Clinical / Counselling Psychologist

Thank you for your interest for the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT), it is an exciting time to join us and being part of our journey to improve mental health care across North London and deliver excellent services to our local people. We will achieve this through the North London Way, as we:

• Collaborate at every level by living our Values to create the right conditions for us all to work together.
• Develop our new Trust culture, to help make our new Trust a great place to work and to receive great care.
• Empower our teams to lead the planned improvements in our services, by skilling them and giving them the tools to make the changes.
• Focus on delivering excellence at every level to improve our performance and ensure consistently high-quality care across all our services.
• Ensure that research, Quality Improvement, and technology lead the way and are embedded in our services.
• Take a trauma informed approach to everything we do

We proactively welcome diversity in our workforce and pride ourselves on being an inclusive employer. We aim to recruit from our local communities and provide opportunities to all including apprenticeships, veterans, care leavers and more.

The North London Way to deliver, Better Mental Health, Better Lives, Better Communities.

Our trust website is: https://www.northlondonmentalhealth.nhs.uk/

Job overview

2 posts: 1 x full time, 1 x part time

The successful candidate will be joining a newly configured network of psychologists working across the Enfield Acute Care Pathway within North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT). This professional cohort will provide great opportunities for joint working and enhanced professional development.

The successful applicant will be supporting the implementation of Trauma-informed care into multi-disciplinary teams on inpatient wards and Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Team (CRHTT), treatment planning , consultation, liaison, reflective practice and influencing team culture.

• This post is also open to be offered as a “Development Role”. This means that we welcome applications from candidates who are newly qualified or who are due to completing their professional training in the same academic year as the application, or who have limited previous NHS experience but relevant clinical experience elsewhere. The successful post holder would start at band 7 and will be willing to work through a personal development plan to identify competency areas and any support required for career progression/transition from band 7 to 8a within a minimum of 18 months if appointed.

Main duties of the job

The post carries a specific remit to work with the ward teams to develop a systematic, consistent and effective response to the common issues that arise within acute care settings that can have a powerful impact on the overall effectiveness and quality of experience for people using the service and the staff working in it.

Working for our organisation

Working for North London NHS Foundation Trust

Why choose to join the North London NHS Foundation Trust?

We believe that by working together, our Trust can achieve more for the residents of North Central London and our patients than we can by working apart.

Our Five-Year Strategy:

1. We will provide consistently high-quality care closer to home.
2. With our partners in North London and each borough we will ensure equity of outcome for all
3. We will offer great places to work, providing staff with supportive environment to deliver outstanding care.
4. We will be more effective as an organisation by pioneering research, quality improvement and technology.

• Transforming and creating a positive environment for our service users, staff and visitors.
• We develop and retain our staff through leadership behaviours and managers programme and many more opportunities.
• We promote flexible working and support staff with a range of health and wellbeing initiatives.
• NHS Discounts, generous annual leave allowance and NHS pension scheme
• We have excellent internal staff network support groups.

The postholder will need to be comfortable working in an environment of complex matrix management arrangements and will at all times behave and align with our Trusts’ values and cultural pillars.

• The post-holder will be ensuring the systematic provision of a high-quality, trauma-informed specialist psychology service within the acute care pathway. This will involve undertaking psychological assessments; evidence based short term psychological interventions, and contribute to the ward based therapeutic group work program and to provide individual and group supervision within multi-disciplinary teams.
• The post holder will also be involved in delivering brief crisis focused psychological interventions, teaching and Reflective Practice to Enfield Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Team (CRHTT) as required by service needs.
• The post-holder will be providing psychological formulation and consultation to contribute to the care plans and management of service users currently being treated on the wards.
• The post holder will contribute in modelling the co-creation of a more Trauma-Informed culture within the wards, Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Team (CRHTT) and the system as a whole.
• As a team member both of the psychological therapies acute care teams and the ward MDT, the post-holder will be expected to work collaboratively, and with MDT members including the provision of joint assessments with Consultant Psychiatrists and joint working with other members of the team.
• The post-holder will provide specialist psychological assessment, treatment and consultation on clients’ psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues and to non-professional carers working autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the service’s policies and procedures.
• The post-holder will supervise psychological assessment and therapy provided by Assistant Psychologists, attached doctoral trainees and supervise psychologically driven treatment interventions by other members of the MDT.
• The post-holder will provide training, supervision and support to other clinical members of the team, who provide psychologically based care and treatment.
• The post-holder will be expected to work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychology practice within the service/team.
• The post-holder will utilize skills for research and audit and contribute to policy and service development, in relation to the Psychological Therapies provision and in collaboration with the borough specific acute care services.
• The post-holder will support the Acute and CRHTT Lead in implementing post-incident support and reflective practice.

Person specification

Education & Qualifications

• Doctoral level training in clinical / counselling psychology, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology, as accredited by the BPS.
• Eligibility for Chartered Status with BPS
• Registered with HCPC as a practitioner psychologist.
• If applying as a development role, expected to be finishing doctoral level training in clinical/counselling psychology in the same academic year as the application and be willing to work through a Personal Development plan with manager/supervisor to identify key areas and support required for a transition from band 7 to 8a within a minimum of 18 months.

• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology or equivalent
• Interest in Group work

Experience & Knowledge

• Experience, including in the NHS, of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community/teams, primary care and in patient and day settings.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.
• Experience of working as a fully integrated MD team member
• Multi-disciplinary team working and involvement in developing Risk management plans and supporting care of service users.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
• Demonstrate further specialist training/experience through having received a substantial number of hours clinical supervision in working as a specialist clinical/counselling psychologist.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS and HCPC.
• Completion of clinical psychology supervisors training or be eligible to undertake it.

• Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Experience of working systemically with MDT to promote quality and better outcomes for service users.
• Experience of running a range of groups/workshops /courses for service users with psychosis and their carers.
• Experience and knowledge of the Trauma Informed Care framework in clinical settings
• Experience of supporting reflective practice.
• Experience of participating in or supporting post-incident support.

Skills & Abilities

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration
• Competency in neuropsychological assessments
• Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers, and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups
• An ability to use and demonstrate psychological model-based formulations as part of clinical and care management planning

• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. PTSD, psychosis, personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc).
• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health.

Personal Qualities

• An enthusiasm and commitment to the psychological treatment of those in the acute/urgent care pathway
• Ability to work independently, reliably, and consistently with work agreed and managed at regular intervals.
• Ability to maintain professional boundaries and form positive therapeutic relationship with service users and carers
• Ability to contain and work with organisational stress and ability to “hold” the stress of others
• Ability to demonstrate Trust Values

• A commitment to the evaluation of services, enthusiasm for both multi-professional and uni-professional audit

Other requirements

• 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 identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour
• IT skills including e-mail, word processing and basic data base

• Personal experience of mental health problems.
• Experience of working within a multicultural framework.
• Ability to support MDT members in the provision of psychologically driven interventions
• Interest and ability to contribute to service development