Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Clinical

• To provide specialist psychological assessments of children and families referred to the General Paediatric psychology Service 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 children and families and others involved in the care.
• Communicates highly complex condition-related information to children, young people and their families.  Such communication may take place in highly emotive situations, where, due to their physical condition, psychological state of mind or strained relationships, there is the potential for highly distressed, antagonistic or hostile reactions. Managing such sensitive communication challenges could take place within the context of acute care wards, outpatient clinics or patients’ own homes.
• To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a child’s and families difficulties, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the child and families problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
• 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.
• 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.
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of children and families within the General Paediatric psychology Service.
• To provide specialist psychological advice guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
• To take part in joint assessment with consultant medical doctors, clinical specialist nurses, specialist physiotherapists and occupational therapists, as part of the multidisciplinary teams, and in regard to joint work with more complex cases.
• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
• To ensure that all team members have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of patients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.
• To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.

Teaching, Training, and Supervision

• To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.
• To gain additional highly specialist experience and skills relevant to clinical psychology and/or the service (as agreed with the professional psychology manager).
• To develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training and supervision and to provide supervision to other multi-disciplinary staff’s psychological work as appropriate.
• To provide professional and clinical supervision of trainee and assistant clinical psychologists.
• To contribute to the pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical and/or counselling psychology, as appropriate.
• To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.

Management, Recruitment, Policy and Service Development

• To contribute to 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 advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
• To manage the workloads of assistant and trainee clinical psychologists, within the framework of the team/service’s policies and procedures.
• To be involved, as appropriate, in the shortlisting and interviewing of assistant / graduate psychologists.

Research and Service Evaluation

• To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
• To undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research.
• To undertake project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within the service to help develop service provision.

Communications and Working Relationships

• Required to work closely with:
  • Head of Services.
  • Heads of specialisms, colleagues within specialisms and other psychologists locally and nationally.
  • Other members within the teams in which the post holder is working e.g. nursing staff, physiotherapists, GPs, pharmacists.
  • Other consultants and referrers in any of the services to which the post holder is associated.
  • Other agencies to which referrals might be made e.g. social services, community mental health team.
• Required to liaise with:
  • Associated organisations, both locally and nationally e.g. the British Psychological Society, and associated projects to which patients can be referred locally.
  • Specialist interest groups within psychology and pain management e.g. The South Wales Faculty of Clinical Health Psychology.
• Effective communication skill, emotional robustness and capacity for concentration to cope and work effectively with stress (in self and others) when working with people who might be in distressing situations e.g. coping with pain, a chronic illness or having been recently diagnosed with a chronic illness.
• To be skilled in, and able to, demonstrate effective clinical judgement in managing distressing and uncertain circumstances e.g. managing the risk of suicide.