Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see Job Description and Person Specification for further information about this post.

Clinical

• To provide highly specialist psychological assessments of service users referred to the Rotherham Stroke Service, based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological and psychometric tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with service users, family members and others involved in the person’s care.
• To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a service user’s problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the person’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across a full range of care settings.
• To work on a daily basis in face to face individual, family and/or in group therapy settings with service users presenting with highly complex and distressing psychological problems, which might occur following stroke, e.g. depression, anxiety, PTSD, emotional lability and cognitive impairment.
• To be responsible for implementing a range of specialist 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 different 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 service users whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
• To provide highly specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals (both psychologists/therapists and non-psychologists) contributing directly to service users’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plans.
• To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all users of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the service user group.
• 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.
• To coordinate, where appropriate, complex intervention plans, taking responsibility for initiating planning and reviews of plans, and including service users, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.
• To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of service users under their care and to monitor progress during both the course of uni- and multi-disciplinary care.

 Teaching, Training and Supervision

• To receive regular clinical professional supervision in accordance with professional practice (HCPC), BPS, BABCP and Trust guidelines
• To provide supervision to other MDT staff’s psychological work, as appropriate.
• To provide professional and clinical supervision of assistant psychologists where appropriate.
• To offer training placements to trainee CBT therapists
• To contribute to the pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical psychology/CBT therapy, as appropriate.
• To provide highly specialised advice, consultation and training to staff (including both psychologists/therapists and non-psychologists) working with the service user group across a range of agencies and settings.
• To attend supervisor training in preparation for becoming a supervisor for the DClinPsy Training Courses

Management, Recruitment, Policy, Organisational and Service Development

•  To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of aspects of the team’s clinical practice through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.
• To contribute to the governance of psychological practice within their own team by developing and collecting relevant measures of outcome and audit and to provide consultation to other health and social care professionals to enable them to develop their own effective systems of governance.
• To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
• To manage any waiting lists within the team and participate as a senior clinician in the allocation of cases taking into account skill mix and caseload. To respond to referrals, making autonomous professional and clinical judgements based upon complex information, prioritising accordingly and contributing to multidisciplinary decision making.
• To implement the policies and propose changes to working practices/procedures concerning professional good practice for the provision of psychological services as applicable to The Rotherham Stroke Service in order to ensure the highest standards of service to the service user group.
• To propose policy or service changes which impact beyond own area of activity by participation in Trust working parties and other local development groups.

 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 and supervise project management, service evaluations and complex audits with colleagues within the service to help develop service provision.
• To disseminate research findings through publications and conference presentations. 

Working Environment

•  To provide psychological care to service users in the least restrictive and least stigmatising environment in a wide range of settings including inpatient wards, nursing homes, outpatient and community settings as well as clients’ homes.
• The job role will involve working alone in situations where there may be some risk of verbal or physical aggression from service users, carers, and the general public.