Clinical / Forensic / Counselling Psychologist

Clinical / Forensic / Counselling Psychologist Location: Exeter, EX1 1RD
Salary: £53755.00 to £60504.00
Date posted: 19th February 2025
Closing date: 5th March 2025

Our professional responsibility is to reduce the risk of infection to others as far as possible. Getting vaccinated against diseases that can be passed person-to-person in healthcare settings is part of this responsibility. The Trust will provide advice, guidance and support on vaccinations and access to vaccinations where requested.

Job Description: We are looking for a 12-month fixed term Band 8a Clinical / Forensic / Counselling Psychologist to join the Support to Succeed Team. The role is to cover a member of staff on maternity leave.

This role is based across multiple Probation sites, with base location dependent on preference as well as WFH.

The successful applicant will also be subject to Probation vetting checks prior to start dates being agreed.

Support to Succeed forms the community part of the offender personality disorder (OPD) pathway in Devon. The OPD pathway is based in prison and probation, with NHS and HMPPS staff working together to increase the wellbeing and reduce the risk of those screened into the pathway, whilst improving the knowledge and attitudes of the wider workforce. STS offers support to probation staff through consultation, formulation and training; and psychologically-informed intervention and risk management (IIRMS) for those leaving prison, including a hub service with activities and psycho-education/skills groups.

This is a cohesive and enthusiastic team including a probation practitioner, psychologist, assistant psychologists, social worker, a peer support worker, support time and recovery workers and admin support. Space is protected for supervision, reflective practice and training, including both whole-team training and the opportunity to undertake training in specific areas of interest relevant to the service.

Main Duties of the Job The role will include offering psychological intervention, developing and facilitating psycho-educational and/or skills-based groups, and providing psychologically-informed and relational support to people with complex presentations including significant trauma, difficulties with interpersonal relationships and emotion regulation, substance misuse, history of offending sexually and/or violently and often isolated/stigmatised by society. IIRMS is a growing and evolving service, allowing opportunities to support service development in this post.

The role will also include facilitating consultation, reflective practice and training for probation practitioners; offering clinical supervision and line management to assistant psychologists and others; and helping to oversee the day-to-day running of the service.

We welcome applications from motivated individuals who are keen to have an opportunity to work with complex presentations, balancing clinical need with risk management. A core part of the role will be to work alongside colleagues from a range of disciplines sharing psychological knowledge and consistently improving the psychological mindedness of the probation and other services. To be successful in this role, you will need to be enthusiastic, forward-thinking and emotionally resilient with a passion and commitment to supporting people with personality difficulties.

The post-holder will receive regular clinical and managerial supervision from the clinical lead.

About Us We provide mental health, learning disability and neurodiversity services, as well as a range of specialist & secure services for the wider south west region & nationally. We are passionate about promoting good mental health & wellbeing. We strive to use the expertise & resources within our organisation, and through our partnerships, to deliver high quality services that are safe & focused on people's recovery.

We are committed to developing a culture of coproduction, involving patients, families & carers in everything we do.

Job Responsibilities Job Purpose

Devon's Support to Succeed (STS) service combines the existing probation consultation service and the new Intensive Intervention and Risk Management service (IIRMs). The probation consultation arm of the service offers mainly indirect work with probation practitioners and includes: psychological consultation to probation practitioners; devising psychological formulations; workforce development; and limited joint working. It principally aims to enhance probation practitioners' practice. IIRMs aims to provide a community-based service that delivers individually tailored and psychologically informed interventions directly to people on probation as they transition out of prison and settle in the community. Both services seek to enhance the management of risk of serious harm to others and reduce re-offending, but also to develop psychological wellbeing and social engagement among users. While probation consultation largely offers indirect work with people on probation, the IIRMs service will work directly with clients.

The role will consist of:

1. Being an autonomous practitioner responsible for your own clinical activity and accountable for observing and interpreting professional and Trust guidelines for professional conduct including accurate record keeping.
2. Providing consultation, advice, and clinical supervision to other professionals and agencies including Band 5 Assistant Psychologists, Trainee Psychologists and others.
3. Devising, supervising and formulating a client's presenting difficulties(s), based upon the appropriate theoretical and conceptual frameworks and evidence-based practice.
4. Delivering individual and group interventions.
5. Organising and agreeing each client's intervention plan including risk management and crisis-planning arrangements for people being released from prison into Devon or otherwise i.e. agreeing across agency arrangements for high risk people on probation released to out-of-area Approved Premises and/or IIRMs.
6. Overseeing the weekly drop-in, custodial in-reach, referral consultation and joint assessment and clinical aspects of the role.
7. Ensuring that frequent case and risk reviews occur and are recorded for all clients.
8. Agreeing plans for the management of non-attendance and eventual discharge of individuals engaged in the OPD Pathway.
9. Meeting appropriate standards of practice in the quality and timeliness of the service provided. Standards of practice will include those defined by: the British Psychological Society (including the Division of Clinical Psychology); the HCPC; and Devon Partnership Trust.
10. Keeping adequate clinical records in accordance with Trust guidance.
11. Undertaking risk and other assessments (where relevant) and collaborating on the risk management of individuals together with His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service.
12. Undertake other responsibilities e.g. quality improvement initiatives or service development/evaluation projects to ensure an ever-improving, high quality, professional service.
13. Liaise with a range of other services relevant to the STS Service (including health, criminal justice, prison and third sector agencies).
14. Communicating in a clear, professional, skilled and sensitive manner.

Duties and Responsibilities

Communication & Working Relationships

• Clients, family and others: To communicate in a highly skilled and sensitive manner with service users with a mental health, learning disability, challenging behaviour and/or personality disorder who may have specific difficulties in understanding and/or communicating and who may be hostile, antagonistic or highly emotionally disturbed.
• Multidisciplinary team colleagues: To work closely, collaboratively and supportively with colleagues in the multi-professional integrated psychological consultation and intervention service on a day-to-day basis.
• Health, social care, CSJ and third sector staff: To communicate with a wide range of health & CSJ and other staff in community settings in a highly skilled and sensitive manner, complex and sensitive information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of individuals. To provide support & guidance in the application of psychological principles and techniques, and to foster reflective practice.
• Senior managers & professional staff: To maintain and build good working relationships with senior professional staff and managers in the OPD Pathway and secure directorate to foster a positive approach to the Support to Succeed service and to enable effective negotiation.

Planning & Organisation

• The psychology service: To plan and organise the work of the psychology provision of the Support to Succeed service and to contribute to the development and improvement of provision of psychological services within the commissioned service to DPT, to best meet the organisation's strategy and priorities.
• The multi-disciplinary service: To provide psychology leadership to the multi-professional planning, development and marketing of Support to Succeed.
• The directorate: To work as part of the psychology management structure and contribute to the planning and implementation of service developments.

Responsibility for Patient/Client Care, Treatment & Therapy

• Assessment & intervention: To provide expert psychological assessment (including risk assessment) and group/individual and support interventions, developing specialist psychological formulations and assessments of service users . click apply for full job details