Deputy Head of Clinical Health Psychology

Deputy Head of Clinical Health Psychology Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust We are looking to recruit an experienced and motivated clinical/counselling psychologist to join the Clinical Health Psychology service as the Deputy Head of CHP. This is a newly substantive post, joining a team of over 20 psychologists specialising in physical health psychology including specialities in Bariatric Surgery, Burns, HIV & Sexual Health, Intensive Care, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Inpatient Neurorehabilitation, Pain and Staff Psychology. The postholder will work alongside the Head of CHP for K&C to deliver the strategic vision of the Trust, optimising psychological services in the acute sector.

The Clinical Health Psychology service has a strong commitment to embedding core values of equity, diversity and inclusion at the core of our work. We are committed to improving access to services for all. CNWL has a wide range of CPD options, including with Contextual Consulting amongst other providers. The team regularly hosts trainees from the North Thames Doctoral courses.

The postholder will be supported to develop their career and flourish as a valued member of the psychology staff group.

Main duties of the job This is a newly created substantive post, as part of the wider Clinical Health Psychology service. The role will be on site at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital and the South Kensington Mental Health Centre. Hybrid models of working could be explored. The postholder will have significant management responsibilities, including clinical and management supervision, financial management and strategic delivery of care in line with Trust directives.

The postholder will provide specialist psychological assessment and therapeutic interventions in the relevant specialties. The postholder will offer advice and consultation on service users' psychological care.

The postholder will be responsible for systematic governance of psychological practice within specific psychology specialties in CHP, with support from the Senior Leadership Team.

The postholder will contribute to enabling other staff, service users and carers from diverse backgrounds to flourish by working to create a psychologically safe environment.

The postholder will utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the areas served by the team/service.

The post holder will work autonomously within BPS and HCPC guidelines and codes of conduct, and Trust policies.

Job responsibilities Clinical

1. To have advanced specialist knowledge, including doctoral level degree, specialist training courses, and to be in receipt of regular clinical and management supervision.
2. To be accountable for the direct delivery of Clinical Health Psychology in Kensington & Chelsea, in conjunction with the Head of Clinical Health Psychology.
3. To provide highly developed specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the team, based upon the appropriate analysis, 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 clients care, requiring frequent periods of intense concentration.
4. To formulate 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 based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
5. To work with highly complex, sensitive or contentious information, at times in environments which might be antagonistic or highly emotive, including but not limited to difficult family dynamics, difficult team dynamics, risk assessment and end of life care.
6. 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.
7. To make highly skilled evaluations and decisions about treatment options considering both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.
8. To exercise full responsibility and autonomy for the treatment of and discharge of clients whose difficulties are managed as a psychologically based standard care plan, ensuring appropriate assessment, formulation and interventions, communicating with the referral agent and others involved with the care on a regular basis.
9. To have full responsibility for providing expertise and specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients specialised formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
10. To ensure that all members of the clinical team have access to a psychologically based framework for the understanding and care of clients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological knowledge, research and theory.
11. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for relevant individual clients and to provide both general and specialist advice for psychologists and other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.

Teaching, training and supervision

1. To ensure appropriate systems for the clinical and professional supervision of qualified and unqualified psychologists across the service/sector.
2. To provide clinical and management supervision of the Senior Leadership Team within the Clinical Health Psychology service, in conjunction with the Head of Clinical Health Psychology. To ensure safe and effective line management supervision is provided to all qualified and assistant psychologists in the services.
3. To provide specialist clinical placements for trainee clinical and/or counselling psychologists, ensuring that they acquire the necessary clinical and research skills to doctoral level where appropriate, and competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good psychological practice, and contributing to the assessment and evaluation of those competencies.

Management, recruitment, policy and service development

1. To contribute to the leadership of the department including for its strategy, which should specifically include its sustainability, equality and diversity, and maintaining the partnership between all commissioning acute Trusts and CNWL NHSFT.
2. To lead as a senior clinician in the development of a high quality, responsive and accessible service for clients, their carers and families within the sector/service, including advising both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
3. To contribute to ensuring relevant operational strategies are implemented and reviewed regularly and are accessible to all relevant staff, such as Business Continuity Plans.
4. To lead as the senior clinician in the development of a high quality, supportive and inclusive working environment for team members and managers, including their welfare, professional and personal development.
5. To support the systematic professional and clinical governance of psychological practice within the sector/service, including maintaining systematic records of appraisals, clinical record keeping standards and the transcribing of minutes and records of appropriate professional meetings.

Person Specification Education and Qualification

• Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical/counselling psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology.
• Current HCPC Practitioner Psychologist registration.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the HCPC.
• Formal training in supervision of other psychologists.
• Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice.

Experience

• Assessed experience of working as a qualified clinical psychologist including post qualification experience within clinical health psychology.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care, in-patient and residential care settings 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 exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care co-ordinator and also within the context of a multi-disciplinary care plan.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision.
• Experience of professional management of qualified and pre-qualified clinical psychologists.
• Experience of management of staff including rostering, welfare and performance management.
• Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
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