Specialist Psychological Therapist (Preceptorship)
Job Description
Job summary
There is currently a vacant Band 7 to Band 8a preceptorship psychological therapist role based in the Inpatient Forensic Psychology service across the Bracton Centre and Memorial Hospital. You will work with a team of psychological therapists and multi-professional mental health colleagues to embed psychologically informed care in the service. You will be based on a ward, but also have input into cross-service psychological activities including the group programme.
As well as holding a clinical caseload in the secure setting, another significant aspect of the role is providing input to the community psychology service based at the William Morris Centre (DA2 7AF). This is a psychological assessment and intervention service that specialises in working with people in the community who are seeking interventions to address their difficulties with interpersonal functioning and risk of harm to others.
Main duties of the job
You will promote an environment in which therapeutic relationships facilitate safety and change, by offering psychological perspectives and emotional support to nursing teams, and promoting psychological thinking in teams. You should have interests in working with psychosis and complex trauma where there is associated risk, including providing direct psychological assessments and interventions, engaging with families and loved ones and working in multi-disciplinary and multi-agency contexts with other mental health disciplines and with other agencies.
Further to the above, you will supervise and manage pre-qualified staff, supervise psychological interventions delivered by MDT colleagues, and supervise psychology students and doctoral trainees. Supervision training will be provided as required.
About us
Oxleas Forensic Psychological Therapies department is an unusually large, long established and nationally well regarded specialty. The Psychological Therapies team is warm and friendly, whilst also being dynamic and innovative. The Forensic Psychological Therapies department in Oxleas provides a breadth of professional opportunities across community, prison and hospital settings and opportunities for research and career progression through ongoing professional development. The post holder will be encouraged to consolidate and further develop their skills and clinical interests in a friendly and supportive multi-professional and multi-agency context. Aside from the stimulating clinical work, benefits of the post include monthly teaching sessions within the psychology department, monthly peer supervision in addition to regular individual supervision, a range of interesting CPD opportunities and opportunities for future career progression within the department. There is access to a network of specialist psychological supervision groups across the forensic directorate. Professionally, psychological therapists in Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust are highly valued and occupy a variety of directorate and Trust-wide leadership roles, including quality assurance, quality improvement, and operating as Responsible Clinicians.
Job responsibilities
Clinical and Client Care
To provide direct psychological care (assessment and intervention) and support the delivery of psychologically informed care by all disciplines within the service.
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 service suers, 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.
Responsibilities for team and service clinical functioning
Attend and contribute to directorate level meetings and forums, as directed.
Contribute to the delivery of accessible and acceptable services to diverse communities.
To be proactive in challenging discrimination.
To advise other colleagues on specialist psychological care of clients.
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 to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
To liaise with the service/s MDT and other professionals.
Implement relevant policies and procedures for the safe running of the service.
Service development
To engage in service improvements through audits and quality improvement initiatives.
To ensure the consultation and engagement of service users in planning and delivering services which meet the needs of local communities.
Advise professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
To participate in Trust and Directorate strategic development and implementation of new initiatives (e.g. national guidelines), including through membership of committees and/or working parties.
Apply clinical governance standards within the service and ensure that these are maintained and improved.
Provide high quality services that are managed efficiently, according to the overall requirements of the Trust, NHS and government guidance and standards.
Participate in service outcome monitoring.
Management and supervision
To provide line management to designated assistant psychologists.
Provide supervision to students and trainees and to multi-disciplinary colleagues delivering psychological interventions.
To support recruitment of assistant psychologists to the service.
For those line managing, 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 staff and trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to health care, and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.
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 junior psychological practitioners and specialist training to 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 / management, 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 the 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 ...
