Principal Clinical Psychologist

Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen to join the Adult Eating Disorders Service in St Helens & Knowsley as a Band 8b Principal Clinical Psychologist.  The service has been undergoing transformation and expansion and this is an exciting time to join our supportive and friendly team.

The multidisciplinary team provides outpatient assessment and intervention to adults over the age of 18 with eating disorders. We offer a range of evidence based psychological therapies including CBT, MANTRA and SSCM.  Our team consists of a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Clinical Psychologists, CBT Therapist, OT, Dietitian, Mental Health Wellbeing Practitioners, Senior Nurse Practitioner and Assistant Psychologists.  We also work closely with other services and professionals including primary care, GPs, inpatient services (Specialist Eating Disorder Units and medical wards) and other secondary care mental health teams.

We are seeking to appoint a Psychologist with excellent communication skills, values, and relevant skills and experience in the speciality, to contribute to providing leadership to the team and supporting service development.

**Interview date is subject to change**

Main duties of the job

We are looking for a qualified Clinical Psychologist with the relevant skills, values and experience to provide a high quality psychological service to individuals with eating disorders.

The post holder will:

Demonstrate a strong interest and commitment to working with people with complex psychological presentations. Experience of working with people with eating disorders would be desirable.

Work closely with the Consultant Clinical Psychologist and other members of the leadership team and contribute to clinical leadership by providing clinical, professional and management supervision, consultation, training and advice.

Support the clinical lead in the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service.

Utilize research skills for audit, evaluation and service development.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Principal Responsibilities:  Clinical:

To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the service 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 clients, family members and others involved in the  client’s care.

To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods of proven 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 clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.

To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.

To ensure that all members of the treating service have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of clients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.

To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide general advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.

To act as care coordinator, if appropriate ensuring the provision of a care package appropriate for the clients needs, coordinating the work of others involved with care, tasking responsibility for arranging CPA reviews as required and communicating effectively with the client, his/her family and all others involved in the network of care, and to monitor progress during the course of multi-disciplinary interventions.

To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- disciplinary and multidisciplinary care.

To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of Psychological care by all members of the treatment service.

Will be required to sit in a constrained position for client therapy and extended assessment sessions.

Will be required to tolerate and manage frequent verbal abuse and occasional physical aggression.

Will be required to deal with the intense emotional atmosphere surrounding therapy contacts which may be highly distressing on a daily basis, and to work with frequent intense concentration for much of the clinical sessions of assessment and therapy. This will include writing reports of a potentially distressing nature e.g., safeguarding adults.

Policy and service development

To participate as a senior clinician in the development of a high quality, responsive and accessible service including advising both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.

Clinical supervision, teaching and training

To provide clinical placements for trainee 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.

To provide post-qualification training (CPD) and clinical professional supervision to recently qualified psychologists attached to the service.

To provide specialist advice, consultation and training and clinical supervision to other members of the service for their provision of psychologically based interventions to help improve clients’ functioning.

To provide pre- and post-qualification teaching of psychology as appropriate.

To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional pre- and post-graduate training and clinical supervision.

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

In common with all Clinical Psychologists, receive regular clinical supervision in accordance with good practice guidelines.

Receive specific specialist clinical supervision in psychological approaches in trauma focussed / -related mental health issues and presentations.