Assistant Psychologist- PMHTR

Job overview

An assistant psychologist for the Primary Mental Health Treatment Requirement Team provides low-intensity (usually CBT-informed) interventions for service users who have been court ordered to take up mental health treatment as part of their community sentence. We work with low mood, anxiety, emotional dysregulation, sleep problems, and other symptoms of psychological distress.

Our work is all about being adaptable, responsive, and caring in working with a population that is often overlooked. We are passionate about being inclusive and are constantly looking for ways to improve our diversity and our accessibility, both in how we increase our referrals from under-served populations and in how we offer our interventions in different ways to accommodate different need.

Main duties of the job

You will assist with presentations to different teams to help them to understand our work, why they would refer a service user to us, and how to complete a referral

You will manage the admin of referrals, including passing them on for screening to the Clinical Lead, completing screening assessments, liaising with various court-related personnel and probation staff, and tracking the data associated with the referrals

You will assess if service users are likely to benefit from our service and support them in completing risk assessments

You will complete 12-week programmes of one-to-one interventions based on the specific needs and goals of each service user

You will support and facilitate our Emotional Coping Skills Group.

You will audit our data and prepare for service evaluations

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The core work of an AP in the PMHTR is delivering low-intensity psycho-educational interventions for service users who are under a community-based court order.

If you are working full time, you can expect to have approximately 15 service users on your personal caseload who will be seen weekly or fortnightly, in sessions that are held in-person, by video, or by telephone (depending on the needs and preferences of the service user and our service).

This work will primarily be CBT-based, with future development possible in adding elements of ACT, CFT, and DBT-based interventions.

In addition to the one-to-one working, we are also in the process of developing our DBT-informed skills group for Emotional Coping Skills. This is a six week protocol with a rolling admission that is currently being administered virtually.

In the future, we will seek to develop a hybrid running of this group, which you would be a part of. We are very excited about our group programme, as it is the first of its kind, and we would be particularly interested to hear from candidates who value group working.

In order to ensure that the right service users--and as many as possible--are being referred into our service, we have to work consistently to ensure that other teams in Probation and Liaison and Diversion services understand who we are and what we do.

Therefore, part of your role will be in making presentations about our work and having useful conversations with our colleagues.

We have recently added a Peer Support Worker to our team and are currently developing a Support Clinic which will provide access to the peer support worker for practical, casual support, as well as an AP for additional skills work.

For a more detailed description, please see attached JD and PS.

Applicant requirements

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.