Practitioner Psychologist Band 7

NHS; London; On-site; GBP 35,000 - 55,000; Full time

Job description

Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust

We are an innovative, welcoming team looking for an enthusiastic psychologist to join our Paediatric Sleep Service at the Evelina Children's Hospital.

This is an exciting opportunity for a qualified practitioner psychologist with a strong interest in sleep, with prior experience in paediatric/CAMHS psychology or adult sleep services, to gain experience in a tertiary level multidisciplinary paediatric sleep service. For service information please see our website Sleep medicine services | Evelina London.

The post holder will contribute to the implementation of stepwise psychology/non-medical pathways for children and young people with sleep disorders and behavioural sleep problems, who may also have mental health issues related to their sleep and/or additional neurodevelopmental conditions such as Autism and ADHD.

The post holder will join an enthusiastic and skilled team of psychologists in specialist areas of Neurosciences and the wider Evelina London/GSTT NHS Trust. Dependent on interest, the post holder will have opportunities for shadowing and supporting discrete pieces of clinical work with other teams to widen breadth of experience. The post is supported by the Consultant Psychologists and other Lead Practitioner Psychologists within Neurosciences.

The practitioner psychologist will also have the opportunity of offering supervision to the team's assistant psychologist or undergraduate placement student.

Main duties of the job

Under supervision of the senior practitioner psychologist, the post-holder will contribute to the ongoing development and delivery of a high-quality Specialist Clinical Health Psychology Service for people aged up to 18 years with sleep disorders and families/carers. The provision of evidenced-based, time-limited psychological interventions to promote psychological well-being and physical health is a key requirement.

The post-holder will exercise autonomous professional responsibility for his/her own actions and will provide assessment (including cognitive assessment depending on the post holder's competencies), therapeutic interventions, and psychosocial support to patients and their families (including 1-1 and groups), and play a role in the development of psychologically informed working practice within the areas. Group therapy support may occur on termly basis. The post holder is expected to collaborate with other members of the Sleep Service to achieve the service's aims and to contribute to service developments in the area of understanding, evaluating, and managing people with haematological conditions.

The post involves frequent staff consultation and team formulation in the context of complex client working. The post holder will utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research.

About us

The Paediatric Neurosciences Service is a multi-disciplinary regional and national service that focuses on children and young people with neurological conditions (including inpatient and outpatient services, neuropsychology and neuro-rehabilitation for conditions such as acquired brain injury and cerebral palsy), and neurodevelopmental disorders (particularly autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, language and communication disorders, intellectual disability, Tics and Tourette's, complex feeding and sleep problems). Services within neurosciences are largely tertiary and hospital based with growing service outreach to the community. The service specialises in the diagnosis and management of highly complex cases, which have a range of co-morbidities, including physical health and genetic conditions, acquired brain injury and associated challenges around functioning and coping, intellectual impairment, neurodevelopmental and mental health disorders, severe challenging behaviour and is composed of multidisciplinary teams each working in an integrated way to deliver care.

Job responsibilities

Please see attached JD and Person Specification for full information. We would also strongly encourage potential applicants to make contact to discuss the role informally.

Person Specification

Knowledge/ Qualifications

• Doctoral level qualification in clinical, educational or health or counselling psychology (or equivalent for those who trained before 1996) as accredited by BPS.
• Eligibility for Chartered status with the BPS.
• HCPC Registration as Practitioner Psychologist
• Experience of working within an acute or community health care/paediatrics setting.
• Experience of working psychologically with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems.
• Experience of using evidence based psychological interventions (including cognitive behaviour therapy) for the assessment and treatment of a wide variety of psychological problems, working in both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary teams.
• Experience of providing both group based and individual psychological interventions.
• Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Experience of working in a multi-disciplinary team.
• Experience of teaching and training other professionals in psychological concepts.

Skills

• Knowledge of psychological interventions, application and supervision of others particularly cognitive behaviour therapy and associated third wave approaches.
• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological, neuropsychological and behavioural assessment and intervention, requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• A strong ability to communicate at both a written and oral level, imparting complex, highly technical and clinically sensitive information to patients, their families, and carers and a wide range of lay and professional people within and outside the NHS. This may require negotiating, motivating, training, reassuring others and demonstrating empathy.
• Experience and ability to undertake risk assessment of client in relation to self and others, and refer on to appropriate services as necessary.
• Awareness of racial, cultural and diversity differences/issues through attendance of relevant training.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
• 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 work effectively within a multidisciplinary team and contribute to effective team functioning.
• Ability to identify, provide and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and challenging interactions.
• Ability to undertake research according to needs of the service, bringing doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including multivariate data analysis, as appropriate for the field of clinical health psychology.

Additional Information

• Ability to maintain periods of prolonged concentration frequently throughout the day as required for complex methods of psychological assessment and delivery of interventions.
• Ability to contain and work with organisational stress and ability to 'hold' the stress of others. Commitment to continuing professional development, partnership working and to reflective clinical practise.
• Well-developed IT skills including data entry and analysis of research data using Microsoft programmes and appropriate statistical packages such as SPSS.

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.