Clinical/Practitioner Psychologist in Paediatrics (General Outpatient)

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Clinical:

1. To be responsible for providing a systematic and autonomous clinical service, within the general outpatient stream, in accordance with objectives agreed with clinical and professional managers.
2. To provide psychological assessments of patients referred to the paediatric psychology service based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of highly complex data from a variety of sources including psychological, psychometric and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with patients, family members and others involved in the patient's care. This may, on occasion, involve school observation.
3. To assess and evaluate information from the child, family and significant others, such as the multi-disciplinary medical team and external agencies, relating to medical condition, developmental status and mental health and to incorporate this information into a clinical formulation.
4. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for children, parents/carers, families and groups, adjusting and refining psychological formulations, drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
5. To liaise with multi-disciplinary teams in a range of medical clinics, providing specialist psychological advice guidance to families and consultation to other professionals involved in the patient's care.
6. To evaluate and make decisions about 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.
7. To ensure that all members of the team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of patients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.
8. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual patients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
9. To have a good understanding of social services - advocating for the child's best interests.
10. To act as psychological care coordinator, ensuring the provision of a treatment package appropriate for the patients' needs, coordinating the work of others involved with care, taking lead responsibility for arranging regular professional meetings and psychological reviews as required, and ensuring all appropriate information is available and disseminated.
11. To communicate effectively in a skilled and sensitive manner (in both written and verbal form) with the patient, his/her family and all others involved in the network of care about difficult and highly distressing issues related to the child's physical and mental health status, and to monitor progress during the course of multidisciplinary interventions.
12. The post will require independent management of a caseload and provision of a psychology service with appropriate supervision and professional management, as per BPS and HCPC guidelines, and in line with the service thresholds and priorities set by the specialty lead clinician.
13. To provide cover for psychology colleagues as part of the duty/ on call service during working hours.
14. To attend case conferences, reviews and other meetings as appropriate.
15. To attend weekly referrals meetings, team meetings and relevant medical specialty meetings as required.
16. To ensure that reports and other correspondence are entered into the relevant notes and communicated to other professionals, parents and children, as appropriate.
17. To attain a thorough knowledge and understanding of common presenting medical conditions in order to provide a clinical psychology service, informed by the demands of the specific specialist paediatric service.
18. Contribute to thinking about how developments can be embedded into team protocols and clinical practice.

Teaching, training and supervision

1. To provide clinical supervision to assistant psychologists and psychology placement students.
2. To provide post-qualification training (CPD) to assistants and psychology placement students attached to the service with the agreement of the appropriate consultant psychologist.
3. To provide advice, consultation, training to other members of the multidisciplinary team for the provision of psychologically based interventions to help patients' functioning.
4. To provide post-qualification external teaching and training to multi-professional audiences.
5. To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional pre- and post-graduate training and clinical supervision and keep a log of all continued professional development (CPD), according to HCPC requirements.
6. To gain experience and skills relevant to clinical psychology and/or the service (as agreed with the professional psychology manager) up to 12 days per year (pro rata)
7. To receive regular clinical supervision from a more senior clinical psychologist in accordance with good practice guidelines. Where appropriate, to receive additional consultancy from senior professional colleagues.

Management, policy and service development

1. To contribute to and support the implementation of new or revised policies that improves the quality of the service in agreement with the Lead Psychologist or Head of Service.
2. To exercise delegated responsibility for managing the psychological materials employed in the assessment and treatment of children, young people and their parents.
3. To take on responsibility as designated by the Lead Psychologist for on-going audit and service evaluation relevant to psychological service provision and amending policies as appropriate.
4. To contribute to the development of the pan-trust psychology service and attending meetings as appropriate.

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 collaborate in project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues to help develop and improve services to clients and their families.

Person specification

Training & Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Doctoral level training in clinical psychology, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology, as accredited by the BPS.
• Current HCPC registration as a Clinical/Practitioner Psychologist

Desirable criteria

• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.
• Training in supervision of other psychological professionals

Experience

Essential criteria

• Experience of working with people with medical/chronic physical health conditions across a range of severity and presentations
• Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision
• Experience of working within a multi-disciplinary team and representing psychology.
• Experience of providing cognitive assessments
• Experience of working with other agencies e.g. social care
• Experience of working with children and young people

Desirable criteria

• Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Experience of working in an acute hospital with patients with medical/chronic health conditions
• Experience of developing and implementing group-based interventions.

Skills

Essential criteria

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• 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
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups

Desirable criteria

• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological approaches for specific problems (e.g. adherence difficulties, preparation for medical treatment)
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group (eg with regard to child protection and consent to treatment)
• Knowledge/experience of working with children with chronic health conditions

Other

Essential criteria

• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.

Desirable criteria

• Experience of working within a multicultural framework.

Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies for children with chronic physical health conditions and the impact of their treatment on quality of life.

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.