Psychological Therapist (Personality Disorders)

Salary: £37,338 - £44,962 per annum, pro rata (Inclusive of 5% HCAs)

Salary period: Yearly

Closing: 31/03/2025 08:00

Employer heading

Band 6

Values Based Screener

At Hertfordshire Partnership Foundation Trust we are looking for people to join us who share our values and those of the NHS. Before your application can be considered please take part in our online values questionnaire, which you can find below. When you have finished you will be sent a 'completion code' by email, which will be valid for 6 months and required to submit your application form.

Job overview

Are you a qualified Mental Health nurse, OT or Social worker?

Or are you an experienced PWP, a qualified CAP, CBT therapist or registered with BACP?

Are you interested in working with an outstanding Trust to develop and deliver community treatment in mental health?

Through an extensive expansion of our psychology provision we are in a period of skill development with the wider workforce and embedding trauma informed approaches across all wards.

We are seeking to recruit a Dialectical Behaviour Therapist (DBT) to join our friendly Adult Community Mental Health Service (ACMHS). This role is based in Hemel Hempstead covering North West Hertfordshire.

Ideally, you will already be trained in DBT; however, full training will be provided as required for the successful candidate.

We welcome diversity in our workforce and encourage applicants from people of all ages and backgrounds, such as those with lived experience of mental health difficulties.

Main duties of the job

The successful candidate will:

1. Have a core mental health qualification and registration (including nursing, social work, occupational therapy).
2. Have an interest in working collaboratively with service users (and their families) to develop their skills to improve their ability to tolerate and manage strong emotion.
3. Have proven experience of working with service users with mental health needs.
4. Be able to work flexibly as the needs of the service demand.
5. Hold a full valid driving licence and have access to a car to use regularly for business purposes (unless you have a disability as defined by the Equality Act 2010).

In return, we can offer you:

1. Development and training opportunities.
2. Regular supervision.
3. 5% on top of basic salary high cost allowance supplement (subject to a minimum and a maximum payment pro rata).
4. 27 days holiday rising to 33 days (depending on NHS Trust service) plus bank holidays (pro rata where applicable).
5. One of the UK's best pension schemes.
6. Free Pilates lessons.
7. Comprehensive health and wellbeing programme.
8. Special leave for family and personal reasons.
9. NHS Car Lease Scheme (for substantive staff).
10. Employee Assistance Programme.

Our staff survey results tell a story of highly engaged, motivated, passionate people working at HPFT. The survey has shown that staff overwhelmingly believe that their role makes a difference to service users, to the extent that HPFT had the best score nationally for this question.

Working for our organisation

Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT)

Our family of over 4000 members of staff provide health and social care for over 400,000 people with mental ill health, physical ill health and learning disabilities across Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Norfolk, delivering these services within the community and several inpatient settings. We also deliver a range of nationally commissioned specialist services including Tier 4 services for children and young people, perinatal services, plus medium and low secure learning disabilities services.

The care we provide makes a fantastic difference to the lives of our service users, their families and carers - everything is underpinned by choice, independence and equality, with our Trust values embedded throughout:

Our Trust values are:

Welcoming. Kind. Positive. Respectful. Professional.

These values are at the core of who we are, everything we do, and how we do it!

Would you like to be part of the HPFT family? Would you like to work with us to ensure our service users live the fullest lives possible they can? Would you like to be supported in your career to be the best that you can be?

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

1. To provide psychological assessments of clients referred to the team based upon the appropriate use, interpretation, and integration of data from a variety of sources including psychological 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.
2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problem.
3. To be responsible for implementing psychological interventions from within your area of specialty for individuals, carers, families, and groups, within and across teams.
4. To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options considering both theoretical and therapeutic models for individuals, families, or groups as appropriate.
5. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment, and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
6. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis, and treatment plan.
7. 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.
8. 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.

For full details of the role and responsibilities for this vacancy please refer to the Job Description and Person Specification documents attached.

Person specification

Qualifications and Training

1. Qualification and continuing registration* in one of the core mental health professions.
2. Continuing registration with body overseeing practice of core mental health profession (e.g. NMC, HCPC).

Desirable criteria

1. Additional training in approaches to PD (e.g. DBT or SCM).

Experience

1. Experience of assessment and treatment of clients across a full range of care settings.
2. Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups including adults with personality disorders.
3. Experience of multi-disciplinary team working.
4. Aware of current NHS initiatives and developments.

Desirable criteria

1. Experience of MDT working.

Diversity

1. Ability to apply psychological practice in different cultural contexts.

Physical Skills

1. Own form of transportation to be able to commute between sites.

About us

Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) is rated by the Care Quality Commission as a provider of mental health and learning disability services. In 2021, we won the prestigious Health Service Journal award for Mental Health Trust of the Year, with the judges saying they were “blown away” by our people’s achievements and that everything they saw “sings and hums”. This year, our staff rated us the 4 best mental health and learning disability trust to work for out of all 52 trusts in the country. Our staff tell us that they are proud to be part of the HPFT team, proud of the standard of care we provide and proud that service users are our top priority. Our people tell us they feel supported through a great development, wellbeing and work-life balance offer and a highly compassionate, values-driven culture. We are equally proud of our staff, who live our values of being welcoming, kind, positive, respectful and professional so that together we provide great care and great outcomes for our service users and carers.Outstanding

If you would like to join a team to be proud of and you share our values and passion for great care and outcomes for our service users and carers, we would love to hear from you.

Additional Information

HPFT is committed to being an equal opportunities employer and in order to reflect the diversity of its population, positively encourages applications from all areas of the community. We aim to be a representative organisation with regards to age, disability, ethnicity, gender, beliefs and sexual orientation and are fully committed to equality, diversity and human rights and encourage applications from all sections of the community including users of mental health services.

The Trust is committed to helping staff balance work and home life and welcomes applications from candidates wishing to work part-time or under flexible working arrangements.

Infection Control

All our staff will need to comply with current Infection Prevention and Control measures which could include wearing a mask on all our Trust sites and in all roles.

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.