Highly Specialist Clinical or Counselling Psychologist

Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust; London; On-site; GBP 59,000 - 67,000

Job description

Highly Specialist Clinical or Counselling Psychologist

Band 8a

Main area: Adult Community Mental Health Services
Grade: Band 8a
Contract: Permanent
Hours: Part time - 30 hours per week (9-5)
Job ref: 277-7094898-CMH-1

Site: Ferryview Health Centre
Town: Woolwich
Salary: £59,490 - £66,239 pro rata pa inc
Salary period: Yearly
Closing: 06/04/2025 23:59

Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a clinical or counselling psychologist with substantial experience of working in adult mental health settings to work in our community psychosis pathway. We welcome applicants who enjoy working as part of a multi-disciplinary team and are passionate about equal opportunities and client-centred care. You will lead on the delivery of psychological interventions for people with a diagnosis of psychosis or bipolar disorder, including groups, family and systemic interventions, and cognitive-behavioural therapy.

You will work closely with psychologists and psychological therapists in a supportive and innovative team, as well as psychology professionals in the family consultation, community rehabilitation, and autism services. You will have regular supervision and access to trust-wide professional networks. There are possible opportunities to develop our links with local children and young people’s services and voluntary community and social enterprise organisations.

Greenwich offers a rich, culturally diverse and stimulating environment. We value our relationship with local training institutions and encourage our psychologists in continued professional development.

Main duties of the job

To provide a psychology service to clients of the Community Psychosis Pathway. You will be experienced in a range of clinical skills with clients with complex mental health issues, including group work, psychological assessments, family interventions, individual therapy, consultation, research and audit. You will be providing specialist psychological assessment and therapy with individuals, families and groups, at the same time as offering advice and consultation on clients’ psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues and to other, non-professional carers, working within the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures.

Working for our organisation

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children’s centres, schools and people’s homes.

We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.

Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:

• We Listen
• We Care

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to Greenwich Intensive Case Management for Psychosis Team based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with clients, family members and others involved in the client’s care.
• To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems and other relevant issues, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
• To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
• 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.
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically-based standard care plans.
• To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
• To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically-based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies.
• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
• To act as care coordinator, where appropriate, taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans under enhanced CPA including clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.
• To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.
• To provide clinical placements for trainee clinical psychologists ensuring the 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.
• To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.
• To continue to gain wider post-qualification experience of clinical psychology over and above that provided within the principal service area where the post-holder is employed.
• To develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training and supervision and to provide supervision to other MDT staff’s psychological work, as appropriate.
• To contribute to the pre- and post-qualification teaching of relevant healthcare staff, as appropriate.
• To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the teams’ operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.
• To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
• To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
• To undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research.
• To undertake project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within the service to help develop service provision.

General

• To maintain registration with the Health Professions Council as a Clinical Psychologist.
• To contribute to the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the postholder’s professional and service manager(s).
• To contribute to the development and articulation of best practice in psychology across the service, by continuing to develop 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 clinical psychology, forensic and related disciplines.
• To maintain 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 and Trust policies and procedures.
• To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to both community and acute mental health.

Person specification

Registration and qualifications

• HCPC registered or equivalent
• Further qualifications and/or training
• Experience of psychological therapies in secondary care adult mental health
• Experience of providing supervision
• Experience of NICE concordant interventions for people with psychosis
• Experience of running groups
• Experience of family work

Service Development and Research

• Experience of audit or service evaluation
• Experience of published research or service evaluation

We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace that welcomes and supports individuals of all abilities. Remember, if you meet the minimum criteria for this role and you have a disability, you can be guaranteed an interview under the Disability Confident Scheme - Please ensure you select this on your application form. We would encourage you to be open about your needs so we can work with you to design a comfortable and accessible interview experience. Any information you provide regarding a disability or a need for adjustments will be treated in confidence and will only be shared with colleagues who are supporting this request.

If you require any adjustments to participate fully in the interview process, please let us know by adding the relevant details when scheduling your preferred interview date and time. Please feel free to contact the appointing manager to discuss your needs.

Please note that the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is prohibited during the interview process. We also discourage overuse of AI during the application process because this can negatively impact the quality of your application and may hinder your chances of being shortlisted. Thank you.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

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.