Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologist

Site Hartley Hospital/Willis House/Rathbone Hospital Town Southport/Prescot/Liverpool Salary £53,755 - £60,504 per annum pro rata Salary period Yearly Closing 24/02/:59

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 To provide a qualified clinical psychology service according to a plan agreed with the multi-disciplinary team and within the overall framework of the Autism Service's policies and procedures. To provide appropriate psychological assessment and therapy at the same time as offering advice and consultation on clients' psychological care to psychologist and non-psychologist colleagues and to other, non-professional carers, working autonomously within professional guidelines.

To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the area served by the team/service. The Autism Service is a highly specialist service providing assessment, consultation and time limited intervention to autistic service users, some of which may have histories of complex problems, including a history of long-term mental health needs.

Please note: we would also consider applications for a Band 7 Preceptorship.

Main duties of the job See Job Description - Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologist for the main duties of job role attached to the vacancy.

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

• To provide autism assessments and psychological assessments of clients referred to the Autism Service 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.
• To consult with colleagues within the trust and to support them in the formulation and implementation of plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client's mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client's problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
• To be responsible for implementing a range of interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis.
• 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 provide highly specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients' formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
• 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.
• To actively undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice and liaise with other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management. To participate in multi-disciplinary and multi-agency risk assessment in complex service networks.
• To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the clients' personalised needs in terms of autism and possible co-occurring diagnoses within 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.
• Has line management responsibility for other clinical staff as appropriate.

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).
• Post-graduate doctoral level training that confers eligibility as a HCPC-registered practitioner psychologist.
• Further training in relevant areas of professional psychology, mental health practice, autism, personality disorder and/or research design and analysis.
• Post-doctoral training in additional specialised areas of psychological practice such as risk assessment; autism; personality disorder; substance use; and/or specific therapeutic modalities.

Knowledge/Experience

• Relevant and appropriate post-qualification experience within the field of LD or mental health, including work with neurodivergent clients.
• 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 research design and methodology.
• 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 within autism services.
• Experience of representing the profession in local policy.
• Experience of the application of psychological theories within different cultural contexts.
• Personal experience of mental health problems.
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialist psychological interventions in specific, difficult to treat groups (e.g., autism, personality disorder, dual diagnosis issues, additional disabilities and drug/alcohol issues etc.).

Values

• High professional standards.
• Responsive to service users.
• Engaging leadership style.
• Transparency and honesty.

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-professional groups.
• 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.
• Ability to develop and use complex multi-media material for presentations to the public, professionals and academic settings.
• Ability and willingness to travel across North West region for work.
• Willingness to be part of the on-call duty rota system in place during evenings and weekends (frequency to be specified).
• ECDL or demonstrable proficiency with Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Publisher and SPSS.
• An ability to apply existing psychological knowledge within the context of autism.
• Record of having published in either peer-reviewed academic or professional journals and/or books.
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