Highly Specialist Psychologist/Psychological Therapist

NHS; City Of London; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 55,000; Full time

Job summary

A prominent healthcare provider is seeking a Highly Specialist Psychologist/Psychological Therapist based at HMP Wandsworth. This role involves providing psychological assessments and therapy while working with multi-disciplinary teams. Ideal candidates will have a Doctorate in Psychology and experience with complex trauma. Opportunities for professional development and specialized training in trauma are included. The role is pivotal in fostering psychologically informed care within the prison environment.

Benefits

Monthly teaching sessions

Peer supervision

CPD opportunities

Qualifications

• Entry-level qualification in applied psychological therapy or mental health.
• Completion of supervised experience in psychological assessment.
• Experience in maintaining professionalism under distressing conditions.

Responsibilities

• Conduct psychometric and neuropsychological testing.
• Provide specialist psychological therapy assessments and interventions.
• Produce client reports conveying key findings.

Skills

Effective communication

Psychological assessments

Risk assessment

Therapeutic relationships

Education

Professional Doctorate in Psychology

Additional training in clinical psychological practice

Job description

Highly Specialist Psychologist/Psychological Therapist

The post is based at HMP Wandsworth where you will work with a team of psychological therapists and multi-professional mental health colleagues to embed psychologically informed care in the prison.

Main duties of the job

You will work to the Trust's vision and values, and focus on enabling all staff, service users and carers from diverse backgrounds to flourish by working to create a psychologically safe environment. You will promote an environment in which therapeutic relationships facilitate safety and change, by offering psychological perspectives and emotional support to officers and nursing teams and by promoting psychological thinking in operational teams. You should have interests in working with complex trauma where there is associated risk, including providing direct psychological assessments and interventions and working in multi-disciplinary and multi-agency contexts mental health disciplines and with other agencies.

Aside from the stimulating clinical work, benefits of the post include monthly teaching sessions within the psychology department, monthly peer supervision in addition to regular individual supervision, a range of interesting CPD opportunities and opportunities for future career progression within the department. The successful applicant will have access to specialist trauma training, including EMDR.

About us

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children's centres, schools and people's homes.We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.

Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:

• We're Kind
• We Listen
• We Care

Job responsibilities

To undertake psychometric and neuropsychological testing as appropriate, including selecting the appropriate tests, administering and scoring the tests in accordance with the manual, and interpreting the findings in the context of all relevant information.

To provide highly specialist psychological therapy assessments, formulations and interventions.

To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans, including taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans with input from clients, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.

To communicate, in a highly skilled and sensitive manner, to clients and others as appropriate, information that may be contentious or highly distressing concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care.

To produce reports on clients, in a timely manner, that convey the key findings of psychological assessment and formulation and treatment outcome in a way that does justice to the complexity of the problems described, but that are understandable to the recipients of the reports, including clients and referrers.

To undertake risk assessment, risk monitoring and risk management for individual clients in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures, and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.

To work in partnership with other disciplines and to maintain links with statutory and non-statutory agencies as appropriate.

To ensure that all services provided are acceptable and accessible to the diverse communities served.

Implement outcome measurement as determined by the local service.

Attend and contribute to psychological therapies and directorate meetings and forums

IMPORTANT INFORMATION, PLEASE READ:

All applicants must be willing to undertake National Security Vetting in order to work in a Prison Setting. This will be completed as part of the pre-employment checks through Oxleas and the prison vetting team.

You will need to provide:

Proof of right to work documentation

Proof of ID, needs to include 1 photographic ID

Proof of address documentation

Non-UK passport holders will need to have correct documentation (right to work in the UK) and a Home office Share code.

Address History:

5 years address history will be needed.

Applicants that are not UK Passport holders who provide less than 5 years UK address history will need to provide a Police Certificate which must be in English from where they resided previously.

Applicants who are UK Passport holders who have lived abroad for a period of more than six months during the last three years will need to provide a certificate of good conduct or an overseas police check in English from the countries resided in or visited.

In order to assist you in obtaining a Police Certificate, guidance can be soughtfrom:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/criminal-records-checks-for-overseas-applicants

If the country you have resided in is not listed here, you can obtain the necessary information by contacting the relevant Embassy or High Commission for that Country. Their contact details can be found on the Foreign & Commonwealth Office website (http://www.fco.gov.uk/en).

Person Specification

Education/Qualifications

• Entry-level qualification in applied psychological therapy/mental health/social welfare profession or equivalent and demonstrable practice in this field (ie professional Doctorate, or combination of MSc plus PG Diploma level/supervised practice/additional training) that has been accepted for the purposes of professional registration
• Additional training beyond entry-level qualification in a specialised area of psychological practice (through formal post-qualification training (PG Diploma or equivalent), OR a combination of specialist short courses and/an evidenced portfolio of supervised practice-based learning in a specialist area of clinical psychological therapy practice, assessed by a registered body and/or an experienced clinical supervisor to be of equal level to a Postgraduate Diploma or higher.
• Registered with professional body or regulatory body as appropriate to psychological therapy discipline ie HCPC/UKCP/BACP/BABCP.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as required by the professional body.

Education

• Completion of a minimum of two years full-time (or equivalent part-time) post-doctoral / post qualification supervised experience
• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients with the full range of clinical severity under supervision
• Experience of 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 providing supervision to pre-qualified psychological therapies staff or students, or other professionals

Skills/Abilities/Knowledge

• Understanding psychological formulation for complex high risk service users.
• Well developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Knowledge of the principles and practice of clinical governance, clinical audit and risk management
• Ability to manage unpredictable workloads and frequent demands on concentration and attention
• Ability to manage within available, and sometimes limited, resources

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.