Clinical Lead Principal Psychologist

Job summary

Are you excited by the challenge of launching a new service? Following on from a successful pilot in Brighton, the Reflect Primary Care Mental Health Treatment Requirement Service is ready to expand to Crawley. Reflect is commissioned by NHS England to provide Community Sentence Treatment Requirements in collaboration with the Probation Service and substance use services. The new service will provide Primary Care Mental Health Treatment Requirement for eligible people who are sentenced at Crawley Magistrate Court and county wide Crown Courts.

You will be based in Crawley Probation and work closely with our partner agencies, the Probation Service and Change, Grow, Live (CGL), to deliver high quality, evidence based psychologically informed interventions to an often high need and marginalised population.

As the Clinical Lead Psychologist you will lead a small team of multi professionals, having operational, strategic oversight and clinical responsibility for the service. You will play an integral role in shaping the service, supporting the team, building relationships with our partners and reporting to NHS England. You will support the team in their assessments and formulations, deliver training and clinically supervise team members.

Experience of working in the Criminal Justice System and primary care settings is advantageous but not essential.

Main duties of the job

You will provide a professional and clinical leadership role within the service/ team, providing a high quality, specialist applied psychology service to clients, where there are highly complex presentations.

You will be responsible for the supervision and governance of a group of mental health practitioners of various professional backgrounds. You will support psychological practice within the team through consultation, supervision, formulation and training.

You will utilise research skills for audit, service development and research within the area served by the team/service.

Job responsibilities

You will be an applied psychologist with a core professional qualification recognised by the HCPC, and significant experience of working at a Senior Practitioner Psychologist level or similar, preferably in a service working with people with offending histories and / or high risk / challenging behaviours and presentations.

You will be able to demonstrate excellent consultation, communication and collaboration skills, and a successful / effective approach when working with a range of stakeholders / agencies within Health and Criminal Justice contexts. You will also be able to demonstrate experience in leadership roles, and will be an effective teacher, trainer and mentor to the staff you lead and support. A main part of the role is to produce psychological formulations for court report with a relatively quick turn-around. Experience of formulating, treatment planning, and communicating assessment outcomes to laymen is essential.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Post-graduate doctoral level training in applied psychology [or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996 or outside the UK] as approved by the HCPC, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology
• Professionally registered as a Practitioner Psychologist with the Health Professions Council (HCPC)

Knowledge/Experience

Essential

• Significant assessed experience of working as a qualified psychologist.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care, in-patient and residential care settings severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse
• Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care coordinator and also within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan
• Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group
• Well-developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of highly specialised psychological therapies and assessment methodologies.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as required by the HCPC.

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.
Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications.

Employer details

Employer name

Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Address

Crawley Probation
32-42 High Street
Crawley
RH10 1BW
Employer's website