Senior Psychological Therapist/CBT Therapist

Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen in our  Primary Care Mental Health Service in North West Hertfordshire (Dacorum/St Albans) for an experienced Clinical or Counselling Psychologist or CBT therapist to provide psychological interventions in primary care.

The post holder will be at the forefront in reviewing and leading the therapeutic provision offered within primary care, to meet the needs of the local population.

Psychological Therapists undertake an integral role supporting the wider MDT and are highly regarded within the Trust.

You will play an important role in the day to day running of local psychology provision, providing supervision to qualified and trainee psychological therapists and practitioners, overseeing psychology referrals and waiting list, and providing support and consultation to MDT colleagues.

Please can you be clear in your application form on how you meet the essential qualification criteria.

Main duties of the job

• The post-holder will provide specialist support, guidance and consultation on clients’ psychological care to non-psychological therapist colleagues and to other, non-professional carers within community mental health services, primary care and other agencies.
• To provide supervision to band 7 psychological therapists / trainee clinical/counselling psychologists and other psychological therapies practitioners as required.
• The post-holder will work closely with the local and quadrant-wide psychological therapy teams, as well as a range of other psychological therapy colleagues within the service setting.
• The post-holder will work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures.
• The post-holder will utilise research skills for audit, teaching, policy and service development and research within the area served by the team/service.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To provide specialist psychological assessments of service users referred to the teams, based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with service user s, family members 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 mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the service user ’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
• 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 designated quadrant lead.
• To participate in relevant special interest groups within the profession across the Trust and nationally as appropriate, to keep up with current developments.
• To contribute to service development projects within own service area and other relevant agencies as required. This can involve contributing to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the service operational policies or other organizational issues, by initiating and using one’s professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.

For a more detailed description, please see attached JD and PS.