Job overview
We are looking for an Assistant Psychologist to provide psychology provision to the adult wards within the St Charles Mental Health Centre based in North Kensington. The service has four open acute wards, a male-only Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and a female only PICU. The unit primarily works with patients who are resident in Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster (KCW).
The post holder would be expected to support and enhance the professional psychological care of clients within the service. They would help provide psychological assessment and psychological interventions of a routine nature, under the direct supervision of a qualified professional psychologist drawing on their supervisor’s expertise and intervention as and when advised and directed. This might include joint and individual direct work with clients and families, group work, indirect interventions on the ward and consultation to other MDT members. They would work according to a plan agreed with a qualified psychologist and within the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures. They would assist in clinically related administration, conduct of audits, collection of statistics, development of audit and/or research projects, teaching and project work.
Main duties of the job
·To provide psychological assessments for clients in the adult acute psychology inpatient services under the close supervision of a practitioner psychologist including psychological 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; and development & implementation of the trauma informed approach within Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster (KCW) acute and urgent care mental health services.
·To provide protocol based individual and group psychological interventions for clients in the KCW acute and urgent care mental health services including trauma informed approach by assisting in the formulation and delivery of routine care plans involving the psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s problems, under the direct supervision of a qualified professional psychologist.
·To attend and contribute to appropriate multi-disciplinary meetings, and to work with other staff to assess inpatients and review their care in preparation for multi-disciplinary reviews.
Working for our organisation
The Acute Psychology Pathway in Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster provides integrated psychological care to service users from our six adult inpatient wards at the St Charles Mental Health Unit and other parts of the urgent care pathway including Home Treatment Teams (HTT) and Mental Health Crisis Assessment Services. Continuity of psychological care is delivered across the whole system, with intervention from this pathway following service users’ treatment journey from acute services to the community Hubs and other community support.
Work includes liaison and working with both client systems and professional networks involved in working with clients with severe mental health problems, people undergoing crises, having complex emotional needs, neurodiversity and other complex mental health difficulties.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
KR 1 Clinical and Client Care
·To provide psychological assessments for clients in the adult acute psychology inpatient services under the close supervision of a practitioner psychologist including development and implementation of the trauma informed approach within KCW acute and urgent care mental health services
·To provide protocol based individual psychological interventions for clients in the KCW acute and urgent care mental health services including trauma informed approach
·To arrange, schedule and provide protocol based group psychological interventions for clients in the adult acute psychology inpatient services including trauma informed approach interventions and Dialectical Behavioural Therapy-informed skills groups. To support the carer support interventions.
·To assist the psychologists in the development of individual or group clinical materials or training materials. To support the administration of psychological and neuropsychological tests.
KR 2 Contributing to team or service clinical functioning
·To contribute to the effective working of the KCW acute and urgent care mental health services by registering new referrals; creating databases to track processes or progress through pathways and keeping them up-to-date; contributing to the training and support of other staff in developing and providing psychological care of clients
·To act in a manner that supports a psychologically informed framework for the service.
·To participate in the team or service’s delivery of accessible and acceptable services to diverse local communities. To assist and participate in staff team formulation meetings. To assist staff support interventions such as debriefs and reflective practices.
KR 3 Policy and service development
·To follow policies and procedures in own area of work
·To participate in the consultation and engagement of service users in planning and delivering services which meet the needs of local communities. Support service development projects if needed.
KR 4 Care or management of resources
·To take care of, and use carefully, the Trust’s equipment and physical resources.
·To ensure that the post holder has sufficient resources by estimating future needs and requesting supplies as needed.
·To be responsible for safe-keeping of equipment or stock provided to the post holder and informing the supervising psychologist or manager when stock requires replenishing may apply to psychometric tests, specialised stationery etc
Vaccination
The successful applicant may have contact with patients or service users. As an NHS Trust we strongly encourage and support vaccination as this remains the best way to protect yourself, your family, your colleagues and of course patients and service users when working on our healthcare settings.
1. Due to the high response levels we receive for some vacancies, we may expire any of them prior to the advertised closing date and advise you to submit your application as soon as possible.
2. Applications from job seekers who require sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. Before submitting your application and to avoid disappointment please check that you are eligible under the
3. Our Agenda for Change employment contracts are subject to a contractual 13 week probationary period.