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Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The Mental Health Emergency Assessment Centre (MHEAC) within Northwick Park Hospital supports service users with acute and crisis mental health presentations, with the aim of facilitating a comprehensive assessment and avoiding the need for admission to an acute mental health ward if not therapeutically indicated. The Complex Emotional Needs (CEN) pathway provides comprehensive assessments alongside evidence-based group and individual psychological interventions to service users within this population.

The post holder will work closely with Psychologists, Operational Managers, Consultant Psychiatrists and other senior team members, to provide a highly specialist and trauma-informed psychological provision of care to service users.  They will play a key role in the urgent assessment of service users presenting to acute services as well as the development of creative and multi-disciplinary care plans to support these service users outside of hospital.  They will be involved in the provision of psychological intervention that follows service users from acute to community services, and input into our newly developed psychological continuity and complex emotional needs pathways.

The post-holder will be expected to work as a senior member of the multi-professional team, including the provision of consultation, co-working, teaching, training, supervision and research as well as developing specific training to enhance the systematic provision of psychological interventions offered to service users by all members of the team within a ‘stepped-care’ framework.  They will make a leading contribution to the learning culture of the team and wider service and play an integral role in the further development and embedding of trauma-informed approaches across the teams.

The post-holder will undertake assessment, psychological interventions and family interventions for the most complex presentations and to contribute to safe therapeutic discharge plans in order to enhance recovery and prevent relapse. They will utilise research skills for Quality Improvement, audit, policy and service development and research.

MAIN DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Clinical:

1. To provide specialist psychological assessment and formulation for service users 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 semi-structured interviews with clients, family members and others involved in the client’s care.

2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a service user’s mental health difficulties, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the service user’s difficulties, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.

3. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.

4. To evaluate and make 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 service users whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.

6. To integrate with the psychological formulation specialist knowledge of complex mental health presentations.

7. To understand the impact of acute mental health presentations, and to offer appropriate advice to the patient, carers and clinicians in the light of such understanding.

8. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to staff contributing directly to service user’s formulations and treatment plans.

9. To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all service users, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.

10. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.

12. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment of service users under their care and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.

13. To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team, where appropriate.

Teaching, training, and supervision:

1. To receive regular clinical professional supervision from the Consultant Clinical Psychologist and/or Principal Clinical Psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.

2. To gain additional highly specialist experience and skills relevant to clinical psychology in acute settings, as agreed.

3. To develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training and supervision.

4. To provide supervision to other multi-disciplinary staff’s psychological work, as appropriate.

5. To provide clinical placements for trainee clinical 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.

6. To provide professional and clinical supervision of trainee and assistant clinical psychologists, and more junior qualified psychologists.

7. To contribute to the pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical psychology as well as other disciplines, as appropriate.

8. To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the service user group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.

Management, recruitment, policy and service development:

1. To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the Acute Psychology and Complex Emotional Needs services operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.

2. To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.

3. To facilitate and assist in Acute Psychology and Complex Emotional Needs services development and provision e.g. information systems.

4. To manage the workloads of assistant and trainee clinical psychologists as well as more junior qualified psychologists within the framework of the team/service’s policies and procedures.

5. To be involved, as appropriate, in the shortlisting and interviewing of assistant/graduate psychologists as well as more junior qualified psychologists.

6. The post holder will be required to attend and contribute to regular professional meetings.

Research and service evaluation:

1. To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other team members.

2. To undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research.

3. To undertake project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within the service to help develop service provision.

IT responsibilities (other than those used for research):

1. The post holder will input and maintain appropriate computer and manual clinical records and statistical data and provide this to the Acute Service Manager when necessary.

2. The postholder will engage in relevant computer and IT training as required.

General:

1. To contribute to the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the postholder’s professional and service manager(s).

2. To contribute to the development and articulation of best practice in psychology across the service, by continuing to develop the skills of a reflexive and 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. To work flexibly and respond to service needs accordingly e.g. with regard to cover Service Level Agreement arrangements

To be noted:

• This is not an exhaustive list of duties and responsibilities, and the postholder may be required to undertake other duties which fall within the grade of the job, in discussion with the manager.
• This job description will be reviewed regularly in the light of changing service requirements and any such changes will be discussed with the post holder.
• The post holder is expected to comply with all relevant Trust policies, procedures and guidelines, including those relating to Equal Opportunities, Health and Safety and Confidentiality of Information, clinical governance including research governance.