Job summary
Applications are invited from HCPC Practitioner Psychologists with relevant experience to join a dynamic and successful department of Clinical Health Psychology (Southport).
You will become part of an energetic team of psychologists who work with adults and teams to maximise wellbeing in the face of illness and disability through the delivery of 1:1 and group interventions.
You will have knowledge and experience in applying Solution Focused Therapy in clinical settings, and an interest in working closely with multidisciplinary teams and Experts by Experience.

Main duties of the job
The role will predominantly involve providing provision of psychology services to people with long term health conditions including stroke.
You will contribute to the broader aims of the service through joint working, consultation, training, supervision and service development/research.
We are committed to CPD and encourage innovation and development, as well as contributing to local Clinical Psychology Training courses.

About us
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.

Job responsibilities
Job purpose:
To provide a specialist applied psychology service ensuring the systematic provision of highly specialised psychological services within the designated clinical service.
This includes the provision of specialist psychological assessment, formulation and therapy, offering advice and consultation on service users psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues and other non-professional carers.
To work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the CYP & Wellbeing division policies and procedures.
To utilise research skills for audit, policy, service development and research within the CYP & Wellbeing division.

Duties and responsibilities:

• Clinical
  • To provide specialist psychological assessment of service users based on the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources.
  • This may include psychological and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with service users, family members and others involved in the service users care.
  • To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a service users psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the service users problems, employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.
  • To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions therapy for individuals, while adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses where appropriate.
  • To increasingly exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of service users whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
  • To develop and implement specialist psychological interventions, integrated into a multidisciplinary effective care coordination process.
  • To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to service users formulation, diagnosis and treatment plans, including risk formulation and risk management
  • To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all service users.
  • To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users and to provide advice, both general and specialist, to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
  • To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of service users under their care and to monitor progressduring the course of both uni and multidisciplinary care.
• Teaching, Training and Supervision
  • To engage with regular supervision and management from senior professional colleagues.
  • To continue to gain wider post qualification experience relevant to the clinical role in line with HCPC and BPS requirements.
  • To develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching and training and to provide supervision to other staffs psychological work, e.g., staff from other designations, as appropriate.
• Management, Recruitment and Service Development
  • To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the psychology teams and wider Trust operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit as requested by the service lead.
  • To advise both psychology and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing as appropriate and requested by the service lead.
• Research and Service Evaluation
  • To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
  • To undertake appropriate research as agreed with the line manager and provide research advice to other team colleagues.
  • To undertake as appropriate, project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within the service to develop service provision.
• General
  • To contribute to the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the post holders line manager, in line with the priorities of the service and PACE objectives, and to provide evidence of CPD undertaken, e.g., in the form of the CPD log book.
  • To contribute to the development and articulation of best practice in psychology across the service by continuing to develop the skills of a reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal, and maintaining an active engagement withcurrent developments in the fields of clinical psychology and related disciplines relevant to the service area.
  • To maintain the highest standards of clinical record-keeping, including electronic data entry and recording, report writing and the responsible exercise of professional self governance in accordance with professional codes of practice of the British Psychological Society and Trust policies and procedures.
  • To maintain up-to-date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to the specific client group.
  • To perform other duties of a similar kind appropriate to the grade which may be required by the line manager or head of service.
  • The post holder will be expected to make full use of IT packages available within the work area, e.g., Microsoft Office, Email, Internet and statistical packages.

Person Specification
Qualification and professional registration
Essential

• Doctoral level training (or equivalent) in a professional area of psychology conferring HCPC registration as a practitioner psychologist.
• Registered or eligible for registration with the HCPC as a practitioner psychologist.

Desirable

• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.

Experience
Essential

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of service users across a range of care settings.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of service user groups, presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity.
• Experience of maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse and utilising supervision systems to manage the impact of this.

Desirable

• Previous experience working with the service user group with which the post is specified.
• Experience of teaching and training.
• Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Experience of working within a multicultural framework.

Knowledge
Essential

• Research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the applied fields of psychology.

Desirable

• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups relevant to the service in which the post is based.
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the service user group

Skills
Essential

• Well developed skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, incorporating a range of methodologies, e.g., clinical interview, psychometrics, structured clinical tools.
• Well developed intervention skills. Including at least one modality- specific clinical training to a high standard.
• Ability to assimilate complex information from a range of sources to complete psychological formulation and clinical risk assessment in order to develop effective treatment plans for service users with complex needs.
• Demonstrated ability to effectively engage service users who may present with significant clinical obstacles to engagement.
• Demonstrated ability to maintain clear and appropriate personal and professional boundaries and to recognise own limitations.
• Well -developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to service users, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Demonstrated skills in providing consultation to other professional and non - professional groups.
• Ability to self -reflect and use clinical supervision appropriately.
• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi -media.
• Knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex multivariate data analysis as practised within the field of applied psychology
• Ability to sit in a constrained position when working with service users.
• Ability to sustain intense levels of concentration responding and participating as required

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website.

Employer contact details
For questions about the job, contact:
Consultant Clinical Psychologist
Dr Dominic Bray
Email: dominic.bray@nhs.net
Phone: 01704387252