Principal Clinical Psychologist

Job summary

This is an exciting opportunity for a motivated, innovative and inspiring Psychologist to join our Bridgeways Older Adults Teams. The post holder will be the Psychology Clinical Lead (0.6 WTE) within the Bromley Memory Service, alongside the Consultant Clinical Psychologist, with dedicated time to offering neuropsychological assessments and expertise to the dementia assessment process. The role is varied and involves supporting and developing a range of meaningful post-diagnostic interventions and groups to patients, family and carers.

Working in the Bromley Older Adults Community Mental Health Team (0.2 WTE) there is flexibility to be involved in a range of psychological interventions and exciting initiatives. The post holder will join well-established, friendly and diverse multidisciplinary teams. The position would suit an experienced psychologist looking to develop their skills in senior roles, leadership tasks, supervision, operational and strategic development.

Main duties of the job

This is a varied role, which includes providing specialist individual, family and group interventions, neuropsychological assessment, as well as contributing to the therapeutic functions of the teams. You will support the teams with oversight and embedding of NHS transformation and exciting developments in more diverse and new psychological roles, and will contribute to service planning and development, including attendance at relevant management meetings. You will be professionally accountable to the Bromley OPMH Head of Psychological Therapies, and specialist clinical supervision will be provided within the OPMH service. You will also be supported by team managers.

As well as service development and clinical governance roles, we welcome and encourage research and audit interests, including co-producing research with our service users through our programme of service user involvement. Supervision and CPD are prioritised in the Trust, with a range of training and specialist supervision opportunities available. Some of the modalities used in the team are CAT, EMDR, Psychodynamic, CBT, ACT and Art Psychotherapy, with access to the relevant specialist supervision. We encourage trauma-informed working, integrated multidisciplinary working and embrace a wide range of modalities and approaches.

About us

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children's centres, schools and people's homes.We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.

Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:

• We're Kind
• We're Fair
• We Listen
• We Care

Job description

Job responsibilities

Professional / Governance

• Maintain clinical psychology registration and adhere to professional and NHS codes of conduct.
• Ensure accurate, timely and professional clinical documentation.
• Comply with relevant Trust policies including confidentiality, risk management, infection control, safeguarding, health & safety, equality and diversity, sustainability and nosmoking policy.

Clinical

• Provide advanced specialist assessments and interventions for older adults in the CMHT and Memory Service.
• Offer psychological perspectives and formulations to support multidisciplinary understanding and care planning.
• Manage a caseload with autonomous responsibility for assessment, treatment and discharge.
• Provide expert consultation on risk, safeguarding, diagnosis and formulation.

Leadership & Management

• Support strategic and operational service development.
• Be responsible for governance of psychological practice and resources.
• Lead recruitment activities for psychology roles.
• Manage psychology therapy staff within the service.
• Provide leadership across multidisciplinary teams and external partners.

Training, Teaching & Supervision

• Provide placements and supervision for trainee psychologists.
• Deliver training, consultation and supervision to multidisciplinary staff.
• Contribute to internal and external teaching programmes.

Research, Evaluation & Service Development

• Lead and participate in service audits, evaluations and quality improvement projects.
• Use research skills to support evidencebased practice.
• Support and advise staff undertaking research activities.

General Responsibilities

• Participate in appraisal, CPD and mandatory training.
• Demonstrate Oxleas organisational values (Were Kind, Were Fair, We Listen, We Care).
• Provide highquality customer care and maintain professionalism.

Person Specification

Education / Qualifications

Essential

• Post graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics, and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology.
• Registration with the Health Professions Council as a Clinical Psychologist

Desirable

• Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice.
• Leadership or management training
• Recognised supervision training

Experience

Essential

• Substantial assessed experience of working as a qualified clinical psychologist with 2 years at a highly specialist level
• Experience working with a wide range of client groups across the life course and across all care settings (outpatients, community, primary care, inpatient, and residential), while maintaining professionalism in highly emotive, distressing, or abusive situations
• Experience exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment, both as a care coordinator and within a multidisciplinary care plan.

Desirable

• Experience of working in older people's mental health services, including people with dementia and their carers.
• Experience in neuropsychological assessment with adults with comorbid mental health/psychological needs
• Experience of assessing and treating clients across the full range of care settings.

Skills/Abilities/Knowledge

Essential

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management, frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration
• Well developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, highly technical and clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex multivariate data analysis as practiced within the field of clinical psychology.

Desirable

• Well-developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (eg. Personality disorders, dual diagnoses, people with medically unexplained symptoms, people with additional disabilities, people with dementia, etc).
• Well-developed knowledge of the theory and practice of highly specialised psychological therapies and assessment methodologies.

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).

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).

Employer details

Employer name

Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust

Address

Bridgeways

Turpington Lane

Bromley

BR2 8JA

United Kingdom

Employer's website

http://oxleas.nhs.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)

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