Women's Transitional Mental Health Lead (FTC)

Job overview

Are you passionate about working with women in the Criminal Justice System and looking to develop your leadership skills?

We are now recruiting to this Women's Transitional Mental Health Lead within the Thames Valley Offender Personality Disorder Pathway, developing and leading a pilot service supporting women with complex mental health needs and significant offending histories to successfully move on from custody. This transition is often a time of increased anxiety, especially for women who have experienced significant trauma and adversity.

To be successful in this role, you should be a Psychologist (newly qualified or experienced), Social Worker or Mental Health Nurse.

You will provide liaison and advocacy to support women to access and engage with relevant services and will carry a small caseload of women to support directly. You will build strong working relationships with professionals from a variety of settings including prison, probation and community mental health and social care.

You will join a specialist and highly supportive team with regular CPD and excellent opportunities for career development.

This post will be fixed-term for 24 months.

WE WOULD WELCOME A CONVERSATION PRIOR TO APPLICATION. Please contact Dr. Rosie Winder, Principal Clinical Psychologist & Thames Valley WOPD Lead a rosie.winder@justice.gov.uk in the first instance.

Main duties of the job

• You will forge strong working relationships with professionals from a variety of agencies and will have excellent communication and negotiation skills.
• You will have a good working knowledge of mental health legislation and use this to advocate for the women on your caseload.
• You will be confident to work independently for much of the time and to manage your own caseload.
• You will line manage and supervise a Band 5 Research Assistant.
• This post involves a combination of remote working and travel across Thames Valley, plus occasional visits to the four women's prisons located across the South of England. Access to a car or motorbike is therefore essential.

This role also attracts the RSU Allowance of £1,446 for this post.

The ability to travel independently between sites within the Trust is essential for this role.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To provide specialist, psychologically-informed consultancy to prison and probation colleagues with a focus on risk-management and safeguarding.
• To liaise with a variety of professionals to facilitate access for this under-served population to relevant statutory and non-statutory support services.
• To support women presenting with a range of difficulties including personality disorder, complex PTSD, addiction, self-harm, challenging behaviour, sexual trauma and repeat victimisation.
• To promote inter-agency working, identifying and highlighting systemic obstacles to pathway progression.
• To co-facilitate relevant teaching and training to NHS and other organisations.

We hope that the advert has given you a clear understanding of the skills we are seeking and the opportunity at hand. You will need to use the “supporting statement” element of your application form to demonstrate your suitability for this role and you should refer to the job description, person specification and the guidance notes attached to this role to help you tailor your application.

The essential and desirable criteria will be used to shortlist for interview, and you should ensure that you refer to these within your application to increase your chances of being selected for interview.

We are aware that some candidates may choose to use AI tools to support their application. We kindly remind applicants that submissions should remain an honest and accurate representation of their experience and must take care to ensure the use of AI tools does not generate an application that does not accurately reflect their knowledge, skills and values.

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.