Practitioner Psychologist / Senior Psychotherapist

Job overview

This is an exciting fixed term opportunity to be a part of the psychology team within the Early Intervention for Psychosis Service in Mersey Care, based at Baird House, Liverpool.

The post is open to applicants who are qualified as HCPC registered practitioner psychologists and/or BABCP accredited CBT therapists and a major part of the role will be the provision of CBT to service users experiencing first episode psychosis.

The role is  0.6wte (22.5hrs/week) over a 9 month period to cover maternity leave within an established and highly regarded Early Intervention service working in a specialist multidisciplinary community based team to support the recovery of people who have experienced a first episode of psychosis.

High quality supervision is available to support further development of your clinical skills whilst working in a friendly and caring team  environment that is both supportive and rewarding.  The post provides an ideal development opportunity for someone wishing to build their knowledge and skills in working with this client group.

If you have a passion for providing exceptional care and are looking for an exciting, varied and challenging role within EIP, we would welcome your talents and skills.

The team is based on Baird House, Liverpool, and travel around the patch will be required.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will apply and maintain those skills acquired through further specialist training and experience to monitor and ensure the systematic provision of highly specialised psychological services, provide a service to clients referred to the team, across all sectors of care, within an equality and human rights framework care and supervise and support the other clinical members of the team who provide psychologically based care and treatment.

The post holder will exercise delegated management responsibilities where appropriate and work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the team. The post holder will utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research and propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the team.

A work plan will be developed with the post holder which will be reviewed on a regular basis depending on the needs of the service.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

To provide specialist psychological assessments of service users 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 service users, and others involved in the service user’s care.

To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a service user’s psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the service user’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.

To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, 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, or group.

To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of service users whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.

To provide specialist psychological advice guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to service users’ 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 service users, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.

To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users 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 service users 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 multidisciplinary care.

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

Please refer to attached Job Description and Person Specification for a full list of duties and responsibilities.