Youth Intensive Psychological Practitioner

Job overview

We are looking for an enthusiastic and motivated Youth Intensive Psychological Practitioners (YIPP), who are keen continue their ongoing development within an adolescent inpatient setting.

The YIPP practitioner's role is to engage in the assessment and formulation of a young person receiving crisis home based treatment, assessing for suitability and providing specific evidence-based psychological intervention for children and young people with severe and/or complex mental health problems, their families and carers, including the assessment and management of complex risk.

Main duties of the job

The role will involve working as part of a multidisciplinary team, supporting specialist assessment and psychological intervention, formulation and individual, family and group-based therapeutic work. There will be opportunities to develop skills in formulation and to contribute to MDT formulation meetings and collaborative development of formulations with service users, families and carers as well as opportunities to support with training.

It is essential that applicants have successfully completed YIPP training and demonstrated ability to apply this knowledge in a clinical setting. In addition, applicants should have experience of working in a highly emotive environment and of direct working with individuals who may be in distress, demonstrating the ability to effectively risk assess often complex situations and seek support and guidance where appropriate. Furthermore, the applicant will be expected to have a working knowledge of safeguarding legislation and be able to efficiently apply this in their day to day practice.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Clinical and Client Care

• To be clinically supervised and supported to employ academic learning regarding child and adolescent development and apply it to the assessment and formulation of a young person in receipt of inpatient, day patient or Intensive Home Based Treatment (IHBT) treatment
• To be supervised and supported to practice discussing that formulation with supervisor with a view to constructing a planned psychological intervention in the context of an agreed MDT care plan
• To be supervised and supported to assess and deliver outcome focused, evidence-based interventions in inpatient and community settings for children and young people experiencing complex and/or severe mental health difficulties.
• To develop skills in supporting and working in partnership with children and young people experiencing complex and/or severe mental health difficulties, their parents/carers, and families (including understanding of current difficulties and collaborating and coproducing their plan of care).
• To show evidence in a variety of forms that at all times assessment and intervention is provided from an inclusive values base, which recognises and respects diversity.
• Under supervision, to undertake accurate assessments of risk to self and others.
• To practice, evidence, reflect on and demonstrate an ability to manage one’s own caseload in conjunction with the requirements of the MDT.
• To keep coherent contemporary records of all training and clinical activity in line with health service protocols and use these records and outcome data to inform decision making.
• To complete all requirements relating to data collection including the collection of routine outcome and experience measures.
• To show evidence of working within a collaborative approach, with children and young people, their parent/carers and MDT colleagues, involving a range of relevant others when indicated.
• To contribute to the development of individual or group clinical or training materials and go on to develop further such materials as falls within own degree of competence.

Contributing to team or service clinical functioning

• Learn, understand, rationalise, and adhere to the protocols within the service to which the postholder is attached.
• To act in a manner that supports a psychologically informed framework for the service.
• To participate in the team or service’s delivery of accessible and acceptable services to diverse local communities.
• To attend multi-disciplinary and multi-agency meetings relating to referrals or children and young people in treatment, where appropriate, both for personal educational benefit in discussion with supervisors, or to provide direct assistance.

Policy and service development

• To follow policies and procedures in own area of work
• To participate in the consultation and engagement of service users in planning and delivering services which meet the needs of local communities.

Care or management of resources

• To take care of, and use carefully, the Trust’s equipment and physical resources.
• To ensure that the post-holder has sufficient resources by estimating future needs and requesting supplies as needed.
• To be responsible for the safe-keeping of resources needed to implement psychological groups, and to be responsible for informing supervising psychologist/line manager when these need replenishing

Teaching and Training

• To continue to apply learning gained on the training program directly to practice.
• To prepare and present case load information to supervisors within the service on an agreed and scheduled basis, in order to ensure safe practice and the governance obligations of the practitioner, supervisor and service are delivered.
• To respond to and evidence the implementation of improved practice because of supervisor feedback.
• To engage in and respond to personal development supervision to improve competences and practice.
• To disseminate research and service evaluation findings through presentations and supervisory discussions.

Record-keeping and Information Governance

• To ensure that all information generated by own work is recorded as required by Trust policies and local procedures.
• Under the supervision of the psychologist to maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping and report writing, according to professional and Trust guidelines, including electronic data entry.
• To maintain data bases and enter data, and perform analyses and produce reports.

Research and development

• To assist in the design and implementation of audit and research projects to inform the service  Psychologist and others in the development of Trust psychology and other services, training provision and research activities.
• To undertake data collection, analysis, the production of reports and summaries, using IT and statistical programmes, which will represent a significant proportion of the job role
• To undertake searches of evidence-based literature and research to assist in the development in the Trust of evidence based practice.
• Under guidance to conduct surveys with service users and carers to gather views on service provision

Maintaining professional standards and continuing professional development

• To engage in robust managerial, clinical and case management supervision in accordance with professional practice guidelines, identifying the scope of practice of the individual postholder within the role, and working safely within that scope.
• To learn to understand the parameters of the role and when more senior clinical intervention is required.
• To gain wider experience of professional psychology within the NHS over and above that provided within the principal service area where the post-holder is employed.
• To ensure the maintenance of standards of own professional practice according to both the postholder’s employer and the Higher Education Institution in which they are enrolled.
• To ensure appropriate adherence to any new recommendations or guidelines set by the relevant departments.
• To ensure that confidentiality is always protected.
• To ensure that any risks or issues related to the safety and wellbeing of anyone the postholder comes into contact with during their professional duties are communicated and shared with appropriate parties in order to maintain individual safety and the public interest.
• To ensure clear objectives are identified, discussed, and reviewed with supervisors and senior colleagues on a regular basis as part of continuing professional development.
• To participate in individual performance review and respond to agreed objectives.
• To keep all records up to date in relation to Continuous Professional Development and the requirements of the post and ensure personal development plans maintains up to date specialist knowledge of latest theoretical and service delivery models/developments.
• To attend relevant educational opportunities in line with identified professional objectives.