Clinical/Counselling Psychologist Band 8a

Job overview

HPFT have a long history of delivering outstanding care, and we are taking our Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Teams (CRHTT) to the next level, through embedding Trauma Informed Approaches within teams.

We meet the needs of individual’s living in Hertfordshire experiencing a mental health crisis, providing an MDT approach to understand their difficulties and implementing brief interventions to support the crisis to resolve.

This role will also involve in-reaching to a newly established Crisis House that forms part of the wider CRHTT provision within the South-East Team.  This is an exciting time of service expansion.

We are looking for a caring and committed HCPC registered Band 8a Clinical or Counselling Psychologist who enjoys working flexibly as part of an MDT to support psychological ways of thinking.  Experience of working within crisis services would be beneficial, but not essential.

If you have the skills, are energetic, imaginative, care passionately about working with individuals and their families, and enjoy influencing team culture through Trauma Informed Approaches then we want to hear from you!

The role is based in the South-East CRHTT, Cygnet House, Ware.  Psychology is highly valued and sought after in this team.  You will form part of a supportive psychology crisis service whose broad spread of roles gives real opportunity for progression within the service.

We don’t want you to miss out so - Apply now!

Main duties of the job

The successful candidate will:

• Provide a specialist psychology service to service users who are currently in a mental health crisis and are being supported by the South-East Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Team, including those service users accessing the newly established Crisis House
• Provide specialist psychological assessment, formulation and interventions, in both individual and group formats.
• Provide clinical supervision to the Assistant Psychologists embedded within the team along with advice and consultation to colleagues, and to other non-professional carers, on psychological aspects of assessment, formulation, care and treatment.
• Provide compassionate care that is based on empathy, kindness, respect and dignity, and underpinned by principles of recovery and knowledge of trauma informed ways of working.
• Support the development and roll out of Trauma Informed Approaches across HPFT crisis services as we change the question people ask from "What’s wrong with you?" to "What’s happened to you?"
• Provide a leadership role within the service to support psychologically informed practice across the team.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

To work with service users who are in a mental health crisis, to seek to understand and resolve the crisis through psychological means, to support the discharge of those service users back to mainstream services as quickly and safely as possible.

To provide specialist psychological assessments of service users referred to Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Services based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex psychological 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.

To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods of proven efficacy, across the full range of care settings.

To be responsible for implementing a range of evidence-based 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 and make 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 provide specialist psychological supervision, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to client’s formulations, diagnoses and treatment plans.

To ensure that all members of the treating 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 with a focus on Trauma Informed Approaches.

For a comprehensive list of responsibilities and duties, please kindly refer to the Job Description and Person Specification by downloading the JD and PS attachment in the advert.

If you are an internal applicant there is the option for secondment, all applicants must have the endorsement/support of their line manager prior to application.