Clinical or Counselling Psychologist - TransPlus

Job overview

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHSFT has been commissioned by NHS England to provide TransPlus at 56 Dean Street. Our vision is for an innovative and patient-centred service, based on the principle that patients must have equal access to services whatever their gender identity with reasonable adjustments to the delivery of care to match the individual’s needs and circumstances.

The role will be to provide a specialist psychology service to clients with gender dysphoria at TransPlus, our specialist gender identity clinic. To provide specialist psychological therapy to TransPlus service users around any aspect of their mental or sexual health connected to their diagnosis of gender dysphoria. The post holder will offer advice and consultation on clients’ psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues and to other, non-professional carers or external agencies. To work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will work with clients who may have had psychological needs identified as part of their assessment in the service. The post holder would be expected to provide short- to medium term evidence based psychological assessment and therapy to clients for a range of presenting difficulties including issues related to living with gender dysphoria, difficulties related to sex and sexual health, difficulties with transphobia or negotiating relationships with family or sexual partners, promoting sexual wellbeing, managing presentations of low mood/anxiety health anxiety or supporting clients who have experienced physical and sexual assault. We also anticipate that the post holder may contribute to the design and running of group psychoeducation interventions on mental wellbeing related to gender dysphoria under the supervision of the senior psychologist in the service.

To provide supervision to trainee psychologists and non-psychologist staff within the team, as well as offering advice and consultation on clients’ psychological care to colleagues and to other, non-professional carers; working autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures.

The post holder will need to work autonomously within professional practice guidelines.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems and psychological aspects of physical morbidity, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
• To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups; adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
• To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account queer and trans affirmative models and considering the impact of wider systems on that persons experience of gender dysphoria
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
• 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, and to support other members of the MDT in risk management.
• To contribute to multi-disciplinary team meetings; to communicate and reflect using a psychologically based framework.
• 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.

To act as a named designated professional for clients within the service.