Clinical/Counselling Psychologist

Job overview

We are looking for a Band 7 Clinical/Counselling Psychologist for a Fixed-Term, 3-day a week role with in the Queens Park and Paddington (QPP) Community Mental Health Hub. We are a multidisciplinary, secondary care mental health service based in Westminster for those experiencing severe and enduring mental health difficulties, including psychosis, PTSD and complex emotional needs.

The post holder will be expected to provide a psychological service to patients of the Queens Park and Paddington (QPP) Community Mental Health Hub as well as the wider catchment area that this unit serves, within the broader aims and objectives of the Adult Psychology Specialty. This may include working across a range of locations within the catchment area including occasional home visits.

The post holder will play key role and contribute to the continuing development of the overall psychology service within the team. You will be given an opportunity to be involved in clinical research and development where appropriate.

Main duties of the job

• Ensure a high standard of clinical care for the clients and those of more junior staff providing a comprehensive and appropriate psychology service to clients, families and carers 2. Play a key role in the advanced assessment and treatment of clients who have acute, chronic or complex presentation and determine clinical diagnosis and intervention required 3. Assess clients’ needs and direct to other services as appropriate 4. Maintain records as an autonomous practitioner 5. Communicate effectively with health and social care professionals and outside agencies regarding client care and progress 6. Communicate with other members of the Team regarding policies, service development and management plans 7. Undertake a significant clinical caseload working under supervision in collaboration with other agencies and health and social care professionals.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Clinical:

• To 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.
• 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 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 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 exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
• To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
• To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the services, 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.
• To complete care plans for clients under the psychology and team caseload, taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans including clients, and where appropriate, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.
• 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.

Teaching, training, and supervision

• To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.
• To develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training and supervision and to provide supervision to other MDT staff’s psychological work, as appropriate.
• To provide professional and clinical supervision of assistant/graduate psychologists and, as appropriate, to contribute to the supervision of individual cases for trainee clinical psychologists.
• To contribute to the pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical and/or counselling psychology, as required by the Head of Specialty.
• To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.

Management, recruitment, policy and service development

• To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the team’s operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.
• To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the services where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
• To manage the workloads of assistant and graduate psychologists, within the framework of the team/service’s policies and procedures.
• To be involved, as appropriate, in the shortlisting and interviewing of assistant/graduate psychologists.
• As negotiated and within time constraints, the post holder will be expected to attend relevant clinical meetings of local adult mental health services for individual patients.
• The post holder will be required to attend and contribute to the regular professional meetings of the Adult Psychology Specialty and other Departmental meetings.

Research and service evaluation

• To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
• To undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research.
• To undertake project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within the services to help develop service provision.
• To familiarise themselves with, and to comply with, the Trust’s requirements on research governance.

IT responsibilities (other than those used for research)

• The post holder will input and maintain, appropriate clinical records and statistical data and provide this to the Service Manager/Head of Speciality when necessary.
• The postholder will engage in relevant computer and IT training as required.
• The postholder will be responsible for ensuring that those psychologists they are responsible for/supervise engage in relevant computer and IT training as required and will input and maintain, appropriate computer and manual clinical records and statistical data.

General

• To contribute to the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the postholder’s professional and service manager(s).
• To contribute to the development and articulation of best practice in psychology across the services, by continuing to develop the skills of a reflexive and reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the field of clinical psychology and related disciplines.
• To maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry and recording, report writing and the responsible exercise of professional self-governance in accordance with professional codes of practice of the British Psychological Society and Trust policies and procedures.
• To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to both the specific client group and mental health.

To be noted:

• This is not an exhaustive list of duties and responsibilities, and the postholder may be required to undertake other duties which fall within the grade of the job, in discussion with the manager.
• This job description will be reviewed regularly in the light of changing service requirements, and any such changes will be discussed with the post holder

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.