Practitioner Psychologist (Clinical/Forensic)

Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust; Colchester; On-site; GBP 36,000 - 47,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading mental health institution in England is looking for an HCPC registered Clinical or Forensic Psychologist to join their Essex Community Offending Behaviour Service. Responsibilities include providing specialist assessments and intervention, clinical supervision, and supporting service development. Ideal candidates will possess a Doctoral level qualification and experience in psychological assessment and multi-disciplinary teamwork. The role involves regular travel and the opportunity to be part of a compassionate team dedicated to delivering high-quality care.

Qualifications

• Registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).
• Experience in specialist psychological assessment and treatment.
• Experience working with various client groups across the lifespan.

Responsibilities

• Conduct specialist psychological assessments including risk assessments.
• Provide specialist psychological advice and consultation.
• Supervise Assistant Psychologists in the service.

Skills

Psychological assessment

Clinical supervision

Multidisciplinary teamwork

Risk assessment

Communication skills

Education

Doctoral level training in forensic/clinical psychology

Job description

We are looking to appoint an HCPC registered Clinical or Forensic Psychologist to join the Essex Community Offending behaviour Service (ECOS). We are a welcoming multi‑disciplinary team, providing a service of excellence for service users across Essex. This post brings a diversity of opportunity, from providing specialist assessments and intervention, to supervising and supporting other members of the team. We recognise the key role that consultation can play in developing our services and being a central part of our psychology offer. The ideal candidate for us will be someone who shares our values about offering compassionate and trauma‑informed services. The ethos of the team is one of continuous quality improvement and providing positive experiences in the process of service users being discharged from inpatient settings. We are passionate about co‑producing the content of our service offer, and we are looking for candidates who share a passion for service development and innovation. We hope that candidates will bring skills and knowledge to support audit, research, and project development within the service. The key duties of the job will involve completion of specialist psychological assessment and risk assessment, and treatment of service users referred to the service. The postholder also will be responsible for providing highly specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to a service user’s formulation, treatment and risk management plans. The key duties will also involve providing clinical supervision to Assistant Psychologists working in the service. Other important duties will involve supporting psychological aspects of service development, evaluation, research and teaching and maintaining standards in supervision and CPD. Please note that regular travel will be required as part of this role.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience: Doctoral level training as a practitioner psychologist including specific models of psychopathology, psychometrics and neuropsychology, with two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan development psychology, as accredited by the BPS. Experience of specialist psychological assessment (including risk assessment) and treatment of clients. Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups across the whole life course and presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity and maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse. Formal training in the supervision of other psychologists. Ability to teach and train others using a variety of complex multi‑media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings. Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.

Clinical: To provide highly specialist psychological assessments (including risk assessments) of clients identified within the designated 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 with clients and others involved in the client’s care. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s difficulties and risk 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. To be responsible for implementing a range of highly specialist psychological interventions for individuals, 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 taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual. To provide highly specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to a client’s formulation, diagnosis and case management plan. To provide a key role directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients within the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group. To undertake complex 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 use well‑developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively orally and in writing, complex highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients and other professional colleagues.

Teaching, training, and supervision: To receive regular clinical and professional supervision from a senior psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues. To develop skills in the area of professional post‑graduate teaching, training and supervision and to provide supervision for other professional staff’s psychological work as appropriate, including psychological reflective practice. To provide professional and clinical supervision to assistant psychologists within the service. To provide clinical placements for trainee clinical psychologists ensuring that trainees develop the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good mental health care and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies. To continue to develop skills in the area of clinical supervision. To contribute to the pre and post qualification teaching of professional psychology. To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate. Contribute through consultation and training to the understanding of team dynamics and the impact of working with personality disorder in ways which strengthen the working of the team in the interests of risk management.

Management, recruitment, policy and service development: To support psychological aspects of service development in the service area of primary responsibility. To support 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 relevant health services and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing. To manage where required the workloads of assistants, and practitioner psychologists in training within the framework of the team/service’s policies and procedures. To be involved, as appropriate, in the short‑listing and interviewing of assistant/graduate psychologists. To be an active participant in all multi‑disciplinary forums related to the delivery of services e.g. clinical reviews, referral meetings etc.

Information resources: To be responsible for personal record keeping, processing and storage of data and taking and transcribing minutes where appropriate. To ensure that all databases related to their service area are maintained satisfactorily.

Research and service evaluation: Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex multivariate data analysis as practiced within the field of professional psychology. To utilise theory, evidence‑based literature and research to support evidence‑based practice in individual work, work within the team and relevant service areas. To contribute when required in appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research. To undertake when required project management with support from senior colleagues, including supporting complex audit and service evaluation to help develop service provision.

General: To contribute to the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the post holder’s professional and service managers. To contribute to the development and articulation of best practice in psychology across the service by continuing to develop the skills of a reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the field of clinical psychology and related disciplines. To maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry and recording, report writing and the responsible exercise of professional self‑governance in accordance with professional codes of practice and Trust policies and procedures. To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to both the specific client group and mental health.

• Doctoral level qualification in forensic/clinical psychology or equivalent.
• Registered as either a forensic/clinical/counselling psychologist with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).

Desirable criteria

• Additional post‑graduate training or qualification in a specific psychological therapy or Neuropsychology, Experience of specialist assessment and therapy with service users across a range of care settings.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of service user groups with presenting problems that reflect a range of clinical severity, including 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 working in a multidisciplinary team.

Desirable criteria

• Experience of working with older people in a clinical role.
• Direct experience of using therapy with older people
• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
• Experience of the application of psychological services in different cultural contexts.
• Skills in the use of complex assessment, therapy or intervention.
• Well‑developed skills in communicating effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to service users, their families, carers and other professional colleagues, both within and outside the NHS.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non‑professional groups.
• Knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychological services.

Desirable criteria

• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.

Candidates who require a Skilled Worker visa to work in the United Kingdom can determine the likelihood of obtaining a Certificate of Sponsorship for this position by assessing their circumstances against the criteria specified on the Check if you need a UK visa – GOV.UK website. We would encourage all applicants to review the criteria carefully to understand their eligibility for sponsorship.

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) is an outstanding organisation with ambitions to match. We are one of just five mental health trusts to achieve an overall rating of ‘Outstanding’ from the Care Quality Commission, and our aim is to be the leading provider of mental health and specialist learning disability services in the country. We also deliver a range of nationally commissioned specialist services including Tier 4 services for children and young people, perinatal services, plus medium and low secure learning disabilities services. The care we provide makes a fantastic difference to the lives of our service users, their families and carers – everything is underpinned by choice, independence and equality, with our Trust values embedded throughout. Our Trust values are: Welcoming. Kind. Positive. Respectful. Professional. These values are at the core of who we are, everything we do, and how we do it!