Job summary
- Main area
- Clinical/Counselling Psychology/Highly Specialised Psychotherapy
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 8a
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time
- Part time
- Flexible working
- Home or remote working
- Job ref
- 311-R308-24-A
- Employer
- Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Birch Hill Hospital
- Town
- Rochdale
- Salary
- £43,742 - £57,349 PA, pro rata
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 12/05/2024 23:59
Employer heading
Clinical or Counselling Psychologist or Psychotherapist
NHS AfC: Band 8a
About the Trust
We are proud to provide high quality mental health and learning disability services, both inpatient and in the community across five boroughs of Greater Manchester - Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport and Tameside and Glossop.
Our vision is for a happier and more hopeful life for everyone in our communities and our staff work hard to deliver the very best care for the people who use our services. We’re really proud of our #PennineCarePeople and do everything we can to make sure we’re a great place to work.
Our ambition is to maximise people’s potential and we aim to promote an inclusive environment and improve the diversity of our workforce so our people truly represent the communities we serve.
All individuals regardless of race, age, disability, ethnicity, nationality, gender, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, religion or belief, marriage and civil partnership are encouraged to apply for this post. We would also encourage applications from individuals with a lived experience of mental illness, either individually or as a carer.
If you come and work for us we will offer a range of benefits and opportunities, including:
- Generous annual leave entitlement for Agenda for Change and Medical and Dental staff.
- Flexible working opportunities to support your work/life balance
- Access to Continued Professional Development
- Involvement in improvement and research activities
- Health and Wellbeing activities and access to an excellent staff wellbeing service
- Access to staff discounts across retail, leisure and travel
If you are Kind, Fair, Ingenious and Determined then we want you to come and join our #PennineCarePeople
Job overview
We are really excited to advertise two permanent Grade 8a posts - Clinical/ Counselling Psychologists or Highly Specialist Psychotherapists (1.85WTE), to work in the Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale (HMR) Secondary Care Psychological Therapies Service (SCPTS).
We will also consider applicants from trainees/newly qualified psychologists on a band 7/8a preceptorship arrangement.
SCPTS is based in the psychological therapies department at Birch Hill Hospital, Rochdale, with close links with the three local Community Mental Health Teams. The successful applicants will be joining a friendly and well-established team, with practitioners who have training and interests in a wide range of psychological approaches, including CBT, CAT, DBT, MBT, and CFT.
There are great opportunities for further training and development, and as a service we are supportive of flexible working arrangements and there are opportunities for hybrid working, including working from the department, home working, and working from the community mental health team bases.
The Birch Hill Hospital site also has some significant benefits, including free and ample parking onsite, excellent canteen, and newly refurbished digital hub which will allow enhanced ICT support and extra space to work and meet with colleagues. Birch Hill is also a mental health specific site, which allows close working with other secondary care colleagues on the inpatient unit, in EIT and the Complex Emotional Relational Needs (CERN) team.
Main duties of the job
- To provide a qualified specialist clinical psychology service for people referred to the Heywood, Middleton & Rochdale (HMR) Secondary Care Psychological Therapy Service (SCPTS).
- To provide consultation and formulation to staff within HMR CMHTs, supported by Clinical Psychology colleagues.
- To provide specialist assessment, formulation and interventions for a clinical caseload.
- To support HMR CMHT practitioners and to develop a psychological understanding and context for service users and carers.
- Operating in an integrated and inclusive style you will work closely with the MDTs to support the development of individual care planning.
We are keen to ensure there is adequate support for the candidate in this role. Management supervision will be provided by the SCPTS clinical lead/team manager; and clinical supervision will be offered by senior clinicians within the team or via a neighbouring SCPT service. The successful applicants will be integral MDT members, working alongside CMHT colleagues, fellow SCPTS psychologists and CBT therapists, and be part of the community services transformation agenda to provide psychological assessment, formulation and intervention to service users who present with complex mental health problems. In addition, you will bring a psychological perspective to care, team meetings, formulation meetings and support the psychosocial intervention work of colleagues, through consultation, supervision and reflective practice.
Working for our organisation
We are passionate about staff well-being and compassionate leadership. Our staff survey results support this:
In the National Staff Survey (2023) Pennine Care was rated as ‘the best mental health and learning disability trust to work for in the North West’, and also the best Trust in Greater Manchester for staff feeling ‘recognised and rewarded, each having a voice that counts, always learning, working flexibly and working as a team.’
Equality, diversity and inclusion is at the top of our agenda. We believe that a diverse, inclusive and engaged culture is vital; that everyone’s value should be recognised and respected.
You will be joining a peer network of other Practitioner Psychologists across the trust. You will have opportunities to link with colleagues, through peer supervision and support, special interest groups, the psychological therapies leadership group and psychology forums.
Pennine Care have recently invested in the psychological leadership structure, which is supported by the Associate Network Director for Psychological Therapies and the CPPO.
There are also opportunities to link with local higher education providers and the R&I team to engage with related research projects.
We are committed to staff development and have an extensive psychological therapies training programme.
Our trust values are:
Kindness
Fairness
Ingenuity
Determination
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Clinical
- To provide specialist psychological assessments 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 and semi structured interviews with service users and carers.
- To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological intervention and / or management of a client’s mental health problems, based upon appropriate conceptual framework of the service user’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings. Clinical work requiring intense concentration over prolonged periods and also frequently involving working with highly distressed service users.
- To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across the teams, developing and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models. Judgement regarding choice of therapy intervention is based on appraisal of evidence based therapeutic options.
- To evaluate and make decisions about intervention options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.
- To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of service users whose problems are managed by psychologically-based standard care plans.
- To provide specialist psychological support, consultation and guidance to other professionals contributing directly to the service users’ assessment, formulation and intervention plan.
- To ensure that all members of the team have access to a psychologically-based framework for understanding and caring for the service user, through the provision of advice, consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.
- To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users and to provide general advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.
- To communicate and receive highly complex and contentious information in a skilled and sensitive manner, in the course of psychological assessment and therapy.
- To provide training and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the teams.
- To deliver a care package appropriate for the service user’s needs, co-ordinating the work of others involved with care, arranging service user reviews as required and communicating effectively and monitoring progress during the course of multi-disciplinary interventions.
Teaching, Training and Supervision
- To support clinical placements for trainee clinical and/or counselling psychologists and other therapists, ensuring that trainees acquire the necessary experience to contribute effectively to good mental health care and to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.
- To provide advice, consultation, training and clinical supervision to other members of MDTs for their provision of psychologically-based interventions to help improve service users’ functioning.
- To provide pre and post – qualification teaching of clinical psychology as appropriate.
- To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional pre and post – graduate training and clinical supervision.
Management and Recruitment
- To contribute to the appropriate use of the psychological resources available to a team, whether in the form unqualified graduate psychology staff, or in the form of psychological materials employed in the assessment and treatment of patients.
- To contribute to the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service / team.
- To participate as appropriate in staff recruitment, both in the short-listing process and as a member of interview panels for assistant and trainee clinical psychologists.
Policy and Service Development
- To participate in the development of a high quality, responsive and accessible service including advising both service and professional managers on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
Research and Service Evaluation
- To 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.
Person specification
Education/Qualifications
Essential criteria
- • Doctorate in Clinical/Counselling Psychology and registration with the Health Professions Council OR UKCP registered therapist with core professional qualification e.g. RMN; OT; MHSW and Masters qualification in Psychotherapy plus experience/training to Doctoral level OR BABCP/BACP accredited CBT/therapist with additional training in for example EMDR/DBT plus experience/training to Doctoral level
Desirable criteria
- • Further qualifications and / or training in a range of therapy models / interventions i.e. CAT
- • Further training and/or qualifications in the delivery of clinical supervision
Experience
Essential criteria
- • Experience of specialist psychology assessment and treatment across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and in-patient settings.
- • Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.
- • Experience of working within multidisciplinary services in mental health
- • Experience of providing clinical supervision to other psychological therapists
Desirable criteria
- • Experience in teaching / training of other qualified mental health staff / nonpsychology staff
- • Experience of developing and conducting service related research, including, i.e., clinical audits or service evaluations.
- • Delivering psychological therapy in a group format (e.g. DBT, CBT, Schema Therapy, CFT).
- • Experience of the application of psychological therapies in different cultural contexts.
Knowledge
Essential criteria
- • Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS, BABCP, BACP
- • Knowledge of the application of clinical governance and risk management policies
- • Knowledge of the practice implications of National guidance and policy, e.g. Nice Guidance, MHA, etc.
Desirable criteria
- • Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, dual diagnosis, people with additional disabilities etc.)
- • High–level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.
- • Knowledge of legislation in relation to working age adults and mental health.
- • Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex multivariate data analysis as practiced within the field of clinical psychology
Skills and Abilities
Essential criteria
- • Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, highly technical and clinically sensitive information to service users, carers and other professional colleagues
- • Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment and intervention frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
- • Skills in providing consultation to other professional and nonprofessional groups.
- • Ability to prioritise work, manage waiting lists, meet deadlines and revise work plans accordingly
- • Ability to teach and train others using a variety of complex and multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
- • Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
Desirable criteria
- • Experience of working within a multicultural framework.
- • Strong interest and experience of working with service users with severe / complex needs
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Applicant requirements
You must have appropriate UK professional registration.
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Dr Clare Reeves
- Job title
- Principle Clinical Psychologist/Service Manager
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 01706 676080
- Additional information
Does this sound like you? Are you interested to know more? If so we’d love you to join us. For informal enquiries please don’t hesitate to contact Dr Clare Reeves and informal visits are most welcome.
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