Assistant Psychologist

Job summary

This is an exciting opportunity to join Southwark Crisis Plus, a frequent attenders/high intensity user service, as an Assistant Psychologist within Southwark Community Mental Health Services. The team works across services in the Southwark directorate whilst being based within the secondary care community mental health teams.

Under the supervision of qualified psychologists, the successful applicant will lead on the co-creation of effective multi-agency crisis plans with the highest-use service users and their care teams. The service users present with a range of diagnoses, challenging behaviours and acute risk in crisis. The successful applicant will develop and use a range of psychological skills including assessment and formulation, and working in a systemically-focused approach.

The job will entail offering time-limited interventions to service users, carers, and a range of mental health professionals to develop Anticipatory Management Plans for the population identified as being High Intensity Users. This will require comprehensive assessment of service users' developmental histories, patterns of presentation and use of crisis services from clinical documentation and consultation. This information will be used to develop guidance for service users, their carers, mental health and external agencies on how best future crises can be more effectively managed and to support the service user's recovery.

Please note that this is a fixed term contract.

Main duties of the job

A core part of the role is liaison with services in order to refine and further develop plans, and support services to action plans. The postholder will attend MDT meetings, ward rounds, etc and needs to be confident following and, at times contributing to, multi-disciplinary clinical discussion.

As well as supporting with the development of Anticipatory Management Plans, some of your work will be linked to further developing the function of Crisis Plus, including supporting the development of new interventions that proactively engage service users.

There is a strong data collection, analysis and interpretation aspect to the role. Amongst other activities, this includes the collection of qualitative and quantitative outcome data from service users and the network of professionals, and developing and maintaining a number of databases linked to identification of HIUs. In light of this, the ideal candidate will have knowledge and experience with Quality Improvements, service evaluation, auditing and research methods. They will have relevant skills in managing and utilising large datasets and being able to analyse and interpret data using Excel and/or SPSS.

About us

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) provide the widest range of NHS mental health services in the UK as well as substance misuse services for people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. We work closely with the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King's College London and are part of King's Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre. There are very few organisations in the world that have such wide-ranging capabilities working with mental illness. Our scope is unique because it is built on three major foundations: care and treatment, science and research, and training.

SLaM employ around 5000 staff and serve a local population of 1.1 million people. We have more than 230 services including inpatient wards, outpatient and community services. Currently, provide inpatient care for approximately 5,300 people each year and treat more than 45,000 patients in the community in Croydon, Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark; as well as substance misuse services for residents of Bexley, Bromley and Greenwich.

Job description

Job responsibilities

Key Responsibilities:

KR 1 Clinical and Client Care

a. To provide psychological assessments for clients in the various services in the borough who present in crisis; including assessment of risk.

b. To co-create crisis-focused management plans with service users and their personal and professional network.

c. To provide culturally appropriate psychological interventions with carers or families of referred clients when required.

d. Liaise with professionals and individuals across a service users network whilst respecting confidentiality and information sharing policies.

e. Support the linked CMHT in identifying HIUs and facilitating discussion/reflection with qualified members of the Crisis Plus team.

f. To assist in the development of individual and network-wide clinical materials or training materials, and in addition to develop such materials independently as falls within own degree of competence.

g. To arrange, schedule and provide training to carers or employees of partner agencies in order to support the clinical work with clients.

KR 2 Contributing to team or service clinical functioning

a. To contribute to the effective working of the service e.g. by registering new referrals; creating databases to track processes or progress through pathways and keeping them up to date; contributing to the training and support of other staff in developing and providing psychological care of clients.

b. To act in a manner that supports a psychologically-informed framework for the service.

c. To support the team or services delivery of accessible and acceptable services to diverse local communities.

d. To liaise with referrers, GPs and other professionals concerned with clients in order to develop and review care plans.

e. To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.

KR 3 Policy and service development

a. To follow policies and procedures in own area of work, and to comment on proposed improvements or beneficial changes.

b. To contribute to service development through undertaking and participating in appropriate projects.

c. To support the consultation and engagement of service users in planning and delivering services that meet the needs of local communities.

KR 4 Care or management of resources

a. To take care of, and use carefully, the Trusts equipment and physical resources.

b. To ensure that the postholder has sufficient resources by estimating future needs and requesting or ordering supplies as needed.

KR 5 Teaching and Training

a. To demonstrate work methods to newly recruited Assistant Psychologists and to support their development of necessary skills.

b. To disseminate research and service evaluation findings through presentations or published articles.

c. To arrange, schedule and provide training to employees of the Trust or employees of partner agencies in order to support service improvement.

KR 6 Record-keeping and Information Governance

a. To ensure that all information generated by own work is recorded as required by Trust policies and local procedures.

b. To maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping and report writing, according to professional and Trust guidelines, including electronic data entry.

c. To create and maintain databases, perform analyses and produce reports.

KR 7 Research and development

a. To assist in the design and implementation of audit and research projects to inform the service Clinical Psychologist and others in the development of Trust clinical psychology services, training provision and research activities.

b. To undertake data collection, analysis, the production of reports and summaries, using IT and statistical programmes.

c. To undertake searches of evidence-based literature and research to assist in the development in the Trust of evidence-based practice.

d. To conduct surveys with service users and carers to gather views on service provision

KR 8 Maintaining professional standards and continuing professional development

a. To receive regular clinical and professional supervision according to HCPC and Trust guidelines.

b. To gain wider experience of professional psychology within the NHS over and above that provided within the principal service area where the post-holder is employed.

c. To develop skills and competencies that assist in the delivery of current duties.

d. To undertake personal training relevant to the post in agreement with the supervising psychologist and the manager.

KR 9 General

a. To travel to appropriate meetings and venues across Southwark directorate and across the Trust as required.

b. To be aware of risk relating to aggressive and challenging behaviour amongst the client group and follow trust policies relating to its management.

c. To respond appropriately and professionally to emotionally distressing situations (challenging behaviour, self-harm, harm to others, suicide and violence ) and to support others involved in such situations.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• A First-class or Upper-second-class Bachelors degree with Honours in Psychology (or related behavioural science) that is accredited by the British Psychological Society and confers the Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership of the British Psychological Society.
• Masters level qualification in applied psychology.

Desirable

• Relevant specialist training in relation to working with a range of MH diagnoses

Experience

Essential

• Experience of working within an NHS setting as an assistant psychologist.
• Sufficient post-graduate experience of psychological assessment and treatment of clients with a range of psychological needs who present in crisis with acute risks.
• To be able to work clinically without direct supervision.
• Post-graduate experience of conducting research projects or audits.
• Experience that supports working with, and addressing issues of, diversity within local communities. This may have been gained through work, research, volunteering and/or lived experience

Desirable

• Experience of working with service users with risk of harm to self or others.
• Working with SUs who have frequent use of acute and crisis services.

Knowledge

Essential

• Graduate level knowledge of psychological research methodology and statistical analysis.
• Good theoretical knowledge of the problems experienced by and needs of service users presenting in crisis.
• Methods of psychological assessment and treatment for those with complex mental health needs.
• Awareness of racial and diversity issues through attendance of relevant training.

Desirable

• Knowledge of interventions such as CBT, distress tolerance and emotional regulation.
• Knowledge of around risk of harm to self or others.
• Understanding of principles of treatment in relation to personality disorder.

Skills

Essential

• Skills in relevant psychological assessment and interventions that enable working independently as a pre-qualified practitioner with clinical supervision.
• Well-developed verbal and written communication skills including communicating complex, sensitive or contentious information to clients, families and colleagues.
• Skills in completing literature reviews and summarising research findings to inform clinical practice or for the purpose of publication.
• Skills in supporting the development of training materials.
• Well-developed IT skills including using excel and SPSS in the analysis of research data.

Desirable

• Experience of data collection, analysis and interpretation using large, service-wide datasets

Abilities

Essential

• Ability to work effectively within a multi-disciplinary team, contributing to effective team functioning and holding team roles.
• Ability to manage emotionally stressful situations such as working with victims of abuse or trauma, or with people who engage in severe self-harming or aggressive behaviour.
• Ability to manage verbal aggression and hostility directed at self.

Desirable

• Experience of data collection, analysis and interpretation using large, service-wide datasets

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

Employer details

Employer name

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust

Address

The Maudsley Hospital

Denmark Hill

London

SE5 8AZ

United Kingdom

Employer's website

https://www.slam.nhs.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)

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