Principal Clinical Psychologist and Mentalization-Based Treatment Lead

www.healthjobsuk.com - jobboard; Dunstable; Hybrid; Full time

Job summary

A community health organization in Dunstable seeks a Principal Clinical Psychologist and Mentalization-Based Treatment Lead. You will be responsible for leading the MBT program for clients with complex emotional needs and providing supervision to a multidisciplinary team. The role requires a doctorate in Clinical Psychology and substantial experience with personality disorders. Flexible working arrangements are available, along with a supportive environment focused on quality improvement and staff development.

Benefits

Flexible working arrangements

Up to £10,000 relocation assistance

Professional development opportunities

Qualifications

• Doctorate in Clinical Psychology or equivalent training required.
• Experience as a qualified Practitioner Psychologist with complex emotional needs.
• Strong leadership and change management skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development and delivery of Mentalization-Based Treatment.
• Provide consultation and supervision to mental health professionals.
• Conduct assessments and deliver interventions for complex emotional needs.

Skills

Leadership skills

Trauma-informed assessments

Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT)

Clinical supervision

Communication skills

Education

Doctorate in Clinical Psychology

HCPC registration as a Practitioner Psychologist

Job description

Principal Clinical Psychologist and Mentalization-Based Treatment Lead

NHS AfC: Band 8b

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

An opportunity has arisen within East London Foundation Trust’s (ELFT) Bedfordshire and Luton Complex Needs Service for a Principal Clinical Psychologist with specialist skills in the ongoing development, delivery and supervision of Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) for people with complex emotional needs (diagnosable as ’personality disorder’). The successful applicant will lead the MBT group-based programme which sits alongside the DBT programme, and will report to the Clinical Lead for Complex Needs Service. They will be committed to co-producing and monitoring the quality of service developments, growing the lived experience workforce, and providing advice, consultation and supervision to core mental health teams. An important part of this role will involve developing the knowledge and skills of professionals and colleagues within ELFT, partnership agencies, voluntary community groups and social enterprises, embedding trauma-informed and psychosocial approaches in service delivery with the aim of promoting the recovery and social inclusion of service users with complex emotional needs, including those transitioning from acute inpatient care and specialist out of area placements back to local community settings.

Main duties of the job

The successful applicant will work as part of a specialist and multi-disciplinary Complex Needs Service that includes a Medical Psychotherapist, Clinical Psychologists, Psychological Therapists (with core social work and occupational therapy professional registrations), a Lived Experience KUF Development Lead, Assistant Psychologists, and Peer Support Workers. The team is based at Mountbatten House, Dunstable and operates as a hub, in-reaching to community mental health services in Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Luton to provide specialist advice, training, consultation and supervision to other professionals and colleagues. The team also offers assessments and evidence-based interventions (MBT and DBT) to a small caseload of service users who have the most complex emotional needs and engage in severe self-harming and suicidal behaviour.

The post holder will be based with the team at Mountbatten house, Dunstable and will be required to offer consultation, supervision, assessment and intervention. This will require travel to CMHT bases, inpatient units and other sites across Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Luton, as well as occasional travel to East London.

The post is being offered on a full-time or part-time basis, with a minimum of 22.5 hours a week (0.6 wte). The days and hours will be negotiated by the Clinical Lead and the successful candidate.

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

The full Job Description and Person Specification for this post can be found in the attached documentation.

The post holder will work across Bedfordshire and Luton to develop and provide direct and indirect highly specialist clinical psychology and psychotherapeutic services for adults with complex emotional needs (associated with a diagnosis of ‘personality disorder’) and their families and carers. Please refer to job descriptions for more details.

Person specification

Education/ Qualification/ Training

• Doctorate in Clinical Psychology or equivalent training as an applied practitioner
• HCPC registration as a Practitioner Psychologist
• MBT Practitioner training accredited by the Anna Freud Centre, and willingness and capacity to train as a MBT Supervisor
• Training in clinical supervision for doctoral clinical psychology trainees
• Post-doctoral training in one or more relevant specialist areas of psychological practice.
• Leadership Training
• Quality Improvement Training

Experience

• Substantial experience of working as a qualified Practitioner Psychologist with people with complex emotional needs associated with a diagnosis of personality disorder in a range of settings.
• Substantial experience of conducting trauma-informed assessments, risk assessments and collaborative safety planning in a community mental health care setting.
• Substantial experience of assessment, formulation and treatment of people with complex emotional needs/’personality disorder’.
• Experience in delivering MBT to people with complex emotional needs, diagnosable as ‘personality disorder’, who present with severe and repeated suicidal and self-harming behaviour.
• Substantial experience of working with those who support people with complex emotional needs (staff, carers, friends and family).
• Experience of liaison and joint work with other statutory and voluntary agencies, including crisis management.
• Experience of working with mental health teams and team leads in a range of settings to provide highly specialist psychological consultation, advice, and support.
• Experience of working with service users, carers, teams and organisations to identify training needs and co-produce and deliver training.
• Experience of completing audits and/or service evaluations to inform service improvements.
• Experience of supervising professional and clinical practice of qualified and unqualified staff.
• Experience of supervising the delivery of interventions for people with complex emotional needs associated with personality disorder across a range of settings.
• Experience or recruiting and managing staff.
• Experience of developing and delivering specialist training programmes.

Knowledge and Skills

• Highly developed knowledge of the theory and practice of Mentalization-Based Treatment for people with complex emotional needs/’personality disorder’.
• Demonstrable leadership and change management skills, including the ability to understand the wider implications of actions.
• Demonstrable and well developed skills in outcome evaluation, audit, research and/or clinical governance.
• Ability to assess, plan, implement and evaluate service developments.
• Competence in use of IT equipment and software packages

Personal

• Ability to contain and work with organisational stress and be able to identify, provide and promote appropriate support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and severely challenging behaviours.
• Ability to concentrate intensely for a substantial proportion of working time, during assessment and delivery of psychological therapy, teaching/supervision sessions, team meetings, preparing written work etc.
• Ability to actively self-reflect and use clinical and professional supervision to facilitate personal and professional development.
• Ability to contain the stress of colleagues and other relevant persons.
• Ability to de-escalate, contain and effectively manage high levels of expressed emotion and conflict.
• Ability to adopt a respectful, caring and inclusive approach to service users, families, carers, colleagues and other professionals.

Other

• Willingness and mobility to travel to various sites across Bedfordshire and Luton.
• Driving license, access to a vehicle and insurance for business travel.

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.

AI in applications

If you use AI or other tools to assist in writing your job application, make sure you add your own personal touch— especially in the supporting information section. AI can make writing easier, but it doesn’t fully understand the position you’re applying for and might generate false or misleading information. Applications written only by AI often sound generic and may not show your real skills, knowledge, or experience. It’s important to write your supporting statement in your own words. East London NHS Foundation Trust does not recommend relying only on AI, as it could negatively impact on your chance of success in the application process.

We carefully check applications to make sure no one has an unfair advantage, and we verify all references. At the interview, you’ll be asked about your experience, so be honest and ensure everything in your application is accurate. Please remember that using AI during the interview is not allowed.

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

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.