Clinical/Forensic/Counselling Psychologist

Clinical/Forensic/Counselling Psychologist

Employer: ABL Health Ltd

Location: Bolton, United Kingdom

Salary: Competitive

Closing date: 4 Apr 2025

Discipline: Life Sciences, Forensics, Psychology

Position Type: Permanent

Hours: Full Time

Job summary
The purpose of ABL's Intensive Personalised Support (IPS) Service is to enable individuals who are at risk of going into care to have a fulfilling life in the community and in their homes. By empowering the individuals we work with and their support networks we seek to reduce the breakdown of families as well as residential and educational placements; particularly reducing the need for residential placements, hospitalisation, criminalisation, and/or overall Social Services input by the time we step back.

Intensive Personalised Support offers a unique and exciting opportunity for professionals to work preventatively and responsively. ABL's innovative model offers a holistic person-centred approach to meeting the needs of the individuals we work with. Dependent on client need, we use formulation and positive behaviour support based on our relationship-building and information-gathering phase with clients, to meet our clients where they are and meet their needs. Most of our clients are children, young people, and their families, but we also work with adults.

Main duties of the job
We offer an intensive period of support, often over many months, with sessions multiple times a week. Session times can vary, but tend to be about 3-4 hours each. Our intent is to bring about long-term change and then to step back having equipped clients and/or their families to implement a consistent and sustainable plans across all relevant settings. Our sessions are typically delivered by our support workers and clinical delivery staff (assistant psychologists and PBS practitioners) based on session plans created by our clinical team. This allows our service to provide clinically-informed social support tailored to each client. Sometimes this may be supplemented by more in-depth or complex assessment and/or intervention provided by qualified clinicians or supported by the operational leadership team, which includes our designated safeguarding officer(s). Broadly speaking, our model contains the following stages of support:

1. Assessment and Relationship Building (Including agreeing outcomes that both the commissioner and our client want to achieve and intervention planning based on these outcomes)
2. Intervention (Including dynamic review of client formulation and/or PBS plan)
3. Maintenance (Keeping support in place to ensure changes achieved can be maintained independent of IPS)
4. Transitions and Stepping Back (Trying to ensure that we end positively, being mindful that endings have often been difficult and unpleasant in our clients previous experiences)

About us
ABL is an exciting fast-paced, growing community health organisation. As an experienced, CQC registered, provider of community health services, we are passionate about delivering evidence based, innovative, effective, and relevant health care services in partnership with individuals, communities and stakeholders.

Job responsibilities
Working as part of the Intensive Personalised Support (IPS) management team, the Clinical/Forensic/Counselling Psychologist is responsible for providing effective clinical guidance, support, and oversight across all of IPS operations. The appointee will work with management colleagues and delivery teams to ensure that the service is at the cutting edge of excellence and that outcomes for clients are demonstrably better than would otherwise be the case. This means involvement with cases from the referral stage through to their completion as summarised in greater detail within the duties and responsibility section below. It also includes involvement with creating, updating, and maintaining service policies, procedures, and outcome measures.

The Clinical/Forensic/Counselling Psychologist will work primarily on a consultancy model, achieving clinical oversight through their supervision of assistant psychologists and our positive behaviour support practitioner and their support of our delivery team. Nonetheless, in more complex instances the post holder may be required to carry out assessments and interventions directly with clients, or support their supervisees in meetings.

In addition to providing robust clinical guidance to the IPS service, there will be opportunities to provide expert advice and support to other ABL services, as well as ample opportunities for career development. The Clinical/Forensic/Counselling Psychologist will also assess needs, strive to reduce distress, and work to improve the psychological wellbeing of clients and/or their families who may have a variety of mental or physical health conditions, come from diverse backgrounds, and are often neurodivergent. We also welcome work to support team wellbeing and reflectiveness, an area we have been developing more in recognition of the challenging situations our team have to navigate and the importance of looking after our team so that they can provide the best support to our clients.

Person Specification
Knowledge and Skills
Essential

• Knowledge of and expertise of implementing Positive Behaviour Support strategies
• Experience (either pre-training, on training, or subsequently) of working with clients with complex needs that are relevant to the population in the service area.

Desirable

• Have an up-to-date knowledge of legislation and its implications for the professions and the client groups we work with.
• Knowledge of ongoing debates and discussions around guidelines; for ex. Regarding various diagnoses

Experience
Essential

• Able to assess, formulate and deliver appropriate interventions to afford behavioural change
• Working with and supporting people whose behaviour is described as concerning or challenging
• Evidence of continued professional development
• Experience of working with children and young people with a Learning Disability, Autism, and/or those that may be socially excluded

Desirable

• Experience of working cross-organisation to achieve outcomes

Qualifications
Essential

• Doctorate (or equivalent) in Clinical/Forensic/Counselling Psychology
• Registered with the HCPC
• 2 years post qualification experience

Desirable

• BPS Chartered
• Qualification and experience in supervising others
• Family Therapist
• Mental Health Qualification
• Qualifications and experience related to trauma-informed parenting Qualification and experience in communication strategies for individuals with additional communication needs (for ex. Talking mats)

Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration.