Assistant Psychologist

Job overview

We are looking for an Assistant Psychologist to provide psychology provision to the adult wards within the St Charles Mental Health Centre based in North Kensington. The service has four open acute wards, two  Psychiatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs). The service primarily works with patients who are resident in Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster (KCW).

The post holder would be expected to support and enhance the professional psychological care of clients within the service. They would help provide psychological assessment and psychological interventions of a routine nature, under the direct supervision of a qualified professional psychologist drawing on their supervisor’s expertise and intervention as and when advised and directed. This might include joint and individual direct work with clients and families, group work, indirect interventions on the ward and consultation to other MDT members. They would work according to a plan agreed with a qualified psychologist and within the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures. They would assist in clinically related administration, conduct of audits, collection of statistics, development of audit and/or research projects, teaching and project work.

Main duties of the job

• To assist practitioner psychologists in the delivery of a specialist applied psychology service in adult acute psychology inpatient services.
• To provide clinical work as required by the service, under the direct guidance, close clinical and professional supervision of a practitioner psychologist.
• To assist in clinically related administration, conduct of audits, collection of statistics, development of audit and/or research projects, teaching and project work.

Offering structured 1:1 interventions to carers and family members. Supporting the clinical psychologists in delivering case team formulation sessions. Attending MDT meetings and representing the psychology department in multidisciplinary discussions. Attending regular training and supervision sessions and completing administrative duties. All of your clinical work should only be completed under the direct supervision of a clinical psychologist. We are supportive of any ideas involving the local communities in Kensington and Westminster, and of helping us build partnerships with other local organisations.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• ·   To provide psychological assessments for clients in the adult acute psychology inpatient services under the close supervision of a practitioner psychologist including development and implementation of the trauma informed approach within KCW acute and urgent care mental health service
• ·   To provide protocol based individual psychological interventions for clients in the KCW acute and urgent care mental health services including trauma informed approach
• To arrange, schedule and provide protocol-based group psychological interventions for clients in the adult acute psychology inpatient services including trauma informed approach interventions and Dialectical Behavioural Therapy-informed skills groups.
• To support the carer support interventions, including the carer support group, the 1:1 carer interventions and the delivery of skill-based groups for carers at the local Recovery College.
• To assist the psychologists in the development of individual or group clinical materials or training materials.
• To support the administration of psychological and neuropsychological tests.  To collect feedback forms and outcome measures.