Practitioner Psychologist

NHS; St Helens; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a dedicated Practitioner Psychologist to join their Mental Health Urgent Care team. This role offers a unique chance to influence psychological pathways and provide critical support within a multi-disciplinary environment. With a strong emphasis on continual professional development, you'll receive training in various psychological therapies and leadership skills. The organization values career progression and is committed to fostering a supportive atmosphere for both staff and service users. If you are passionate about making a difference in mental health care, this opportunity is for you!

Benefits

Flexible Working Options

Professional Development Training

Supportive Work Environment

Career Progression Opportunities

Qualifications

• Experience as a qualified clinical psychologist at a specialist level.
• Knowledge of legislation related to mental health and client groups.

Responsibilities

• Provide specialist psychological assessments and treatment plans.
• Monitor and evaluate progress of service users' treatment.

Skills

Effective Communication Skills

Clinical Supervision

Psychological Assessment

Teaching and Training

Crisis Intervention

Education

Doctoral Level Training in Clinical Psychology

Registration with Health and Care Professions Council

Post-doctoral Training in Specialized Areas

Job description

This is an exciting opportunity to work as a Band 7/8a (dependent on experience and subject to preceptorship) Practitioner Psychologist in Mental Health Urgent Care in Mersey Care. The service works in to the Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment teams, First Response Service (crisis line), Core 24 AED Liaison, and Liaison & Diversion services across the trust.

The multi-disciplinary leadership team in the service area is very keen to support a strong psychological provision and pathways. The successful candidate will support the delivery of these pathways, developing a positive psychology influence.

Continual professional development is central to the post. We'll provide you with a wide range of training to meet your individual and service needs. Over recent years, staff have been funded for training courses in: EMDR, ACT, DBT, MBT, CBT, CFT and full CAT training.

We're keen on career progression and will support your training in leadership and management if you wish. Our aim is to support, develop and retain you at Mersey Care for many years to come!

The team work from bases in Mersey Care and travel around the patch will be required. This post will have their main base in Peasley Cross (St Helens).

**We welcome applications from those already qualified and those due to qualify in 2025. We have an excellent preceptorship programme and are committed to staff development**

Main duties of the job

The post holder will apply and maintain those skills acquired through specialist training and experience to monitor and ensure the systematic provision of highly specialised psychological services, provide a service to clients referred to the team, across all sectors of care, within an equality and human rights framework care, and supervise and support the other clinical members of the team who provide psychologically based care and treatment. The post holder will exercise delegated management responsibilities where appropriate and work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematicgovernance of psychological practice within the team. The post holder will utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research and propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the team.

A work plan will be developed with the post holder which will be reviewed on a regular basis depending on the needs of the service. It will be anticipated that you may have a trainee from the Clinical Psychology courses (Liverpool, Lancashire and Manchester).

Psychological input is highly valued by staff within services, so you'll need experience of working with other services, championing psychological interventions and developing working partnerships.

About us

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.

We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.

At the heart of all we do is our commitment to 'perfect care' - care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We're currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

Job responsibilities

To provide specialist psychological assessments of service users referred to the team based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews withservice users, and others involved in the service users care.

To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a service users psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the service users problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.

To be responsible for implementing 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 evaluate, monitor progress and make highly skilled evaluations and decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, or group.

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

To provide specialist psychological advice guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to service users formulation, diagnosis and treatment plans.

To ensure that all members of the clinical team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of service users, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.

To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users and to provide both general and specialist advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.

To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, highly complex information concerning the assessment, formulation, and treatment plans of service users under their care where there may be conflicting views, high emotion and significant barriers to understanding and change, and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multidisciplinary care.

To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.

Please refer to attached Job Description for a full list of duties and responsibilities.

Person Specification

Knowledge/Experience

• Assessed experience of working as a qualified clinical psychologist at a specialist level for a significant period.
• Significant experience of representing psychology within the context of multidisciplinary care.
• Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment within the context of a multi-disciplinary care plan.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision.
• methods of psychological assessment, formulation, intervention and management, frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical psychology.
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS Formal training in supervision of other psychologists.
• Knowledge of IT systems including word processing, email and local electronic patient information systems
• Experience of assessing and treating clients across the full range of care settings.
• Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Experience of working in the designated service area.
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g., psychosis, personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc.)
• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.

Values

• Accountability
• Responsive to service users
• Engaging leadership style
• Transparency and honesty
• Discreet
• Change Oriented

Skills

• Well developed and effective communication skills 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.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
• Ability to self reflect, use clinical supervision appropriately and consider complex organisational and team dynamics.
• Ability to identify provide and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and severely challenging behaviours.
• Ability to identify, and employ, as appropriate, clinical governance mechanisms for the support and maintenance of clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials for presentations in public, professional and academic settings

Qualifications

• Doctoral level training in clinical psychology accredited by the BPS or its approved equivalent
• Registration with Health and Care Professions Council as Practitioner Psychologist
• Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice

Other

• Reasonable adjustments will be made for those with sensory impairment

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.