Principal Clinical Psychologist
The post holder will provide psychological assessment and interventions in keeping with evidence based practice working autonomously within the professional guidelines and within the overall framework of the Trusts policies and procedures. The post holder will be involved with service development, research and audit in line with the service priorities.
The post holder will be expected to supervise and support the psychological assessment and therapy provided by other psychologists and other clinical members of the team who provide psychologically based care and treatment. The post holder will work in collaboration with professionals, carers and service users offering advice, consultation and supervision as appropriate.
The post holder will develop and maintain therapeutic relationships with clients, including in group settings. This will include joint working with complex cases which require more specialised levels of assessment and therapeutic skills. The post holder is expected to provide autonomous, highly specialist assessments of clients referred to the service based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of psychological of psychological 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, and, where appropariate, family members and others involved in the clients care.
The post holder will be expected to communicate with clients with a wide range of difficulties and other presentations, including clients with complex mental health difficulties and plan and organise broad range of complex activities. The post holder will be expected to formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and /or management of a clients mental health problems including associated challenging behaviours, based on appropriate conceptual framework of the clients problem and employing methods of proven efficiency across the full range of care settings.
The post holder will be expected to make decisions and clinical judgements involving a range of highly complex factors in the context of inadequate or unavailable information, equivocal research/ evidence or where expert opinion differs. The post holder will be expected to exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based care plans.The post holder is expected to act as care co-ordinator where appropriate, ensuring the provision of a care package for the clients needs, co coordinating the work of others involved with care, arranging the clients reviews as required and communicating effectively with the client, the family and all others involved in the care and to monitor progress during the course of multidisciplinary interventions.
The post holder will have skills to communicate sensitive and complex information regarding personal psycho-social problems in an empathic and supportive way using the highest levels of interpersonal skills in situations which can be highly emotional and sometimes antagonistic.
The post holder will be expected to have responsibility and autonomy for the treatment and discharge of clients, whose problems are managed as a psychologically based care plan, ensuring appropriate assessment, formulation and interventions, communicating with the referral agent and others involved with the care on a regular basis.
The post holder will undertake risk assessments that will be used to inform/advise other professionals and carers where there are concerns in relation to mental health or risk taking behaviour.