Job overview

The Northants Personality Disorder Hub is a countywide specialist service that works to enhance understanding of personality disorder and promote the delivery of effective interventions across community and inpatient services in Northamptonshire. The team comprises of staff from a range of professional backgrounds (including nursing, occupational therapy and clinical psychology).

The service provides a Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) programme at two locations across the county, and leads on the delivery of Structured Clinical Management (SCM) across general secondary mental health services. Alongside this, the service also frequently delivers training to community and inpatient teams and benefits from an established group of experts by experience who are passionate about promoting hope, improving services and co-developing and delivering staff training.  The service has active inclusion strategies targeted at improving access to relevant services for marginalised and disadvantaged groups.

An opportunity has arisen for a clinical or counselling psychologist with an interest in working with complex needs to join our specialist multi-disciplinary team in a fixed term maternity cover post. As outlined at the top of this advertisement, this post could be offered as a secondment opportunity provided that you have obtained approval from your current line manager.

Main duties of the job

This post will give the successful candidate the opportunity to develop their capabilities within a highly supportive and motivated multidisciplinary team.

Psychological formulation and an investment in on-going professional development are embedded in the team’s approach.  As a contributor to advances in local and national pathways, the service is at the forefront of transforming services and providing high quality care.

This post offers:

·        Training and supervision in DBT with the potential to use this toward a later accredited qualification in DBT.

·        Opportunities for leadership and development through involvement in high impact projects, including those targeted at improving service access and quality for marginalised groups, supported by senior management.

·        Support for relevant research/evaluation

You’ll have access to our generous pension scheme and health service discounts, as well as generous annual leave plus bank holidays.

As a Senior Psychologist you will provide:

·        specialist psychological assessment, individual and group therapy sessions;

·        psychologically informed training and consultation to multidisciplinary professionals across community and in-patient services;

·        mentoring to Assistant and Trainee Clinical Psychologists within the team;

·        coordination and further development of the service’s outcomes/evaluation protocol;

·        contribution to a range of service development projects.

Working for our organisation

NHFT is an NHS Community and Mental Health Foundation Trust, providing physical, mental health and specialty services in hospital settings and in the community. We provide over 200 services across the county - as well as some specialist services in bordering and nearby counties. We work together with our partners to ensure that everyone who comes through our doors receives compassionate, person-centred care, regardless of their background or circumstances.

NHFT promotes a culture of learning, to improve the care and safety of our patients and colleagues. We have achieved our ‘outstanding’ rating by encouraging opportunity, innovation, development and growth across our workforce.