Clinical Psychologist

Band 8a (Consideration would be given for B7/8a development post)

Clinical Psychologist - Adult Autism Assessment Service, MPFT

Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin

Are you looking for a new challenge? Do you have the skills and experience to develop high-quality service provision with, and for, people querying an autism diagnosis? Then this is the job for you!

MPFT are looking for a creative, passionate, innovative, and experienced practitioner psychologist to help develop the adult autism assessment service for people in Shropshire and Telford and Wrekin.

You will be helping us to develop the current adult autism assessment service in Telford and Wrekin, and to expand MPFT's adult autism assessment service into Shropshire County.

Shropshire has two well established Autism Hubs One in Telford and one in Shrewsbury. Both Hubs are part of the Community, Voluntary and Social Enterprise (CVSE) sector and are partners with MPFT in the delivery of our adult autism assessment offer.

You will gain experience and knowledge in person-centred and evidence-based approaches to diagnosing autism in multi-disciplinary and multi-agency settings.

Experience in this field will be beneficial but not essential. Appropriate clinical supervision and CPD opportunities will be provided.

Main duties of the job

You will have close working relationships with colleagues in the Autism Hubs and be part of a multi-disciplinary team of practitioners within the adult autism assessment pathway, including other psychologists, speech and language therapists and occupational therapists. There is a separate pathway for diagnosing autism when people have a learning disability.

The Clinical Psychologist will provide highly specialist psychological assessment for autism and deliver a service across Telford and Wrekin. The post-holder will provide highly complex assessments leading to psychological formulations and the development of care plans and risk assessments (where appropriate).

The post-holder will undertake highly specialist diagnostic assessments of adults to include standardised assessments such as ADOS2 and ADI-R for the assessment of autism.

The post-holder will work as a member of a Multi-Disciplinary Assessment Team (MDT). They will present complex assessment information in MDT meetings and work with colleagues in MDT to discuss whether individuals referred meet diagnostic criteria for ASD, whilst considering other differential diagnoses.

The post-holder will provide highly specialist psychological input to the Adult Autism Assessment Team including providing clinical supervision to less experienced psychologists and other members of the MDT assessment team.

About us

By joining Team MPFT, you will be helping your communities and in return for this, we will support you by:

• Supporting your career development and progression
• Excellent NHS Pension scheme
• Generous maternity, paternity and adoption leave
• Options for flexible working
• Up to 27 days annual leave (increasing with service up to 33 days) and the opportunity to purchase additional leave
• Extensive Health and Wellbeing support and resources
• If you work in our community teams, we pay for your time travelling between patients
• Lease car if you complete more than 500 business miles per annum, fully insured and maintained (including tyres), mileage paid at lease car rate
• Salary sacrifice car - fully insured and maintained (including tyres), your gross pay is reduced by the cost of the vehicle before tax, NI and pension deductions are calculated, mileage paid at business rates
• Salary sacrifice bikes up to £2k
• Free car parking at all trust sites
• Free flu vaccinations every year
• Citizens Advice support linked with a Hardship Fund for one off additional support up to £250 (if the criteria is met)

And more. We are proud to be a diverse and inclusive organisation and there is a choice of staff networks that help you meet like-minded people.

Please note, we may be required to close this vacancy early if we receive a high volume of applications.

Job description

Job responsibilities

Main duties continued:

The post-holder will also provide advice and consultation regarding service users psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues and to others involved in the persons care. They will be working autonomously within professional guidelines and within the scope of the services policies and procedures. The post provides opportunities to utilise and develop skills in clinical audit policy and service development and clinical research within the areas served by the team/service. The post holder will be required to work in clinic and community settings including service users own homes (where appropriate and clinically indicated).

Detailed main responsibilities:

1. To provide highly specialist psychological assessments, within the areas of agreed responsibility, for adults whose presentations are suggestive of a possible autistic spectrum condition, as part of a multi-disciplinary assessment process.
2. To offer supervision and advice to other clinical staff within the Adult Autism Assessment Service.
3. Assessments will involve the interpretation and integration of highly complex data from a variety of sources including psychological and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations, semi-structured interviews, and guided clinical inquiry methods with service users, family members and others involved in the service users care.
4. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility, within professional guidelines, for the assessment, therapeutic treatment and discharge of adults and their families/carers.
5. The post-holder will exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within their work.
6. The post-holder will be responsible for adhering to relevant Trust policies and standards and will be accountable for professional and clinical actions.
7. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users and to provide advice to less experienced psychologists and other professions, on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
8. To support other staff with risk assessment and risk management as a senior clinician within the Adult Autism Assessment Service.
9. 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 impacted on the individuals current presentation.
10. To manage and prioritise own caseload in relation to service users whose problems are within the remit of the service and to keep the service manager informed of case-load, waiting times and other issues that affect the service.
11. Through supervision to support other clinicians with caseload management, prioritisation.
12. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of service users under their care and to monitor progress during the course of their treatment within the service.
13. To communicate highly complex and potentially highly contentious information in a highly skilled and sensitive manner in situations with service users who may be extremely hostile or highly emotional requiring the highest level of communication skills.
14. To be involved in referral screening processes, duty calls, MDT service meetings and other service functions as required.

**Please see the attached Job Description and Person Specification for the further full details on this role.**

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• ESSENTIAL: It is a condition of employment that the post-holder is registered with the Health & Care Professions Council and is eligible for registration as a Chartered Clinical Psychologist. Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS including two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology.

Desirable

• Further training in a specific psychological assessment, model or intervention specific to the role remit/area of work Qualification in one or more recognised and accredited diagnostic assessment/s for Autistic Spectrum Conditions.

Experience

Essential

• 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, including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.

Desirable

• Assessed experience of working as a qualified clinical psychologist.
• Experience working therapeutically with autistic people with significant emotional or mental health difficulties, and their families/carers.
• Experience of specialist standardised assessments for ASC such as ADOS2 and ADI-R.

Personal Attributes

Essential

• A passion and enthusiasm for working with people presenting with ASC and their families and carers. A desire to champion and enable people with ASC.

Employer details

Employer name

Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

Address

Hazeldine House, Telford, TF3 4JL

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