Specialist Clinical Psychologist

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust; Sefton; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

An exciting opportunity for a Clinical or Counselling Psychologist within a leading mental health service. The role involves providing psychological assessments and interventions, working collaboratively in a multidisciplinary team, and offering supervision and training. Newly qualified applicants are welcome, and the service offers relevant training and support.

Qualifications

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment.
• Experience of working with various client groups across care settings.

Responsibilities

• Provide specialist psychological assessments and therapy to clients.
• Support the development of psychological skills across the workforce.

Skills

Communication

Leadership

Consultation

Education

Doctoral level training in clinical psychology

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.

Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Clinical or Counselling Psychologist to work within Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust within the Southport Community mental health team. This post is suitable for both newly qualified and current band 8a's. The service will offer relevant training and support to ensure newly qualified applicants are eligible for preceptorship to an 8a clinical psychology post.

The service offers group and individual interventions utilising a range of models including CBT, EMDR, MBT, Psychodynamic, ISTDP, CFT and Psycho-education. Stepped care model is used to provide service users with a range of psychological interventions, appropriate to the level of need. You would be joining a service that includes a Principal Clinical Psychologist, a Consultant Psychotherapist, a Specialist Clinical Psychologist and Assistant Psychologist.

It is a varied role, suited to those who enjoy the challenge of engaging service users in a secondary care setting and who enjoy working in a Multi-disciplinary team. As well as opportunities to do 1:1 and group clinical work, there are also opportunities for consultation, training and reflective practice. Recruits will also be encouraged and supported to supervise Trainee Clinical Psychologists on placement.

Applicants must have a recognised qualification (or in the process of completing). Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology accredited by the BPS, or its approved equivalent.

Main duties of the job

You'll work within a team to support people with a range of psychological issues by providing specialist psychological assessment, therapy and interventions to service users and carers, making use of a range of models, where appropriate. You'll also offer specialist advice, leadership and consultation to non-psychologist colleagues and support the development of psychological skills across the whole workforce through specialist training, supervision, mentorship and reflective practice.

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.

Working for our organisation

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.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients 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 clients, family members 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 psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client's problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.

To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families 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 where appropriate.

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, family or group.

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

To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment and treatment of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based enhanced care plans.

To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients' formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.

To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.

To undertake 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 act as care coordinator, where appropriate, taking responsibility for initiating planning and reviewing of care plans under enhanced CPA including clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.

To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.

Person specification

KNOWLEDGE/EXPERIENCE

Essential criteria

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment, formulation and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and in patient settings.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course presenting problems that reflect the full 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 teaching, training and/or supervision
• Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts

VALUES

Essential criteria

• Continuous Improvement
• Accountability
• Respectfulness
• Enthusiasm
• Responsive to service users
• Engaging leadership style
• Strong customer service belief
• Transparency and honesty
• Discreet

Skills

Essential criteria

• Expertise in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, formulation, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration
• Well developed and effective communication skills, oral and written, to communicate 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 nonprofessional groups.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health
• Knowledge of IT systems including word processing, email and local electronic patient information systems
• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multimedia materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
• Reasonable adjustments will be made for those with sensory impairment
• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of service governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
• Ability to self-reflect, use clinical supervision appropriately and consider complex organisational and team dynamics

Desirable criteria

• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc).
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of at least one specialised psychological therapy

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Doctoral level training in clinical psychology, or its approved equivalent accredited by the BPS

Desirable criteria

• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.

Please ensure you check the email account from which you apply for all correspondence. All information regarding your application will come from apps.trac.jobs not NHS Jobs.

Only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we offer a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants who consider themselves to be disabled who meet the minimum (essential) criteria for the role in the person specification. If you would like your application to be considered under the Trust's guaranteed interview scheme you can indicate this in the personal information section of your online application form.

Should you require a reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process please email [e-mail] to ensure that measures can be put in place to support you.

We reserve the right to close any vacancies from further applications when we have received a minimum number of applications from which to make a shortlist. Please ensure you apply without delay if you wish to be considered for this role.

The Trust expects all post holders who require an enhanced DBS for their role subscribe to the DBS Update Service. You will be required to enrol for this service for a fee of £16 per year and maintain registration. Trans applicants who require a DBS check and do not want to reveal details of their previous identity can contact the DBS Sensitive Applications Team (01516761452 or email [e-mail]) with their application number once they have completed their DBS application form. The team can prevent any previous identity showing on the DBS Certificate, unless the applicant has a conviction under their previous details in which case this will need to be disclosed.

Applicants requiring sponsorship may wish to determine the likelihood of obtaining sponsorship for this position by assessing themselves against the criteria on the gov.uk website - https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

Please be advised that the use of Artificial Intelligence on applications is monitored and if you choose to use this, you must declare this on your application form.

Please note: new entrants to the NHS will commence on the first pay point of the relevant band.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

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.

Documents to download

• Job Description and Person Specification (PDF, 512.3KB)
• OH Risk ID form (PDF, 141.5KB)
• A Great Place to Work (PDF, 2.1MB)
• Our People Promise and Charter (PDF, 5.8MB)
• Preceptorship Information (PDF, 549.9KB)
• Employee Benefits (PDF, 950.7KB)