Clinical/Forensic/Counselling Psychologist or Psychological Therapist

This post offers an exciting opportunity to work in the pan-London London Womens Mental Health Treatment Requirement (MHTR) Service. This is a London pathways Partnership (LPP) service, led by Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with Central and North West London (CNWL) NHS Foundation Trust and Together for Mental Wellbeing. MHTRs aim to reduce custodial sentences, improve wellbeing and address mental health needs associated with offending. MHTRs were introduced by the Criminal Justice Act in 2003, recognising that for many individuals who offend, mental health and substance misuse issues underpin their offending behaviour. This service aims to increase the use of MHTRs as part of a community sentence. The MHTR Service will also provide the courts with information and confidence to sentence to robust and effective treatment requirements. The London Womens MHTR Service provides a primary-care level service and is also one of three pilot secondary care sites, testing pathways into secondary care services for individuals. The successful individual will have the opportunity to work across both services.

Please note, this a pan-London service. While the base is London Bridge, clinical work occurs across all the London boroughs.

Important Sponsorship Information for this post:

We are currently unable to offer a certificate of sponsorship for this post

The Role Will Include

Assessment of women prior to sentencing to consider suitability for an MHTR

Providing short-term psychological interventions for those that are sentenced to an MHTR

Liaison with stakeholders including probation colleagues, court staff and secondary care mental health services

Supervision of prequalified staff including trainees and assistant psychologists

Involvement in service research, audits and development

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, childrens centres, schools and peoples homes.

We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Marys Hospital, Sidcup and

Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.

Our Purpose Is To Improve Lives By Providing The Best Possible Care To Our Patients And Their Families. This Is Strengthened By Our New Values

Were Kind

Were Fair

We Listen

We Care

Clinical and Client Care

To provide highly specialist psychological therapy assessments, formulations and interventions.

To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of community clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans, including taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans with input from clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.

To provide culturally appropriate psychological therapy interventions with carers or families of referred clients when required.

To communicate, in a highly skilled and sensitive manner, to clients, family carers and others as appropriate, information that may be contentious or highly distressing concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care.

To produce reports

on clients, in a timely manner, that convey the key findings of psychological assessment and formulation and treatment outcome in a way that does justice to the complexity of the problems described, but that are understandable to the recipients of the reports, including clients and referrers.

To undertake psychometric and neuropsychological testing as appropriate, including selecting the appropriate tests, administering and scoring the tests in accordance with the manual, and interpreting the findings in the context of all relevant information.

To undertake risk assessment, risk monitoring and risk management for individual clients in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures, and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.

To work in partnership with other disciplines and to maintain links with statutory and non-statutory agencies as appropriate.

To ensure that all services provided are acceptable and accessible to the diverse communities served.

Implement outcome measurement as determined by the local service.

Attend and contribute to psychological therapies and directorate meetings and forums.

Responsibilities for team and service clinical functioning

Deliver accessible and acceptable services to diverse local communities.

To be proactive in challenging discrimination.

To advise other members of the service on specialist psycholo

gical care of clients.

To liaise with the service/s MDT and other professionals including to liaise with referrers, GPs and other professionals concerned with clients in order to develop and review care plans.

To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research.

Work within the remit of relevant policies and procedures for the safe running of the service.

Policy and service development

To implement clinical governance standards within the service and ensure that these are maintained and improved.

Ensure that services to clients are of a high quality and are managed efficiently, according to the overall requirements of the Trust, NHS and government guidance and standards.

To undertake quality improvement projects relevant to the role.

To ensure the engagement of service users in planning and delivering services.

Management and supervision

To provide line management to pre-qualified staff and to supervise students and trainees.

To support recruitment of psychological therapies staff to the service.

For staff line managed, to ensure local standards are implemented for the allocation and review of work, job planning, review of performance, sickness management and initial stages of grievance or disciplinary action.

To oversee quality line management and supervision within the team structure, ensuring that assistant psychologists and trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies a

nd experience to contribute effectively to health care, and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.

To supervise psychological work carried out by other professionals as appropriate.

To provide highly specialist advice, consultation and training of staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate. This may include work with the Criminal Justice System and Childrens Services.

Teaching and Training

To provide and support specialist clinical placements for students and trainees in applied psychological practice.

To contribute to the delivery of teaching and training to psychological practitioners and other professions.

To contribute to the development of the knowledge and skills base within the service by maintaining an active awareness of current developments in psychological therapy and risk assessment / management and to implement knowledge gained in practice.

To disseminate research and service evaluation findings through presentations and published articles.

To continue to gain wider post-qualification experience of psychological therapies and risk assessment, over and above that provided within the principal service area where the post-holder is employed.

Record-keeping and Information Governance

To ensure that all information generated by own work is recorded as required by Trust policies and local procedures.

To ensure th

e highest standards of clinical record keeping and report writing, according to professional and Trust guidelines, including electronic data entry, in those parts of the service for which the post-holder has management or leadership responsibility.

Research and development

To undertake the planning, initiation and completion of research, service evaluation and audits, and quality improvement projects relevant to the service and the directorate research agenda.

To oversee the planning, initiation and completion of research, service evaluation and audits by students, trainees and colleagues.

To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.

Maintaining professional standards and continuing professional development

To receive regular clinical and professional supervision from a senior psychological practitioner according to professional and Trust guidelines and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.

To attend Reflective Practice reliably.

To maintain own Continuing Professional Development in line with registered body and Trust Personal Development Plan requirements.

To maintain an up-to-date knowledge of current developments in professional and clinical practice and of relevant legislation and policies.

To comply with the registered body Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics/Standards of P

roficiency.

To ensure that all assistant for whom the post-holder has management responsibility maintain professional standards, and adhere to all organisational HR policies and procedures.

Maintaining registration and standards of practice according to the employer and any regulating bodies eg the UKCP, BABCP & HCPC etc.

Ensuring all aspects of confidentiality relating to both the service and individuals are maintained at all times.

General

To travel to clinical venues, training activities and meetings as appropriate and across the Trust when required.

To be aware of risk relating to aggressive and challenging behaviour amongst the client group, and follow Trust policies relating to its management.

To respond appropriately and professionally to emotionally distressing situations of people in distress or in crisis and who may be abusive and to support others involved in such situations.

To work flexibly which may include offering some regular commitment to late clinics or weekend working, within the overall Job Plan.

To be proficient in the use of IT for purposes such as email, electronic calendar, intranet, video calls and electronic clinical records.

To be familiar with word processing, database and statistical packages, and to use such packages appropriately as necessary.

To maintain high standards of clinical record keeping, including electronic clinical records and report writing, in accorda

nce with professional codes of practice and Trust policies and procedures.

To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues pertaining to the client group.

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