Specialist Psychologist in Gender

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust; Liverpool; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 50,000; Full time

Job summary

A prominent healthcare provider in Liverpool seeks a Clinical or Counselling Psychologist for its innovative Adult Gender Identity Service, Transcend. You will deliver specialized assessments, provide psychological therapies, and contribute to service development within a distinct collaborative care framework. The ideal candidate will possess doctoral level training in psychology and be registered with the Health Professions Council, alongside demonstrated experience in diverse clinical settings. Flexible working opportunities are available.

Benefits

Flexible working options

Access to ongoing CPD and supervision

Opportunity to shape national service development

Qualifications

• Doctoral training accredited by the BPS.
• Registration with Health Professions Council.
• Significant experience in multi-disciplinary care.

Responsibilities

• Deliver specialist psychological assessments and interventions.
• Support service development through research and audits.
• Supervise and train trainee psychologists.

Skills

Effective communication skills

Psychological assessment

Autonomous clinical responsibility

Teaching and training abilities

Education

Doctoral level training in clinical/counselling psychology

Registration with Health Professions Council as Practitioner Psychologist

Tools

IT systems including Microsoft Office

Psychological assessment tools

Job description

Are you passionate about inclusive, person-centred care? Do you want to be part of a pioneering service supporting trans and gender-diverse adults across Cheshire and Merseyside?

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust is thrilled to offer an exciting opportunity for a Clinical or Counselling Psychologist to joinTranscend, our innovativeAdult Gender Identity Service. This is a unique chance to contribute to a growing, specialist service that is shaping the future of gender healthcare in the NHS.

About Transcend

Transcend supports individuals to explore their gender identity and any associated psychological needs through comprehensive assessments, direct therapeutic interventions, and collaborative care planning. We work holistically, recognising the intersection of gender identity with mental health, neurodiversity, trauma, and social wellbeing.

Our team is committed to delivering compassionate, evidence-based care within anequality and human rights framework, and we are proud to be part of a national effort to improve access to gender-affirming healthcare.

Why Join Us?

• Be part of apioneering servicesupporting gender-diverse adults
• Work in a team that valuescompassion, inclusion, and innovation
• Access ongoing CPD, supervision, and opportunities to shape national service development
• Make a real difference in the lives of individuals navigating gender identity and mental health

Main duties of the job

What You'll Be Doing

As a specialist psychologist in Transcend, you will:

• Deliverspecialist psychological assessments, formulations, and interventions for service users across all sectors of care
• Provideindividual and group-based psychological therapies, drawing on a range of models and approaches
• Supervise and support other team members delivering psychologically informed care
• Contribute toservice development, audit, and research, including the use of outcome measures and data to inform best practice
• Exerciseautonomous clinical responsibilityfor assessment, treatment, and discharge planning
• Support the development of policy and practice within the service
• Supervisetrainee psychologists from Clinical and/or Counselling Psychology training programmes

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

Clinical

1.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 with service users, family members and others involved in the service users care.

2.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.

3.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.

4.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, family or group.

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

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

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

8.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.

9.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.

10.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 multi-disciplinary care.

11.To 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

12.To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.

13.To provide clinical placements for trainee clinical and/or counselling psychologists, ensuring that trainees acquire 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.

14.To provide post-qualification training (CPD) and clinical professional supervision to qualified clinical psychologists and other psychological services staff.

15.To provide advice, consultation and training and clinical supervision to other members of the team for their provision of psychologically based interventions to help improve service users functioning.

16.To provide pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical/counselling psychologists and/or other psychological services staff as appropriate.

17.To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional pre- and post-graduate training and clinical supervision.

18.To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the service user group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.

Management, Recruitment, Policy and Service Development

19.To manage the workloads of Assistants, Trainees and recently qualified psychological services staff, where appropriate, within the framework of the Clinical Business Units and teams/services service policies and procedures.

20.To support senior clinicians in the development of a high quality, responsive and accessible service including advising both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.

21.To 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 in the form of psychological materials employed in the assessment and treatment of patients.

22.To exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the team.

23.To participate as appropriate in staff recruitment, both in the short-listing process and as a member of interview panels, for assistants, trainees and recently qualified psychological services staff.

24.To act up for line manager as appropriate.

25.The post holder will be expected to make full use of IT packages available within the work area, for example, Microsoft office, email, internet and statistical packages. Reasonable adjustments will be made for employees who ate unable to comply due to sensory impairment.

Service Governance

26.To support the psychology lead, as a senior clinician, in the evaluation, monitoring and development of the teams operational policies, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit and ensuring incorporation of psychological frameworks for understanding and provision of high-quality care.

27.To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.

28.To undertake appropriate research as agreed with Operational and Professional managers and provide research advice to team colleagues undertaking research.

29.To initiate project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within and across the service to help develop and improve services to clients and their families.

30.To undertake a defined role in local Service Governance structures as agreed.

General

31.To ensure the development, maintenance and dissemination of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external and external CPD training and development programmes and to provide evidence of CPD undertaken, e.g., in the form of CPD logbook.

32.To ensure the development and articulation of best practice in psychology within the team and contribute across the service by exercising 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/counselling psychology and related disciplines.

33.To maintain and promulgate 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 of the British Psychological Society, Health Professions Council, Clinical Business Unit and Trust policies and procedures.

34.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.

35.To perform other duties of a similar kind appropriate to the grade, which may be required by their operational manager after consultation, if necessary with professional manager.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• Doctoral level training in clinical/counselling psychology accredited by the BPS or its approved equivalent.
• Registration with Health Professions Council as Practitioner Psychologist.
• Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice.
• Post-graduate training and learning in the specific area of specialist knowledge and expertise (or working toward)

Knowledge/Experience

• Assessed experience of working as a qualified clinical/counselling psychologist at a specialist level for a significant period.
• Significant experience of representing psychology within the context of multi-disciplinary care.
• Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care coordinator and also within the context of a multi-disciplinary care plan.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision.
• Expertise in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, formulation, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration
• Understanding of the philosophy and principles of care underpinning gender healthcare
• Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical/counselling 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 and experience in delivering clinical supervision to qualified and non-qualified psychologists
• Knowledge of IT systems including word processing, email and local electronic patient information systems
• Attended Quality Improvement training
• Engagement in audit, service development and/or reflective practice highlighting areas of practice that have changed as a result of this process
• 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 gender healthcare and in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g., personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc.)
• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies

Skills

• Well developed and effective communication skills, oral and written, 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 distressing situations and 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
• Ability and willingness to travel across the Trust

Values

• Accountability
• Support
• High professional standards
• Responsive to service users
• Engaging leadership style
• Transparency and honesty
• Discret
• Change oriented

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.

Full-time,Flexible working,Home or remote working