Principal Clinical Psychologist - Whiston, United Kingdom - Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust

Description

Job summary

Are you an enthusiastic Clinical Psychologist with experience and interest of supporting autistic people with complex needs? This post offers an exciting opportunity to develop clinical and strategic skills and shape the development of an exciting innovative new service.

The Intensive Support Team for Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust is an innovative, dynamic and responsive service that provides a valued service to autistic people who are at risk of a breakdown in community care, and/or an inappropriate admission to hospital. The team offer additional support to those with complex needs and work in collaboration with our mental health services.

You will have the opportunity to work in an evolving team and at the same time be part of well-established autism team working alongside Clinical Psychologists, Occupational Therapists, Speech & Language Therapists, Nurses, support workers and assistant psychologists within the autism service.

The service model is one of supporting autistic people who are possibly in crisis and require additional support with regard to their autism to keep them safe and well in the community. This will involve working closely with specialist practitioners and other health professionals to support this complex group of individuals to remain in their community setting and, where an appropriate admission has occurred, to be discharged promptly and safely in line with national Transforming Care strategy.

Main duties of the job

To ensure the systematic provision of a high-quality specialist clinical psychology service to Improving Access to Autism (ASC) service, service users, across a community primary care setting. To advise, supervise and support the assessment and treatment provided by clinical members of the teams who provide psychologically based care and treatment within the ASC service. To work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service/team. To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research. To propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the service. To work in an effectivepartnership with the clinical service leadership including other IAPT team members and members of other agencies responsible for a client's care.

About us

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 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.

Job responsibilities

To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the service based upon the appropriate use, interpretation, and integration of complex 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, family members and others involved in the clients care.

To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a clients mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the clients problems, and employing methods of proven efficacy, across the full range of care settings.

To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals and groups, within and across Mersey Care IAPT teams adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.

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 exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based care.

To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.

To ensure that all members of the treating service have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of clients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.

To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide general advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.

To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- disciplinary and multi- disciplinary care.

To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment service.

Will be required to sit in a constrained position for client therapy and extended assessment sessions.

Will be required to tolerate and manage frequent verbal abuse and occasional physical aggression.

Will be required to deal with the intense emotional atmosphere surrounding therapy contacts which may be highly distressing on a daily basis, and to work with frequent intense concentration for much of the clinical sessions of assessment and therapy. This will include writing reports of a potentially distressing nature , safeguarding adults.

For full list of duties and responsibilities please refer to the Job Description Attached.

Qualifications

Essential

Knowledge/ Experience

Essential

Values

Essential

Skills

Essential