Job summary
- Main area
- Forensic and Clinical Psychology
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 5
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time
- Flexible working
- Home or remote working
- Job ref
- 367-LD&F-9507
- Employer
- Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- 3 Bowlers Green, Radlett WD7 9HQ
- Town
- Radlett
- Salary
- £29,970 - £36,483 per annum pro rata (inclusive of 5% HCAS)
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 20/07/2025 08:00
Employer heading
ERA Team Assistant Psychologist/Facilitator
NHS AfC: Band 5
Values Based Screener
At Hertfordshire Partnership Foundation Trust we are looking for people to join us who share our values and those of the NHS. Before your application can be considered please take part on our online values questionnaire, which you can find below. When you have finished you will be sent a 'completion code' by email, which will be valid for 6 months and required to submit your application form.
http://hpft.recruitforvalues.co
Job overview
The purpose of this post is to support colleagues working within Adult Mental Health Services to develop their understanding and skills in identifying, assessing, and managing risk to others posed by some service users, who do not reach the threshold for Forensic Services, so that our colleagues can ensure that our service users can better engage with their treatment, remain in services, and improve their overall risk against others.
This will involve supporting staff by facilitating Enhanced Risk Assessment (ERAs) meetings, Risk Management Plan meetings, and Consultations; attending AMH team meetings to discuss the ERA process and support decision-making regarding risk; contributing to training for AMH staff about assessing and working with risk; and as part of this process formulating risk and developing management plans with staff.
We do not work directly with service users within ERA; instead, our focus is on helping our colleagues (both within HPFT and from external agencies) to develop robust formulations and management plans that positively impact upon our service users and the community.
There may be opportunities to work clinically with adjoining forensic teams, particularly the Primary Mental Health Treatment Requirement team (Liaison & Diversion), which provides court-ordered low-intensity interventions for service users as part of their community-based sentence.
Main duties of the job
The primary duty of this post is to ensure that all colleagues within HPFT have access to appropriate guidance and support to work with service users who pose a potential risk to others. The way that we do this includes several different key areas:
1. You will increase the awareness of the team's work to teams within HPFT
2. You will conduct Consultations with colleagues who refer service user cases to us, help facilitate Risk Management Plan Meetings with colleagues to create more robust plans to handle risk, and lead or support facilitate Enhanced Risk Assessment Meetings with multiple agencies
3. Write up useful and accurate Consultation Records, Risk Management Plans, and ERAs in a timely fashion, taking advice and guidance from the Clinical Lead, and ensuring that the written work is disseminated appropriately
4. Help develop and lead on training programmes for our colleagues on working with risk
5. Collect and maintain the data that we collect on our work, take part in audits and evaluations, and support service development plans and growth
6. Be aware of and responsive to changing need within the wider service, to ensure that our work is addressing the needs of our colleagues for working with risk
Working for our organisation
Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) is an outstanding organisation with ambitions to match. We are one of just five mental health trusts to achieve an overall rating of ‘Outstanding’ from the Care Quality Commission, and our aim is to be the leading provider of mental health and specialist learning disability services in the country.
Our family of over 4000 members of staff provide health and social care for over 400,000 people with mental ill health, physical ill health and learning disabilities across Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Norfolk, delivering these services within the community and several inpatient settings. We also deliver a range of nationally commissioned specialist services including Tier 4 services for children and young people, perinatal services, plus medium and low secure learning disabilities services.
The care we provide makes a fantastic difference to the lives of our service users, their families and carers - everything is underpinned by choice, independence and equality, with our Trust values embedded throughout:
Our Trust values are:
Welcoming. Kind. Positive. Respectful. Professional.
These values are at the core of who we are, everything we do, and how we do it!
Would you like to be part of the HPFT family? Would you like work with us to ensure our service users live the fullest lives possible they can? Would you like to be supported in your career to be the best that you can be?
Then please read on…
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Key Relationships:
This post will be located within the LD & Forensic Business unit of the Trust although the key relationships will be with colleagues from the Adult Mental Health Services, i.e. Crisis Teams, Inpatient services, PMHTR, PATH team.
Much of the work is done remotely, with regular weekly supervision and meetings in-person and virtually to support team and service development. Supervision and line management for the post will come from the Clinical Lead for the ERA Team, a principal clinical psychologist.
Duties and Responsibilities:
This post will work closely with the other two assistant psychologists in the team.
Each of the assistant psychologists will conduct brief Consultations with colleagues who have made a referral to our team, which allows us to get information about why a service user has been referred, understand what is happening within that risk profile, and provide recommendations for management or additional risk assessments.
Where the initial Consultation is not sufficient to create a robust management plan, recommendations may be made to complete a Risk Management Plan meeting (with the support of a second AP where needed) wherein additional colleagues may be invited to provide more information and context for the service user's care and management. In these instances, the AP will take the lead in facilitating the meeting and support the attendees to create an appropriate risk management plan.
Where there is more historical information available or a deeper assessment is needed, the Consultation may lead to a full Enhanced Risk Assessment report. In these instances, the AP will lead (with the support of a second AP) a meeting of all relevant colleagues associated with a service user's care. This will will lead to an assessment report which provides a holistic assessment of the risk and understanding of the service user's formulation.
All Consultation Records, Risk Management Plans, and Enhanced Risk Assessment Reports are reviewed and approved by the Clinical Lead before being finalised.
ERA APs will also help to develop and provide training sessions to teams based around the understanding and management of risk; these sessions will include - but are not limited to - training around the management of risk; discussion of risk with the service user; and developing risk formulations and management plans.
Additionally, ERA APs will take part in "Meet & Greet" sessions, wherein they will help introduce the ERA team and process across the wider network. These include both PowerPoint presentations and more casual, informed conversations.
We care deeply about being both effective and accessible to our colleagues; in line with this, we collect a lot of information about how we are functioning and the outcomes of our recommendations. Therefore, all APs should be interested in and prepared to take part in service evaluations and further research projects.
You will have individual supervision with the Clinical Lead fortnightly, supplemented with group supervision on alternating weeks. We have weekly caseload meetings to discuss what is happening within the team and our work, as well as monthly business meetings which focus on wider service issues and monthly journal discussion meetings with the PMHTR Team.
Person specification
TRAINING & QUALIFICATIONS
Essential criteria
- An upper second class honours degree or higher in psychology.
- Entitlement to graduate membership of the British Psychological Society
Desirable criteria
- Further post graduate training in relevant areas of professional psychology, mental health practice and/or research design and analysis
- MSc in Clinical Forensic or Forensic Psychology
- Formal training in the use of the HCR-20 risk assessment
EXPERIENCE & KNOWLEDGE
Essential criteria
- High level communication skills (written and verbal) including an ability to communicate and work in settings in which the atmosphere may be highly emotive
- Graduate level knowledge of research design and methodology.
- Experience of using computers for databases or data-analysis, especially SPSS for Windows.
- High standard of report writing.
- Ability to communicate sensitive information to service users, carers and colleagues
- An understanding of the needs and difficulties of people with personality disorder, mental illness or other disabilities.
Desirable criteria
- Experience of paid work as an assistant psychologist.
- Experience of working in forensic and adult mental health services
- Experience in completing forensic risk assessments.
- Experience of providing consultation and facilitating others in completing risk assessments.
- Experience of facilitating workshops and training sessions
- Experience of working with people with a personality disorder, mental illness, and offending behaviours
- Up to date knowledge of psychological research and national guidance relevant to the client group
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Applicant requirements
The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Dr Jess McCloskey
- Job title
- Principal Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Lead
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 07816 118611
- Additional information
I warmly welcome advance questions or information requests about this post and whether it suits your ways of working and interests. I would also be happy to send you on our recent service evaluation or operational policy to help clarify the role.
As these posts tend to attract a lot of applications, I would recommend requesting a video discussion only after you have been shortlisted for the role.
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