Highly Specialised Clinical, Forensic or Counselling Psychologist

Highly Specialised Clinical, Forensic or Counselling Psychologist

Are you interested in complexity, longer-term therapeutic work, and close multi-disciplinary team working? Would you like to be involved in providing trauma-informed, creative and compassionate care?

The Forensic Psychology department is seeking to recruit a Clinical, Counselling or Forensic Psychologist to join Thames House, our low secure women's in-patient service. This role is either suitable for a Band 7 Psychologist who would like to develop into an 8a role, or for a person already working at 8a level.

You'll be responsible for ensuring the provision of a high quality psychological service within the unit, engaging with a challenging but rewarding population. The model of care at Thames House is based on attachment theory and is trauma-informed. There is an emphasis on close multi-disciplinary team working. Staff support and working with families/carers are an important part of the role.

There will also be opportunities to lead on service wide projects. Our psychology department is proud of the diversity of therapeutic approaches utilised in our work, where supervision and continuing professional development is prioritised.

This is a full-time role, although part-time applicants will be considered. The role includes an RSU allowance of £1,446 per annum on top of your salary.

Please note if you are based outside of the UK you will need to hold HCPC registration in order to be considered for this role

Main duties of the job

You'll be providing a highly specialist psychology service to a 26-bed low secure women's inpatient unit, including:

• Holding a clinical caseload, providing therapeutic input to individuals, groups, and family/carers, and contribute towards multi-disciplinary team meetings.
• Providing supervision to Assistant and/or Trainee Psychologists, and develop and deliver teaching and training.
• Service development, both at Thames House, and within the wider Forensic service.
• Undertaking highly specialist psychological assessments of complex cases, assessing personality, beliefs, attitudes, behaviour, emotional function, and other relevant psychological characteristics and dimensions and factors relevant to the development.
• Maintenance and understanding of the client's difficulties as appropriate, using standardised psychometric instruments, protocol based assessment tools, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and structured and semi-structured interviews as required.
• Utilising assessment techniques directly with clients and collects information from family members and others involved in the client's care as appropriate.

Job responsibilities

You'll be working collaboratively with the individual using the service to develop and implements complex plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of the clients presenting problems, that are based upon highly specialist knowledge and an appropriate conceptual framework, that employ psychological procedures and practices having an evidence base for their efficacy and/or an established theoretical basis for their use and that are provided across the full range of care settings.

The role also involves providing teaching/training sessions/programmes in psychological principles and practice for other members of the MDT.

In addition, you'll supervise and line manage qualified and unqualified psychologists as commensurate with the grade and experience of the post-holder and delegated by line manager.

Person Specification

Qualifications/Professional

• Completion of a British Psychological Society accredited Doctoral Level postgraduate professional training course in clinical psychology (the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology), Forensic Psychology or Counselling Psychology.
• Registered Practitioner Psychologist with the HCPC.
• Specialist Trauma Training, e.g. EMDR, NET or CBT-PTSD.

Knowledge and skills

• Knowledge and skills in use of psychological assessment, formulation and interventions with complex presenting problems.
• Skills in providing consultation and training from a psychological perspectives to members of other professional and non-professional groups.
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific 'difficult to treat' groups (e.g. personality disorder, challenging behaviour, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc.).

Experience

• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, with clients of all ages across the lifespan and of wide-ranging presenting problems that reflect the full spectrum of clinical complexity and severity.
• Has further specialist post qualification training, has gained further clinical experience and has received of a minimum of 50 hours clinical supervision whilst working as a qualified clinical, forensic or counselling psychologist.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
• Experience of working therapeutically with clients with complex needs.

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.

£53,755 to £60,504 a year plus an RSU allowance of £1,466 per annum | pro rata