Psychotherapist/Clinical Psychologist

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust; Warrington; On-site; GBP 45,000 - 65,000; Full time

Job summary

A prominent healthcare organization in Warrington seeks a Senior Psychotherapist/Clinical Psychologist to join their recovery team. The successful applicant will engage in providing complex psychological assessments and treatments, manage workloads of staff, and contribute to training and development. This role offers opportunities for professional development and is part of a dedicated team delivering holistic mental health care. The organization serves over 1.4 million people and offers various specialist services in the North West.

Benefits

Professional development opportunities

Support for CPD activities

Collaborative team environment

Qualifications

• Must have experience in providing psychological assessments and interventions.
• Able to formulate and implement treatment plans based on psychological frameworks.
• Experience in supervising clinical placements and conducting training.

Responsibilities

• Provide psychological assessments of service users referred to the team.
• Exercise responsibility for treatment planning and delivery.
• Deliver training and supervision to other professionals.

Skills

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)

EMDR

Communication skills

Risk assessment

Psychological assessment

Education

Doctorate in Clinical Psychology or equivalent

Job description

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust celebrates diversity and promotes equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect. We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from ethnically diverse, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people that are under‑represented in our workforce. Furthermore we welcome applications from reservists and ex‑armed forces personnel as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.

Key Clinical Responsibilities

• 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 with service users and others involved in the user’s care.
• Exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of service users whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans and enhanced care plans.
• Be responsible for the systematic provision of cognitive behaviour therapy, CAT and/or EMDR at a highly specialist level to people experiencing significant and/or severe psychological problems.
• Formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a service user’s psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework and evidence‑based methods.
• Implement a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, and groups within and across teams, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining provisional hypotheses.
• Evaluate, monitor progress and make highly skilled decisions about treatment options, taking into account theoretical and therapeutic models and complex historical and developmental factors.
• Provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to service users’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plans.
• Ensure that all members of the clinical team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of service users, through advice, consultation and dissemination of research and theory.
• Undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users and give both general and specialist advice on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
• Communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner complex information concerning assessment, formulation and treatment plans where there may be conflicting views, high emotion and significant barriers to understanding and change, and monitor and evaluate progress during multidisciplinary care.
• Provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.

Teaching, Training and Supervision Responsibilities

• Receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.
• Provide clinical placements for trainee clinical and/or counselling psychologists, ensuring that trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience.
• Assist with the clinical supervision of practitioner psychologists, CBT therapists, EMDR practitioners, CAT practitioners and other MDT staff as agreed by the service lead/professional lead and operational manager.
• Provide post‑qualification training (CPD) and clinical professional supervision to qualified clinical psychologists and other psychological services staff.
• Offer advice, consultation, training and supervision to other team members for their provision of psychologically based interventions to improve service users’ functioning.
• Deliver pre‑ and post‑qualification teaching of clinical psychologists and/or other psychological services staff as appropriate.
• Maintain and develop skills in professional pre‑ and post‑graduate training and clinical supervision.

Management, Recruitment, Policy and Service Development Responsibilities

• Manage the workloads of assistants, trainees and recently qualified psychological services staff, where appropriate, within the framework of the team’s service policies and procedures.
• Participate as a senior clinician in the development of a high‑quality, responsive and accessible service, including advising both service and professional management on psychological and organisational matters.
• Exercise delegated responsibility for managing the psychological resources available to a team, whether in the form of additional qualified and unqualified graduate psychology staff or psychological materials employed in assessment and treatment.

An exciting opportunity has arisen for an experienced Senior Psychotherapist/Clinical Psychologist to work within Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust in the Warrington Recovery Team. The Warrington Recovery Team is a large specialist secondary care community mental health team. The successful applicant will be part of a large team of psychologists, CBT/EMDR therapists, assistant psychologists, occupational therapists, mental health nurses, support workers, psychiatrists and peer workers. You will be joining a hard‑working and busy team providing holistic care/therapies with people who experience complex mental health difficulties. Inline with Mersey Care's community transformation program we are working in partnership with our primary care colleagues and strive to provide a seamless mental health offer. Our Recovery Teams provide high‑quality intervention‑based care in both high and low intensity formats. Training opportunities will be available and you will be supported to follow CPD opportunities to further develop your career.

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.