Wellbeing for life: We work in partnership with all who use our services to improve health and wellbeing. Together we look at ways of improving an individual’s quality of life, through high quality healthcare and personal support.

Our Values

• Compassion: Our staff will be led by compassion and embody the values of care outlined in our Staff Charter.
• Respect: We will respect and value the diversity of our patients, service users and staff, to create a respectful and inclusive environment, which recognises the uniqueness of each individual.
• Empowerment: We will involve, inform and empower our patients, service users, carers and their families to take an active role in the management of their illness and adopt recovery principles. We will ensure our staff receive appropriate direction and support, to enable them to develop and grow.
• Partnership: We will work closely with our many partners to ensure that our combined efforts are focused on achieving the best possible outcomes for the people we serve.

Detailed Job Description and Main Responsibilities

• Evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both: Theoretical and therapeutic models.
• Exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans ensuring appropriate assessment, formulation and intervention communicating with the referral agents and others involved with the care on a regular basis.
• Develop and provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan in accordance with NICE guidelines and evidence-based practice.
• Contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care, to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.
• Act as a Lead Professional, including for cases when initial comprehensive assessments are carried out by the post holder, ensuring the provision of a care package appropriate for the client’s needs, co-ordinating the work of others involved with care, arranging client’s care reviews as required and communicating effectively with the client, her family and all others involved in care; and to monitor progress during the course of multi-disciplinary interventions.
• Undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures with the aim of overall risk reduction.
• Ensure that practice operates within the adult and children safeguarding frameworks.
• Communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.
• Provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.
• Provide comprehensive psychological reports and to carry out psychological testing as required by the service or the courts.
• Attend and contribute to appropriate MDT meetings within the Perinatal service.
• Assist in the coordination and running of therapeutic groups, if the service model has capacity for this.

Person Specification

Training & Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Good Honours degree in Psychology (2.1 or above) giving eligibility for Graduate membership of BPS.
• Post-graduate doctorate in Clinical or Counselling Psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996 or those in lateral transfer) as accredited by the BPS and giving eligibility for membership of the Health Care Professionals Council (HCPC).
• The post holder must be registered with HCPC as a Practitioner Psychologist.
• The post holder must be eligible for chartered status with the BPS.
• In addition to routine CPD and supervision, has demonstrated a clear commitment to developing a specialist area of expertise through significant training, personal study, experience, and/or research, as evidenced by CPD log, appraised during IPR/PDR process.

Desirable criteria

• Experience of working with adults with complex mental health problems.
• Experience of working with perinatal presentations.
• Experience of working with families impacted by mental health.
• Experience of working with trauma, loss and grief.
• Trained in EMDR/trauma focused CBT.

Knowledge & Skills

Essential criteria

• Very high level of interpersonal and communication skills enabling written and oral presentation and receipt of complex and sensitive information, to facilitate acceptance, and relate effectively in an emotive and hostile environment.
• Assessment and therapeutic skills related to complex and severe Mental Health Problems.
• Ability to provide consultation to other non-psychology colleagues, and teaching and training skills.
• Skills developed through formal training in supervision of other psychologists.
• Demonstrate further specialist training/experience through having received substantial supervision whilst working as a clinical psychologist. (This would equate to 50 hours of clinical supervision over a minimum of 18 months.)
• Ability to make judgements in complex clinical situations through assessment, analysis and interpretation of information and deciding on appropriate action from a range of options.
• Ability to plan and organise tasks, activities, or programmes and adapt these to changing needs and circumstances.

Desirable criteria

• Ability to prioritise complex work demands.