Clinical or Counselling Psychologist

A unique and exciting opportunity has arisen for an enthusiastic and motivated clinical or counselling psychologist to work one day a week in the Camden Diabetes Integrated Practice Unit (IPU). This post has been successfully delivered one day a week and is a key member of the IPU team.

The IPU works as a diverse multidisciplinary team in primary, secondary and tertiary care to design care plans that meet the needs of people with Diabetes.

Main duties of the job

The postholder will use their knowledge and skills to provide a range of interventions to ameliorate psychological distress and enhance physical and physiological wellbeing in service users.

This role is embedded fully into the multi-disciplinary teams of the service and will provide psychological expertise to the team as well as working alongside medical and allied health professionals across a range of contexts.

We are looking for an HCPC registered Clinical or Counselling Psychologist with experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of a wide variety of client groups across the full range of care settings.

Job responsibilities

Job Description

Job title: Clinical or Counselling Psychologist in Diabetes

Hours: 7.5 hours per week

Contract: Permanent

Accountable to: Medical Director, Camden Health Partners

Responsible for: Psychological Services for Individuals with Diabetes

Description of the Service

The Camden Diabetes Integrated Practice Unit (IPU) works as part of a diverse multi-disciplinary team in primary, secondary, and tertiary care to design care plans that meet the needs of people with Diabetes. The team serves patients registered with a GP and Primary Care Networks in the Camden borough. Diabetes can have a significant impact on the quality of someone life and the financial implications on the NHS. The Team aims to optimise health and wellbeing, reducing complications and prevent unscheduled hospital visits. The Community Diabetes Team offers time-limited input for Camden patients who require specialist support. Most service users have Type 2 Diabetes but the service also offers support to individuals with Type 1 Diabetes who are disengaged with care or require outreach support. The post holder will be employed by Camden Health Partners and will work in the Camden Community Diabetes IPU based at St Pancras Hospital.

JOB PURPOSE

This role is a unique opportunity to provide high quality psychological care to an award-winning, forward thinking diabetes service in which psychological insights and care are highly valued and considered of central importance to the strategic objectives of the service.

The clinical/counselling psychologist role is highly valued and embedded fully into the multi-disciplinary teams of the service. The post-holder will be expected to work alongside medical and allied health professional colleagues across a range contexts, including but not limited to; single and multi-professional outpatient consultations, home visits, and multi-disciplinary team meetings. A key part of the role is liaising with other agencies such as mental health teams, social services, GPs.

The post holder will:

• Use their knowledge and skills to provide a range of interventions to ameliorate psychological distress and enhance physical and psychological wellbeing in service users.
• Support the psychological care offered to service users by other members of the multi-disciplinary team by providing consultation and training, including but not limited to the provision of psychological expertise within multi-disciplinary team meetings.
• Potentially provide training and support for the design and implementation of interventions to change health-related behaviour at all levels of care, including initiatives to encourage population, community and individual level change, and encompassing system, practitioner and service-user change.
• Provide advice and support for colleagues and patients to maintain clinical excellence, improve diabetes services, reduce the number of admissions, length of stay in hospital and to promote patient self-care and improved quality of life.

MAIN DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Clinical:

1. To provide highly developed specialist psychological assessments of patients based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with patients, family members and others involved in the patients care.
2. To formulate plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a patients psychological difficulties based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the patients problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
3. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within the Diabetes Service, individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
4. To make highly skilled evaluations and decisions about psychological treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group, as well as their medical and practical circumstances.
5. To provide psychological input to the structured education sessions run by the service
6. To provide expertise within the service for specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to the formulation and implementation of care plans to support the physical and psychological health of service users.
7. To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all service users of the service , across all settings and agencies serving the Diabetes patient group.
8. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for relevant individual patients and to provide both general and specialist advice for psychologists and other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.
9. To communicate in a highly skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of service users under their care and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both single and multi-disciplinary care.

Teaching, training and supervision:

1. To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a relevant senior clinical psychologist and this will contribute to on-going development of additional professional skills, experience and knowledge.
2. To continue to gain wider post-qualification experience relevant to the execution of duties of the role.
3. To develop skills in the area of professional and/or post-graduate teaching, training and supervision and to provide supervision to other professionals on the psychological aspects of their work as required.
4. To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the patient group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.

Management, recruitment, policy and service development:

1. To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the operational policies and services of the Camden Integrated Diabetes Service, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service and evaluation and audit.
2. To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.

Research and service evaluation

1. To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
2. To undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research.
3. To undertake project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within the service to help develop service provision.

General

1. To ensure the development, maintenance and dissemination of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in potential internal and external CPD training and development programmes.
2. To ensure the development and articulation of best practice in psychology within the service area and contribute across the service by exercising the skills of a reflexive and reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the field of counselling, clinical and health psychology and related disciplines.
3. To ensure the highest standards of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry and recording, report writing and the responsible exercise of professional self-governance in accordance with professional codes of practice of the British Psychological Society, HCPC and Trust policies and procedures.
4. To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to both the specific client group and mental health.

Further conditions

1. This is not an exhaustive list of duties and responsibilities, and the post holder may be required to undertake other duties which fall within the grade of the job, in discussion with the manager.
2. This job description will be reviewed regularly in the light of changing service requirements and any such changes will be discussed with the post holder.
3. The post holder is expected to comply with all relevant Camden Health Partners policies, procedures and guidelines, including those relating to Equal Opportunities, Health and Safety at Work Act (174) and Confidentiality of Information.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• Postgraduate level training in clinical or counselling psychology at Doctoral level or equivalent on a BPS accredited training course.
• HCPC registered Clinical or Counselling Psychologist.
• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.

Experience

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and inpatient settings.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical 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 working with clients with physical health problems or health-related behaviour change.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
• Experience of the application of clinical counselling psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Experience of developing and/or running self-management groups.
• Experience of working with clients with eating and/or weight problems.
• Experience of using mindfulness-based approaches with clients.

Skills and Knowledge

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
• Knowledge of the physiological basis to the development and management of Type I and Type II Diabetes.
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with).

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.