Highly Specialist Clinical/ Counselling Psychologist
Our values are: We Care, We Respect, We are Inclusive – so we are looking for people who live and breathe these qualities when supporting service users and carers, and in their relationships with colleagues in the Trust and our partner organisations.
Job overview
Are you a psychologist with an interest in inpatient mental health and a passion for bringing psychological ways of working to complex systems?
If so, read on!
We are looking for an enthusiastic qualified psychologist with experience in working with systems and families, to join the Newham Acute Psychology Service (NAPS). This team provides psychological services to the people who reside, work and visit Newham Centre for Mental Health (NCMH).
Why work with us?
Within the NAPS team you will be encouraged to bring your ideas and creativity to develop the psychology provision in your wards and across the service. Staff development and innovation is very important to us. See below for a list of some of our current projects:
- Relational Security (i.e. See, Think, Act) and trauma-informed care implementation.
- Quality improvement projects (e.g. Inpatient Sexual Safety).
- Sensory intervention in NCMH.
- New project in development for systemic working with families and systems to support transition to the community.
CPD opportunities:
- Collaboration with the local Systemic Therapies service.
- Research opportunities in collaboration with NELFT and the University of East London.
- CPD opportunities (e.g. systemic working, indirect approaches, leadership).
- Local Secondary Care Psychological Services network offers further opportunities for learning and connection.
Main duties of the job
You will be responsible for bringing psychological approaches to our adult mental health wards. The NAPS team aims to foster a compassionate, safe and therapeutic culture for all people within the service. You would be expected to play an active part in planning, prioritising and reflecting on how best to organise your work to move towards this aim.
Roles will include direct interventions with patients in group, individual and family sessions; staff support and development including team formulations, reflective spaces and training; leadership of co-production, evaluation and quality improvement (QI) initiatives throughout the service.There is a current focus on supporting the discharge process and interface with community services, in collaboration with our local systemic therapy team. Where required, this may involve seeing families in their homes.
We are looking for applicants who bring enthusiasm and creativity around inpatient working. Experience in acute mh services and providing culturally inclusive psychological approaches in NHS services is also highly desirable as well as an ability to speak an additional local language in order to engage wider communities.
The Trust has embraced flexible working. We are interested in hybrid ways of working that are within the scope of the role.
We look forward to welcoming the successful candidate; their ideas, passions and aspirations into our team.
Working for our organisation
Our mission is to make a positive difference to people's lives by improving the quality of life for all we serve. Our values are: We Care, We Respect, We are Inclusive – so we are looking for people who live and breathe these qualities when supporting service users and carers, and in their relationships with colleagues in the Trust and our partner organisations.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
For full details of the job please refer to the attached Job Description and Person Specification.
Person specification
Education/ Qualification
Essential criteria- Doctorate in Clinical/ Counselling Psychology or equivalence and able to demonstrate eligibility for BPS
- HCPC registration as a Practitioner Psychologist.
- Further training or qualifications in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice (e.g. Systemic approaches).
- Quality Improvement Training
- Clinical supervision training for doctoral psychology trainees.
Experience
Essential criteria- Post-qualification experience as a practitioner psychologist or equivalent.
- Experience of providing teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision.
- Experience of systemic working with families and teams
- Experience in working in multidisciplinary settings and representing a psychological perspective in teams and services.
- Experience of working as a psychologist in an inpatient setting.
- Experience of professional management of qualified and pre-qualified clinical psychologists.
- Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
- Experience in contributing to service development, redesign and improvements in secondary mental health services
Knowledge and skills
Essential criteria- Able to draw upon a broad theoretical knowledge base in the analysis of highly complex facts and situations, requiring sustained and intense concentration, to arrive at appropriate formulation and compare and select from a range of treatment options.
- An in depth knowledge and skills in applying clinical risk assessment and management in own and others’ clinical caseload.
- Able to communicate at a high level verbally and in writing highly complex, technical and sensitive information to clients, families, carers, and a range of professionals and lay people within and outside the NHS.
- Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
- Able to plan, organise and prioritise own workload in the face of periods of competing demands.
- Up to date knowledge of psychological research, national guidance and legislation relevant to the delivery of secondary mental health services.
- Aware of the potential impact of discrimination & disadvantage on mental health.
- Highly developed knowledge of the theory and delivery of specialised psychological practice relevant to a secondary mental health setting (e.g. systemic working, psychosis, personality disorder, complex trauma).
- Record of having published in either peer reviewed or academic or professional journals and/or books.
Personal
Essential criteria- Enthusiasm for a broad range of psychological phenomena, an interest in models of service delivery and an ability to articulate the value added by clinical psychology services within the context of multi-disciplinary mental health services.
- Able to manage effectively frequent exposure to highly distressing/highly emotional circumstances and exposure to traumatic circumstances.
- Respectful approach to service users, families, carers, colleagues and other professionals. Willing to negotiate and can handle confrontation effectively and professionally.
Other
Essential criteria- Able to travel independently between work sites and to community settings for the delivery of services.
- Ability to speak an additional local language.
Making Things Better
Quality Improvement is a key part of our work to improve our services and refine how we do things. We have a global reputation for our quality improvement work and we don’t stand still! So we offer a fantastic opportunity for our staff to learn, lead and contribute towards improving our services.
We launched our Five Year Strategy in April 2018, which identified four main strategic outcomes to improve: population health outcomes, experience of care, staff experience and improve value. This complements the NHS Long Term Strategy and sets out our direction of travel.
Our Community
We provide a wide range of community health and mental health inpatient services to children, young people, adults of working age, and older adults in The City of London, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Bedfordshire and Luton. We also provide psychological therapy services to the London Borough of Richmond, and provide Forensic services to the whole of North East London.We provide services in urban and rural settings, sometimes in our inpatient units, but mostly in the community close to where people live. Integrated care is key in making the best use of resources and providing effective care.
Aiming High
We were rated ‘Outstanding’ by the CQC in 2016, were proud to be rated ‘Outstanding’ again in 2018 and continue to be rate 'Outstanding' in 2021.. We were named in the HSJ’s Top 10 best places to work in healthcare and were voted Provider Trust of the Year in 2018.
Staff and Service Users United
We strive to ensure that staff feel valued by the Trust and as they are truly pivotal in delivering better outcomes for our patients and service users. Our aspiration is to help to make ELFT the best place to work. This Trust is clinician-led and provides the highest possible level of clinical expertise throughout its services.We pride ourselves on our service user involvement. A service user will be on your assessment centre and interview panel if you are invited to meet us.
We especially welcome people with lived experience of health difficulties, with insight and understanding of different backgrounds, cultures and lifestyles in our population as we believe that this will equip staff to deliver a high standard of care to our service users and patients.
Diversity
ELFT Is committed to being a diverse organisation and our workforce is reflective of the population and communities we serve. We believe that having colleagues with a range of backgrounds and life experiences enriches and adds value to the outcomes we have set out to achieve.Having partnered and endorsed by organisations who are representative and experts in various areas of equality and diversity, we can ensure we are meeting the pre-set standards all the way from recruitment stage throughout the career journey of our employees by being accessible, having fair inclusive practices and a host of staff networks to support, nurture and celebrate our valued staff in the workplace.
Other reasons to apply
As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that’s job share, part time or another flexible pattern.
As part of the relocation scheme we presently have, the Trust could support you with offering up to £10,000 for removal and associated expenses. This is subject to change and terms and conditions apply.
What Next?
If you like the sound of ELFT, don’t waste a moment. We sometimes close adverts early if there is a high response, so apply now!
As part of our recruitment process we may be required to share information you provide on the application form with NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA) and/or other organisations for the purpose of the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of fraud or any other unlawful activity affecting the NHS.We also use third party providers to check and verify your qualifications who may be contacting you on our behalf to verify the same..
If you do not hear from us within four weeks of the closing date, please consider that you have not been shortlisted on this occasion. You must provide professional email addresses for all referees as we will contact them as soon as an offer has been made.Please note we do not request references prior to interviews. All applications made through NHS Jobs account will be processed by TRAC System. Please note that some emails may go to your spam/junk mailbox so make sure you check this regularly.
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