Clinical Psychologist - Warrington
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Job overview
An exciting opportunity has arisen for a full time qualified Clinical Psychologist within Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust to join an expanding multidisciplinary team meeting the needs of Children and Young People (age up to 18) in Warrington.
The post holder will demonstrate an attitude which respects and values service users’ and their carers. The post holder will embrace the core values of the organisation and adopt the principles of Recovery. These principles will recognise the need to:-
- Promote safe practices
- Value the aims of service users
- Work in partnership and offer meaningful choice
- Be optimistic about the possibilities of meaningful change
- Value social inclusion
No Wrong Door’ is a nationally recognised innovative programme working with complex adolescents who are within or on the edge of the care system. ‘No Wrong Door’ integrates residential care, foster care, speech and language support, mental health services and the police into a single hub that is based in a residential home.
North Yorkshire Borough Council devised the ‘No Wrong Door’ model and Warrington’s partner agencies (council, health and police) are now working with them to launch the model in Warrington, as part of the Department of Education’s flagship £84 million Strengthening Families Protecting Children (SFPC) programme.
The Life Coach is a non-traditional role who will need to “think differently” and undertake inventive and unscheduled approaches to therapy with young people.
Main duties of the job
We are looking for a Clinical/Counselling Psychologist to work in the pioneering No Wrong Door Service as a Life Coach. The Life Coach will be a crucial member of the embedded Hub team, providing an approachable, flexible yet robust clinical role comfortable in listening to, enabling and drawing out the potential of these often hard to reach, challenging young people using life coaching skills in informal settings.
- A development opportunity will be considered for a competent, committed and experienced clinical psychologist (band 7 with the plan to progress to band 8a once fully competent in the role).
Working for our organisation
Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.
We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.
At the heart of all we do is our commitment to ‘perfect care’ – care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together.We’re currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.
Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
To provide psychological assessments of clients referred to CYPMHS 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 consult with colleagues and to support them in the formulation and implementation of 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 problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
To be responsible for implementing a range of interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis.
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 provide highly specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to client 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 serving the client group.
To actively undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice and liaise with other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management. To participate in multi-disciplinary and multi-agency risk assessment in complex service networks.
To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the clients personalised needs in terms of mental health and possible co-occurring problems within 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 take supervisory responsibility for assistant clinical psychologists.
To manage the workloads of assistant clinical psychologists, within the framework of the team/service’s policies and procedures.
To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.
To provide professional and clinical supervision of assistant clinical psychologists.
To contribute to the pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical and/or counselling psychology and other disciplines, as appropriate, including the supervision of clinical psychologists in training.
To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.
To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the team’s operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.
To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
To initiate and undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research.
To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of CYPMHS operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.
To lead relevant research activity within the service line as required by the service.
To develop research bids and coordinate applications for the research funding, as required by the service.
To establish and maintain research partnerships with relevant internal and external individuals and groups.
To foster and inspire innovative ideas and developments aimed at enhancing the experience of service users and carers and support their development through research and/or project management methodology.
To undertake project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within the service to help develop service provision.
To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
To be involved, as appropriate, in the short listing and interviewing of assistant / graduate psychologists, and of team members from other professions, where appropriate.
To exercise delegated responsibility for managing the psychological resources available to the team, in the form of psychological materials employed in the assessment and treatment of clients; and to assist in clinically related administration, conduct of audits, collection of statistics, development of audit and/or research projects, training and project work.
To contribute to the training and support of other staff in psychological care, including contributing to the organisation of training seminars and conferences for others.
To maintain up to date knowledge of clinical and policy related best practice and new developments in the field of personality disorder.
To manage information resources relating to this and ensure their wide availability, working closely with Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust knowledge, services and relevant external partners.
To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of service users.
To contribute to the development of systems to support, mentor and supervise service users working in the service.
To be engaged and participate in the future development of CYPMHS and promote a culture of continuous service improvement.
To help develop effective clinical pathways for children and young people with complex needs within the Trust’s Community Division and the wider health and social care community across Merseyside, Cheshire and Wirral.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria- A First or Upper Second honours degree in psychology OR a lower class with a post-graduate qualification, (e.g.: Master’s degree)
- ECDL or demonstrable proficiency with Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Publisher and SPSS
- Post-graduate doctoral level training in Clinical Psychology as accredited by the BPS.
- Registration with HCPC as a Practitioner Psychologist
Experience
Essential criteria- Demonstrable experience of working with children, young people, their families, and systems around them
- Post-qualification experience of working with individuals with histories of problems of complex, multi-factorial origin
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Only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview.
As a Disability Confident Employer, we offer a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants who consider themselves to be disabled who meet the minimum (essential) criteria for the role in the person specification. If you would like your application to be considered under the Trust’s guaranteed interview scheme you can indicate this in the personal information section of your online application form.
Should you require a reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process please email [email protected] to ensure that measures can be put in place to support you.
We reserve the right to close any vacancy earlier than advertised in exceptional circumstances once we have received a high volume of applications.
The Trust expects all post holders who require an enhanced DBS for their role subscribe to the DBS Update Service. You will be required to enrol for this service for a fee of £16 per year and maintain registration. Trans applicants who require a DBS check and do not want to reveal details of their previous identity can contact the DBS Sensitive Applications Team (01516761452 or email [email protected]) with their application number once they have completed their DBS application form.The team can prevent any previous identity showing on the DBS Certificate, unless the applicant has a conviction under their previous details in which case this will need to be disclosed.
Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.
Please be advised that the use of Artificial Intelligence on applications is monitored and if you choose to use this, you must declare this on your application form.