Principle Psychologist/Psychological Therapist

Job overview

This is an exciting opportunity to be the service lead at a small, specialist psychological therapies service at the William Morris Centre. The William Morris Centre is a community psychological service, working with adults who exhibit complex emotional and relational problems that cause harm to others. The William Morris Centre is co-commissioned by the forensic and general adult mental health directorates in Oxleas.

We are seeking a candidate who is passionate about working to reducing violence and sexual harm while improving the lives of service users. This is a service highly valued by the people who use it and we seek candidates who are energised by a senior role that combines clinical practice, psychological leadership skills and operational management.

Main duties of the job

The service lead holds clinical and operational leadership of the service, as well as retaining a clinical caseload to ensure continual development of specialist clinical skills. While located in the forensic directorate, there is a close working relationship with general adult community services in the Trust.

The post holder will be responsible for the delivery of a psychological therapies outpatient assessment and intervention service for violence and aggression, including the social inclusion offer and consultations to other services. The role includes responsibilities such as: clinical and risk oversight; managing referrals and timely access to the service; ensuring the service meets the needs of the population we serve and patients are satisfied; reporting on activity and quality; leading service developments; and liaising with internal and external partners and services.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• Working closely with professional and operational leads in the forensic and offender healthcare directorate, to be responsible for the delivery of a psychology outpatient assessment and intervention service for violence and aggression.
• To liaise closely with Oxleas’ community adult mental health services to ensure psychological provision is available, when appropriate, to people with emotional, interpersonal and forensic / violence and aggression treatment needs.
• To support the Trust’s ambition to deliver great care, out of hospital, in a timely way.
• Responsible for managing referrals, senior oversight of risk management, managing caseloads and reporting on activity and quality.
• Providing oversight of the clinical model and ensuring adherence to model integrity including throughout assessments and interventions.
• Being the point of contact at the William Morris Centre for Oxleas’ secondary care mental health services, and facilitate movement of clients between those services and WMC (and vice versa) and providing support to clinicians within those services as necessary.
• Developing and overseeing a system for forensic psychology consultations to Oxleas secondary care teams.
• To effectively foster and develop relationships with both internal and external partners in the criminal justice system, primary and secondary care NHS services and non-statutory third sector organisations.
• To ensure that all services provided are acceptable and accessible to the diverse communities which make up the William Morris Centre population.
• The postholder will be an authentic, compassionate and inspiring leader who acts as a role model and champions the Trust’s vision and values.
• The postholder will build a service where people feel valued, developed and supported and where the Oxleas values are role-modelled
• The postholder will be responsible for enabling all staff, service users and carers from diverse backgrounds to flourish by working to create a psychologically safe environment.
• To support the clinical lead in contributing service development, and to attend relevant meetings and clinical forums.
• To initiate, implement and monitor appropriate service developments to improve the quality and delivery of services at the William Morris Centre.