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Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Duties and Responsibilities:

Clinical Responsibility

• Provide psychological services to adults with learning disabilities referred to the North Essex Specialist Health Services. Younger people may be worked with only if appropriate, for example, in preparation for transition into adult services.
• Provide specialist psychological assessments of service users, based upon the appropriate use, interpretation, and integration of complex psychological data from a variety of sources including: psychological and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations, semi-structured interviews with service users, family members and others involved in the service user’s care.
• Be responsible for formulation and implementation of plans for formal psychological treatment and/or management of service users’ mental health/learning disability/behavioural problems, based on an appropriate conceptual framework of the problems and employing methods of evidence-based efficacy across the full range of care settings.
• Be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families, and groups based on formulations and drawing on different explanatory psychological models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
• Evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical, developmental processes, which have shaped the individual family or group.
• Exercise autonomous professional responsibility for psychological assessment, treatment, and discharge of service users.
• Provide specialist psychological advice, guidance, and consultation to colleagues in the team, carers from the public/private and voluntary sector and families.
• Undertake risk assessment and management of individual service users to provide advice for other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.
• Act as care co-ordinator, when required, ensuring the provision of a care package appropriate for the service user needs, co-ordinating the work of others involved with care, taking responsibility for arranging CPA reviews as required and communicating effectively with the service user, his/her/their family and all others involved in the network of care and to monitor progress during the course of multi-disciplinary interventions.

Leadership and Staff Management Responsibility

The post holder will be responsible for:

Management, and supervision

• To participate as an experienced clinician in the practice governance, quality, and safety components of the service.
• To exercise delegated management responsibility and to provide professional and clinical supervision for individual clinical psychologists, associate psychologists, trainee clinical psychologists or assistant psychologists, as agreed with the Head of Psychology.
• Managers have a duty to promote and support staffs personal health and wellbeing at all times, this includes both physical and mental health and wellbeing.
• Managers have a responsibility to support staff by directing employees to services that are available to everyone to help in managing health and wellbeing. They should be open and approachable as well as proactive in discussing and agreeing a process to monitor an employee’s mental and physical health.

Teaching and Training

• Ensure members of team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding care of service users through provision of advice and consultation and dissemination of psychological research and theory.
• Advise, support and facilitate effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the team.
• Provide clinical placements for trainee clinical psychologists, ensuring trainees acquire necessary skills, competencies, and experience and to evaluate these competencies.
• Provide consultation/supervision to other non-psychology team members in carrying out psychological assessments and interventions.
• Provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with people with a learning disability across a range of agencies and settings in North Essex.

Recruitment

• Participate in staff recruitment within the service as negotiated with the professional supervisor and line manager.

Financial Responsibility

• The post holder will have no direct financial responsibility but will be required to maintain appropriate processes for ordering psychological test materials and equipment and for upgrading materials in line with good psychological practice.

Service Development and Improvement

Service Development

• As an experienced clinician, participate, in the development of a high quality responsive and accessible service.
• To participate in the development and articulation of best practice in psychology across the service.
• To contribute to identifying the needs of people with a learning disability in relation to current services.
• Contribute to the planning of future provision and participate in appropriate planning and development projects as agreed with the professional lead and line manager.
• To be responsible for development of a specialist area of psychological interest and service in agreement with the Head of Psychology according to service priorities, to advise of and participate in service development in this area and be a resource for consultation to colleagues regarding this specialist area.
• To participate as an experienced clinician in the development, evaluation and monitoring of the team’s operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.
• 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.

Research & Service Evaluation

• As an experienced clinician, participate 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 high-quality care.
• To utilise evidence–based literature research to support practice and work.
• Undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff.
• To undertake project management including complex audit and service evaluation with colleagues.

Communications

• To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner information concerning assessment, formulation, and treatment plans and to monitor and evaluate progress.
• Written and verbal communication is required to other members of the team, staff working with service users across a range of agencies and settings, adults with a learning disability and their families and carers.
• The post holder will communicate highly sensitive, contentious information effectively in a highly emotive or hostile atmosphere, and needs to overcome barriers to acceptance/psychological resistance to potentially threatening information.
• Communication requires face to face work with patients in isolated potentially hostile settings without other team members being nearby.

Other

• To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist and line manager.
• To participate in the appraisal HPFT process and in developing and maintaining up-to-date professional development plans.
• To maintain and develop skills in areas relevant to clinical work. To develop and maintain the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the Professional Lead.
• 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.
• Frequent travel is required by car throughout the area covered by the Community Teams and other areas of Essex, as required
• Flexibility to work in a variety of settings including service user’s homes, residential, day and in-patient services. An awareness and ability to assess and manage risk in these situations
• Additionally, the post holder has to work within the Trust’s manual handling policy, maintain intense concentration in all aspects of service user management, manage emotional consequences of working with distressing conditions and work in environments where there is occasional exposure to unpleasant conditions.