Clinical Psychologist

Job overview

Building Attachment & Bonds Service (BABS) are looking to recruit an experienced Specialist Clinical Psychologists

The service sits within the Mersey Care Community Care Division but is hosted in the community in Family Hubs and Children Centres.

The post will involve providing specialist therapeutic parent-infant mental health support to vulnerable families in the antenatal/postnatal period.

The main focus of the BABS work is supporting parents and infants to build secure bonds and attachment relationships, and good parent infant mental health. It would be an advantage if the post holder has previous experience and/or an interest and passion for working in the specialist field of parent infant mental health; in particular, experience of working on an outreach, community-basis supporting vulnerable families in the community.

The successful applicant must be confident and skilled to work independently, and in collaboration/partnership with other professionals.

The successful applicant must be confident and comfortable working with safeguarding issues/concerns and the multitude of risks presented in the parent infant relationship. Most importantly, the successful applicant must have good interpersonal skills and qualities to build a good relationship and engage families with complex lives.

Band 7s & Secondments will also be considered for this post.

Main duties of the job

The post will involve providing specialist therapeutic parent-infant mental health support to families in the antenatal/postnatal period via Parent Infant Mental Health Assessments, psychological formulation and various parent-infant interventions.

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.

Main duties of the job

The successful applicant will work collaboratively with the following professionals and teams to support vulnerable parents and infants:

Community and Specialist/Public Health Midwives

Mersey Care teams within the Child Health Directorate (Health Visitors, Family Nurses, Breastfeeding Team)

Children Centre and Early Years Staff

Perinatal Mental Health Teams

Children’s Social Care staff (Social Workers, Early Help and Family Support Workers Staff)

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

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.

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.

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 plans.

To ensure that all members of the clinical team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of clients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.

To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide both general and specialist advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.

To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, highly complex information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients 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.

To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.

The candidate would be expected to provide staff support in the form of 1:1 supervision, peer support and reflective practice group on a regular basis

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.