purpose of the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of fraud or any other unlawful activity affecting the NHS. We also use third party providers to check and verify your qualifications who may be contacting you on our behalf to verify the same.

If you do not hear from us within four weeks of the closing date, please consider that you have not been shortlisted on this occasion. You must provide professional email addresses for all referees as we will contact them as soon as an offer has been made. Please note we do not request references prior to interviews. All applications made through NHS Jobs account will be processed by TRAC System. Please note that some emails may go to your spam/junk mailbox so make sure you check this regularly.

Find us online at www.elft.nhs.uk | Find us on Facebook | Follow us on @NHS_ELFT

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.

Documents to download

• Job description (PDF, 288.6KB)
• Person specification (PDF, 120.7KB)
• ELFT at a glance (PDF, 151.0KB)
• Staff Benefits (PDF, 7.1MB)
• ELFT Strategy (PDF, 153.5KB)
• Trust Demographic Information (PDF, 1.5MB)