Senior Clinical or Forensic Psychologist (band 8a)

Job overview

JOB SUMMARY

This position will involve working as part of the newly formed Community FASTER (Forensic Autism and learning disability Support, Training and Enhanced Risk management) team in the West Midlands, as directed by the lead psychologist. Community FASTER is a pilot project (running until September 2027), and is a Forensic Community LDA Service for people with learning disability and/or autistic people. It is a psychology-led service.

Based on the core functions of the national specification for community forensic LD and autism services, Community FASTER is set up to provide:

• In-reach support to inpatient services to support safe and timely discharges
• Forensic risk assessment and management of risk in the community to ensure public safety and safety of the individual
• Delivery of therapeutic interventions
• Expert advice and training to other agencies, including health services, probation, police, and prison service.
• Consultancy and support
• A West Midlands-wide on-call service – clinical advice and urgent support for staff working with service users in the cohort outside core hours (Monday- Friday 8am-8pm).

Main duties of the job

• The Clinical or Forensic Psychologist will support the systematic provision of a high-quality specialist Psychological Service to a wide range of patients who are referred to the service

They will:

• support other services (in line with the service model) in consultation, supervision, formulation and training. This will involve Face-to-Face psychological interventions.
• work within a multidisciplinary team in these services to achieve service goals.
• develop, within the MDT ways of providing efficient and effective services.
• provide specialist psychological assessments and interventions to patients and carers, as required.
• supervise and support psychological assessment, formulation and therapy provided by other clinicians involved with these services, working autonomously within professional guidelines, exercising full clinical responsibility, and implementing changes where necessary.
• supervise and give day to day management to junior psychological/therapist staff, as required.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To provide specialist psychological assessment and therapy for clients in the service using complex psychological data gained from a variety of sources appropriately.
• To gather and interpret psychological information to develop psychological formulations from this to assist in the treatment and management of the presenting issues.
• To provide training and consultation to staff from a range of statutory agencies and independent providers to support service users to remain in the community.
• To ensure the systematic provision of the psychological service provided by the individual and any staff reporting to them, including the responsibility to prioritise work appropriately.
• To support the provision of the out of hours on call service.
• To communicate assessment results, formulations, outcome data, and other complex and sensitive information orally and in written form in order to support the work of multidisciplinary colleagues.
• To undertake formal assessments e.g. of capacity, safeguarding and risk, to take the appropriate steps to manage the situation, and to provide advice to other professionals on the psychological aspects of the assessment and associated management issues.
• To plan therapeutic interventions which can be delivered by other staff in line with the evidence base and NICE guidelines. To supervise their delivery, ensuring appropriate measurement and review of outcomes.
• To contribute to the development of services within the service, reviewing service outcomes, designing and participating in audit, research and clinical governance initiatives, and reporting on the results. This will involve communication with a wide range of clinical and managerial colleagues, within and outside the Trust.
• To work cooperatively with colleagues to achieve service goals and maximise service effectiveness.
• To provide supervision to trainee psychologists on placement, junior staff, volunteers and other colleagues, including professional and doctoral research supervision, as required.
• To manage junior staff, as required.
• To adhere to the lone worker policy.
• To work autonomously within professional guidelines.