Band 8a Clinical/Counselling Psychologist - Swindon

Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust; Swindon; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job description

Job overview

We are looking for an enthusiastic and experienced Clinical or Counselling Psychologist to join the Swindon Psychological Therapies Service (PTS).

There are two elements to the job:

1. Windswept ward (0.4 wte): Windswept is a 14 bedded rehabilitation unit, providing input for adults of working age, experiencing complex mental health difficulties, most typically psychosis. The unit provides holistic care, including perspectives from a multi-disciplinary team. The ward are currently embarked on an exciting project to repatriate people who have been in long term, out of area placements, and to find creative ways to meet their needs more locally.
2. Community (0.6 wte): We are co-located with the Recovery team, and work closely with them to deliver high quality, evidence based interventions. There are opportunities to develop more specialist skills in working with a variety of different presentations in this part of the job. However, many of the people referred to Swindon PTS have a history of complex traumatic experiences, so experience of working with these presentations would be invaluable.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will provide assessment, formulation and psychological intervention for service users during their admission to Windswept. Consultation, training and facilitation of team formulation would be key aspects of the role. Psychology input to the ward is well established and highly valued by the multi-disciplinary team.

For the community part of the role, the post holder would provide assessment, formulation & ongoing psychological intervention to service users with complex mental health difficulties. As part of the CMHF transformation, there will also be opportunities to provide training & supervision to colleagues from other disciplines in the delivery of psychologically informed interventions.

Working for our organisation

We are AWP (Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust): a diverse organisation with over 5,000 dedicated staff providing inpatient and community-based mental health care.

We provide services from a range of locations to approximately 1.8 million people living in Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES), Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, across the county of Wiltshire and in parts of Dorset.

Our outstanding people promote mental health and wellbeing. The expertise and resources within AWP are dedicated to a person-centred approach for those who use our services and for all employees. We recognise that happy and fulfilled employees give better care.

AWP is committed to support and create a positive research and evidence-based environment and culture, which can have a beneficial impact on everyone who works for the organisation and the care we provide to those who use our services.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To provide a high quality and largely autonomous and systematic clinical/counselling psychology service.
• To undertake highly specialist assessments, including neuropsychological assessment, risk assessment and assessment for suitability for specialist psychological therapies with clients and their carers (as appropriate to the role).
• To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of clients' mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client's problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
• To be responsible for providing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations, drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
• To provide at least one specialist evidence based psychological intervention as dictated by the needs of the service.
• To provide highly specialist consultation to members of the various teams in the area and beyond regarding formulation and psychological management of clients of those teams.
• To use highly specialist psychological knowledge and skills to contribute to the more effective management of patients by teams.
• To be involved in the development and delivery of training within the Trust.
• To participate in clinical and caseload supervision arrangements provided by the Service.
• To maintain accurate records and to monitor clinical workload using agreed systems.
• To support the full implementation of Your Team, Your Conversation, Your Plan.
• To enter data as requested by the Trust in a timely manner.

Person specification

Education and Qualifications
Essential criteria

• Doctoral Clinical Psychology or Counselling Psychology qualification, or equivalent
• HCPC Registered
• Post qualification and further specialist training in specialist intervention, or models relevant to the setting

Desirable criteria

• Supervision Training

Experience and Knowledge
Essential criteria

• Experience of working alongside multidisciplinary colleagues
• Clinical supervision/consultation with other professionals.
• Evidence based therapeutic interventions with client group
• Psychological assessment skills and knowledge
• Advanced theoretical and practical knowledge in the specialism. Ability to use this knowledge to think systemically/ organizationally
• Experience of risk assessment and management
• Knowledge of relevant legislation eg MH Act.
• Experience of delivery of training

Desirable criteria

• Relevant R&D or clinical audit work post qualification.
• Clinical supervision of Clinical or Counselling psychology trainees
• Experience of working in an acute setting

Skills and Abilities
Essential criteria

• Ability to work effectively and flexibly as an integral member of a team
• Good communication and liaison skills
• Well organised with good administration skills
• Empathy/engagement skills with the client group
• Ability to cope with workload pressure/ prioritise workload
• Ability to work independently
• Self-awareness and emotional resilience

We are proud to be fostering a diverse workforce that reflects our communities. A key commitment to this is improving staff representation from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, those from the LGBTQ+ communities, people with 'lived-experience' of mental health conditions and people living with disabilities,- we are a 'Disability Confident Employer' offering a guaranteed interview to Disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria. This includes people with a variety of disabilities and neurodivergent conditions (for example autism, ADHD, sensory, physical and learning disabilities).

We encourage applications from people who wish to work on a flexible basis, recognising that flexibility may mean a range of different working patterns and hours, we do our utmost to work with our staff to meet their needs and the needs of our service users.

Click here to view our applicant guidance.

Please apply to join us, we would love to hear from you. Any personal details you supply to us are kept safe in line with the General Data Protection Regulations.

Adverts normally close for application a few minutes before midnight on the closing date and we will let you know if we are offering you an interview by email via our recruitment system 'TRAC'. We contact all applicants within 4 weeks after the closing date, so please check your emails regularly once you have submitted your application; you are welcome to contact us, via the TRAC system, if you have any queries about your application.

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.