Clinical Forensic Counselling Psychologist/Psychological Therapist

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Clinical and Client Care

1. To provide highly specialist psychological therapy assessments, formulations and interventions.
2. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of community clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans, including taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans with input from clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.
3. To provide culturally appropriate psychological therapy interventions with carers or families of referred clients when required.
4. To communicate, in a highly skilled and sensitive manner, to clients, family carers and others as appropriate, information that may be contentious or highly distressing concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care.
5. To produce reports on clients, in a timely manner, that convey the key findings of psychological assessment and formulation and treatment outcome in a way that does justice to the complexity of the problems described, but that are understandable to the recipients of the reports, including clients and referrers.
6. To undertake psychometric and neuropsychological testing as appropriate, including selecting the appropriate tests, administering and scoring the tests in accordance with the manual, and interpreting the findings in the context of all relevant information.
7. To undertake risk assessment, risk monitoring and risk management for individual clients in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures, and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
8. To work in partnership with other disciplines and to maintain links with statutory and non-statutory agencies as appropriate.
9. To ensure that all services provided are acceptable and accessible to the diverse communities served.
10. Implement outcome measurement as determined by the local service.
11. Attend and contribute to psychological therapies and directorate meetings and forums.

Responsibilities for team and service clinical functioning

1. Under the supervision of a senior psychologist, to lead the family and carers strategy for the Directorate.
2. To facilitate a family and carers forum.
3. To support the inpatient ward team in the effective working of the team and a psychologically informed framework for the team.
4. Deliver accessible and acceptable services to diverse local communities.
5. To be proactive in challenging discrimination.
6. To advise other members of the service on specialist psychological care of clients.
7. To liaise with the service/s MDT and other professionals including to liaise with referrers, GPs and other professionals concerned with clients in order to develop and review care plans.
8. To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research.
9. Work within the remit of relevant policies and procedures for the safe running of the service.

Policy and service development

1. To implement clinical governance standards within the service and ensure that these are maintained and improved.
2. Ensure that services to clients are of a high quality and are managed efficiently, according to the overall requirements of the Trust, NHS and government guidance and standards.
3. To undertake quality improvement projects relevant to the role.
4. To ensure the engagement of service users in planning and delivering services.

Management and supervision

1. To provide line management to pre-qualified staff and to supervise students and trainees.
2. To support recruitment of psychological therapies staff to the service.
3. For staff line managed, to ensure local standards are implemented for the allocation and review of work, job planning, review of performance, sickness management and initial stages of grievance or disciplinary action.
4. To oversee quality line management and supervision within the team structure, ensuring that assistant psychologists and trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to health care, and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.
5. To supervise psychological work carried out by other professionals as appropriate.
6. To provide highly specialist advice, consultation and training of staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate. This may include work with the Criminal Justice System and Children's Services.

Teaching and Training

1. To provide and support specialist clinical placements for students and trainees in applied psychological practice.
2. To contribute to the delivery of teaching and training to psychological practitioners and other professions.
3. To contribute to the development of the knowledge and skills base within the service by maintaining an active awareness of current developments in psychological therapy and risk assessment / management and to implement knowledge gained in practice.
4. To disseminate research and service evaluation findings through presentations and published articles.
5. To continue to gain wider post-qualification experience of psychological therapies and risk assessment, over and above that provided within the principal service area where the post-holder is employed.

Record-keeping and Information Governance

1. To ensure that all information generated by own work is recorded as required by Trust policies and local procedures.
2. To ensure the highest standards of clinical record keeping and report writing, according to professional and Trust guidelines, including electronic data entry, in those parts of the service for which the post-holder has management or leadership responsibility.

Research and development

1. To undertake the planning, initiation and completion of research, service evaluation and audits, and quality improvement projects relevant to the service and the directorate research agenda.
2. To oversee the planning, initiation and completion of research, service evaluation and audits by students, trainees and colleagues.
3. To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION, PLEASE READ:

All applicants must be willing to undertake National Security Vetting in order to work in a Prison Setting. This will be completed as part of the pre-employment checks through Oxleas and the prison vetting team.

You will need to provide:

1. Proof of right to work documentation
2. Proof of ID, needs to include 1 photographic ID
3. Proof of address documentation
4. Non-UK passport holders will need to have correct documentation (right to work in the UK) and a Home office Share code.
5. 5 years address history will be needed.
6. Applicants that are not UK Passport holders who provide less than 5 years UK address history will need to provide a Police Certificate which must be in English from where they resided previously.
7. Applicants who are UK Passport holders who have lived abroad for a period of more than six months during the last three years will need to provide a certificate of good conduct or an overseas police check in English from the countries resided in or visited.

In order to assist you in obtaining a Police Certificate, guidance can be sought from:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/criminal-records-checks-for-overseas-applicants

If the country you have resided in is not listed here, you can obtain the necessary information by contacting the relevant Embassy or High Commission for that Country. Their contact details can be found on the Foreign & Commonwealth Office website (http://www.fco.gov.uk/en).

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Entry-level qualification in applied psychological therapy/mental health/social welfare profession or equivalent and demonstrable practice in this field (ie professional Doctorate, or combination of MSc plus PG Diploma level/supervised practice/additional training) that has been accepted for the purposes of professional registration.
• Additional training beyond entry-level qualification in a specialised area of psychological practice (through formal post-qualification training (PG Diploma or equivalent), OR a combination of specialist short courses and/an evidenced portfolio of supervised practice-based learning in a specialist area of clinical psychological therapy practice, assessed by a registered body and/or an experienced clinical supervisor to be of equal level to a Postgraduate Diploma or higher.
• Registered with professional body or regulatory body as appropriate to psychological therapy discipline ie HCPC/UKCP/BACP/BABCP.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as required by the professional body.

Experience

Essential criteria

• Completion of a minimum of two years full-time (or equivalent part-time) post-doctoral / post qualification supervised experience.
• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients with the full range of clinical severity under supervision.
• Post-qualification of working with and addressing issues of diversity, including experience of working within a multicultural framework.
• Experience of maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.

Skills/Abilities/Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Ability to administer, score and interpret psychometric and neuropsychological tests with appropriate training and supervision.
• Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

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.

Documents to download

• Job Description & Person Specification (PDF, 760.3KB)
• Important Additional Information For Candidates (please read carefully) (PDF, 160.6KB)
• Privacy Notice for Staff (PDF, 268.6KB)
• Staff Benefits (PDF, 2.5MB)