Clinical Psychologist

Main area: Children and Young Persons Mental Health Services - Community Division

Grade: Band 8a

Contract: Permanent

Hours: Full time - 37.5 hours per week

Job ref: 350-CC

Site: Knowsley Resource and Recovery Centre

Town: Whiston

Salary: £53,775 - £60,504 per annum

Salary period: Yearly

Closing: 24/02/:59

Interview date: 27/02/2025

Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust celebrates diversity and promotes equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from ethnic minorities, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people that are under-represented in our workforce. Furthermore, we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces personnel as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.

Job overview An exciting opportunity to provide a qualified clinical psychology service to individuals within the CYPMHS Knowsley Service providing psychological assessment and therapy, offering advice and consultation on individuals' psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues and to other, non-professionals. To work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of Trust policies and procedures. To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the area served by the team/service.

Would consider a preceptorship 7/8a if a candidate was more suitable.

Main duties of the job

1. To provide a qualified specialist clinical psychology service to clients of the service team, across all relevant sectors within an equality and human rights framework.
2. To provide specialist psychological assessment and therapy, offering advice and consultation on clients' psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues and to other, non-professional carers.
3. To work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the Directorate's and team's policies and procedures.
4. To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the area served by the team/service.

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

1. To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the team 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.
2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client's psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client's problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.
3. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses where appropriate.
4. 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.
5. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
6. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment and treatment of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based enhanced care plans.
7. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients' formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
8. 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.
9. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
10. To act as care coordinator, where appropriate, taking responsibility for initiating planning and reviewing of care plans under enhanced CPA including clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.
11. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning 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.

Person specification Qualifications

• 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
• Further training in relevant areas of professional psychology, mental health practice and/or research design and analysis
• Post-doctoral training in additional specialised areas of psychological practice such as risk assessment and/or specific therapeutic modalities

Knowledge/Experience

• 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
• Experience of working with a variety of client groups, across the whole life course and a full range of care settings, maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and threats of physical abuse
• Experience of exercising clinical responsibility for service user's psychological care and treatment, both as a profession and also within the context of a multi-disciplinary care plan
• Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision
• Doctoral level knowledge of clinical psychology in relation to children and young people
• Knowledge of legislation and the implications for both clinical practice and professional management in relation to the client group and mental health issues in general
• Experience of working in a multi-disciplinary team/ experience of working alongside staff from other disciplines
• Experience of multi-professional management of teams and/or services
• Experience of representing the profession in local policy fora
• Experience of the application of psychological theories within different cultural contexts
• Personal experience of mental health problems

Values

• Accountability
• Support
• High professional standards
• Responsive to service users
• Engaging leadership style
• Transparency and honesty
• Discreet
• Change oriented

Skills

• Skills in the use of methods of psychological assessment & formulation
• An excellent ability to communicate, both orally and in writing, complex, technical and clinically sensitive information, to service users, their families and a wide range of professionals within and outside of the NHS
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professionals group
• Ability to identify, provide, and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations
• Ability to identify and employ where appropriate, clinical governance mechanisms for the support and maintenance of clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviours
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