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 ethnically diverse, 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
The postholder will work within HMPs Liverpool and Altcourse which are both male category B prisons in the Liverpool area. The postholder will apply and maintain specialist skills, knowledge and experience to monitor and ensure the systematic provision of highly specialised psychological services. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to provide both group and individual interventions utilising a range of models, and there will be opportunities to support further training. You will be responsible for a clinical caseload and will receive regular clinical/management supervision and will provide both formal and informal supervision to other members of the team. You will have management responsibilities to maintain a safe and well led team and be involved in service development to improve quality service provision. This is an exciting time to join the Trust and influence the development of new services for people with mental health issues. The Trust's services operate within the least restrictive principle and implement Trauma Informed Care.
Main duties of the job
To apply and maintain specialist skills, knowledge and experience to monitor and ensure the systematic provision of highly specialised psychological services within prison settings. To provide both group and individual interventions utilising a range of models, with opportunities for ongoing further training. To be responsible for a clinical caseload, attend
regular clinical/management supervision and provide both formal and informal supervision to other members of the team. To have management responsibilities to maintain a safe and well led team and be involved in service development to improve quality service provision. To work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service/teams. To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research.
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 semistructured interviews with clients, 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 and groups, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
4. To evaluate, monitor progress and make highly skilled evaluations and 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 provide specialist psychological advice guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients' formulation, diagnosis and treatment plans.
7. To ensure that all members of the clinical team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of clients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.
8. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide both general and specialist advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
9. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, highly complex information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care where there may be conflicting views, high emotion and significant barriers to understanding and change, and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.
10. To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.
11. To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.
12. To provide clinical placements for trainee clinical and/or counselling psychologists, ensuring that trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good mental health care and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.
13. With experience, provide clinical placements for trainee clinical and/or counselling psychologists, ensuring that trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good mental health care and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.
14. To provide advice, consultation and training and clinical supervision to other members of the team for their provision of psychologically based interventions to help improve clients' functioning.
15. With experience, provide pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical
psychologists and/or other psychological services staff as appropriate.
16. To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional pre- and post-graduate training and clinical supervision.
17. To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.
18. To manage the workloads of Assistants, Trainees and recently qualified psychological services staff, where appropriate, within the framework of the Directorate's and team's/service's service policies and procedures.
19. To participate as a senior clinician in the development of a high quality, responsive and accessible service including advising both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
20. To exercise delegated responsibility for managing the psychological resources available to a team, whether in the form of additional qualified and unqualified graduate psychology staff, or in the form of psychological materials employed in the assessment and treatment of patients.
21. To exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service/team.
22. To participate as appropriate in staff recruitment, both in the short-listing process and as a member of interview panels, for assistants, trainees and recently qualified psychological services staff.
23. To act up for line manager as appropriate.
24. The post holder will be expected to make full use of IT packages available within the work area, for example, microsoft office, email, internet and statistical packages.
25. To take the psychology lead, as a senior clinician, in the evaluation, monitoring and development of the team's operational policies, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit and ensuring incorporation of psychological frameworks for understanding and provision of highquality care.
26. To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
27. To undertake appropriate research as agreed with the Head of Service and provide research advice to team colleagues undertaking research.
28. To initiate project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within and across the service to help develop and improve services to clients and their families.
29. To undertake a defined role in Directorate Service Governance structures as agreed.
30. To ensure the development, maintenance and dissemination of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external and external CPD training and development programmes and to provide evidence of CPD undertaken, e.g. in the form of CPD logbook.
31. To ensure the development and articulation of best practice in psychology within the service area and contribute across the service by exercising the skills of a reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the field of clinical psychology and related disciplines.
32. To maintain and promulgate 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, Directorate and Trust policies and procedures.
33. To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to both the specific client group and mental health.
34. To perform other duties of a similar kind appropriate to the grade, which may be required by their Psychological Services manager.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
* Doctoral level training in clinical psychology accredited by the BPS or its approved equivalent or equivalent qualification in forensic psychology, accredited by BPS.
Desirable criteria
* Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice
Knowledge
Essential criteria
* Assessed experience of working at a highly specialist level
* Significant experience of representing psychology within the context of multi-disciplinary care.
* Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care coordinator and also within the context of a multi-disciplinary care plan.
* Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision
* Expertise in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, formulation, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
* Well developed and effective communication skills, oral and written, to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
* Skills in providing consultation to other professional and nonprofessional groups.
* Knowledge of legislation in relation to client group and mental health
* Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical psychology field.
* Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS.
* Knowledge of IT systems including word processing, email and local electronic patient information systems.
Desirable criteria
* Demonstration of an awareness of boundary and security issues in a secure setting
* Experience of assessing and treating clients across the full range of care settings.
* Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
* Formal training in supervision of other psychologists.
* Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities.
* High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.
Skills
Essential criteria
* Ability to identify provide and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and severely challenging behaviours.
* Ability to identify, and employ, as appropriate, clinical governance mechanisms for the support and maintenance of clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
* Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials for presentations in public, professional and academic settings.
* Ability to self reflect, use clinical supervision appropriately and consider complex organisational and team dynamics.
Please ensure you check the email account from which you apply for all correspondence. All information regarding your application will come from apps.trac.jobs not NHS Jobs.
Only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview.
As a Disability Confident Employer, we offer a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants who consider themselves to be disabled who meet the minimum (essential) criteria for the role in the person specification. If you would like your application to be considered under the Trust's guaranteed interview scheme you can indicate this in the personal information section of your online application form.
Should you require a reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process please email recruitment@merseycare.nhs.uk to ensure that measures can be put in place to support you.
We reserve the right to close any vacancies from further applications when we have received a minimum number of applications from which to make a shortlist. Please ensure you apply without delay if you wish to be considered for this role.
The Trust expects all post holders who require an enhanced DBS for their role subscribe to the DBS Update Service. You will be required to enrol for this service for a fee of £16 per year and maintain registration. Trans applicants who require a DBS check and do not want to reveal details of their previous identity can contact the DBS Sensitive Applications Team (01516761452 or email sensitive@dbs.gsi.gov.uk) with their application number once they have completed their DBS application form. The team can prevent any previous identity showing on the DBS Certificate, unless the applicant has a conviction under their previous details in which case this will need to be disclosed.
Applicants requiring sponsorship may wish to determine the likelihood of obtaining sponsorship for this position by assessing themselves against the criteria on the gov.uk website - https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa.
Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.
Please be advised that the use of Artificial Intelligence on applications is monitored and if you choose to use this, you must declare this on your application form.
Please note: new entrants to the NHS will commence on the first pay point of the relevant band.
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Applicant requirements
You must have appropriate UK professional registration.
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Documents to download
* job description (PDF, 187.8KB)
* Functional Requirements (PDF, 536.5KB)
* A Great Place to Work (PDF, 2.1MB)
* Our People Promise and Charter (PDF, 5.8MB)
* Preceptorship Information (PDF, 549.9KB)
* Employee Benefits (PDF, 950.7KB)
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