Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust
Principal Perinatal Psychologist
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Job Overview
Coombe Wood is a highly regarded specialist perinatal service providing a 10 bedded inpatient treatment and support for pregnant and postnatal women experiencing mental health and emotional difficulties. We treat women/birthing people with their babies up to a year old. Our multi-disciplinary team (MDT) consists of doctors, nurses, nursery nurses, therapists and support staff who are experienced specialists offering mental health treatment for mothers and support with infant care and development and encouraging the formation of lasting positive bonds.
The Principal Perinatal Psychologist will provide psychological leadership and work closely with the MDT to ensure we provide excellent care to women/birthing people and their babies.
Main duties of the job
- To contribute centrally to the systematic provision of a high quality, highly specialist perinatal clinical psychology and perinatal psychotherapy service to clients of the CNWL perinatal service.
- To offer specialist perinatal-focused psychological therapy in an acute mental health setting at the mother and baby unit.
- To provide clinical supervision and consultation as appropriate, functioning as a Principal Perinatal Psychologist in perinatal mental health.
- To supervise and support the psychological assessment and treatment of patients provided by the psychologists and other clinical members of the team who provide psychologically based care and evidence based treatments which are adapted to the needs of perinatal patients.
- To work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service and teams.
- To conduct, promote and facilitate audit and research within the perinatal field.
- To act as a specialist resource to the wider Trust and across the National professional community.
- To propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the team/service.
Working for our organisation
Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL) has almost 8,000 staff providing integrated healthcare to a third of London's population, Milton Keynes and areas beyond. We involve service users, carers, the public, staff and partner organisations in the way that we are run.
Our catchment area spans diverse communities, with over 100 first languages spoken. It contains areas of great affluence as well as areas of much deprivation. We are committed to providing services that meet the needs of the people who use them, and we actively encourage involvement from local people who can help make a difference. We’re proud of our diversity and we continue to undertake new initiatives to advance equality for LGBT+, BME and people with disabilities to promote good relations and understanding between our staff.
We are recognised locally, nationally and internationally for providing high quality, innovative healthcare. We aim to employ only the best people, and our experts are frequently called upon to contribute to national health strategy and policy, and many models of our care have been adapted for use in other countries.
Become part of our team. We care for you as much as you care for others.
CNWL NHS Foundation Trust are committed to safeguarding all children and vulnerable adults and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. We follow safe recruitment practices to protect children and vulnerable adults.
Detailed Job Description And Main Responsibilities
Clinical:
- To provide highly specialist psychological assessments of the more complex clients referred to the teams, 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 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 or overseeing 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 considering 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 care plans.
- To provide highly specialist psychological advice, guidance supervision and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
- To ensure that all members of the treating team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of clients of the service, through the provision of advice, consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.
- To undertake risk assessments and risk management for individual clients and to provide general advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.
- 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 - and multi-disciplinary care.
- To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.
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Teaching, training and supervision
- To provide or oversee the provision of clinical placements for trainee clinical and/or counselling psychologists and honoraries, 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 clinical and/or counselling psychologists attached to the team.
- To provide advice, consultation and training and clinical supervision to other members of the team for their provision of psychological interventions to help improve clients’ well-being and functioning.
- To provide pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical and/or counselling 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.
Leadership, management, recruitment, policy and service development
- To support 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.
- To support undertaking responsibility for the development, implementation and evaluation of clinical and service governance strategic objectives as relevant to this specialty.
- To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
- To support with the management of the workloads and activities of clinical psychologist, assistant, trainee and more junior clinical psychologists, within the framework of the team/service’s policies and procedures.
- To exercise delegated responsibility for managing the psychological resources available to a team, whether in the form of additional qualified and unqualified graduate psychology staff, or in the form of psychological materials employed in the assessment and treatment of patients.
- To exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service/team.
- To participate as appropriate in staff recruitment, both in the short-listing process and as a member of interview panels for assistant, trainees and qualified clinical psychologists.
- To participate alongside other colleagues in any service development work involving experts by experience and ensuring the contribution is heard and their well -being is attended to and maintained.
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Research and service evaluation
- To take lead as a senior clinician, in the evaluation, monitoring and development of the Psychology and wider perinatal services operational policies, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.
- Ensuring incorporation of psychological frameworks for understanding and provision of high-quality care.
- To utilise psychological theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice within individual work and group work.
- To undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research.
- To initiate project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within and across the service to help develop and improve services to clients and their families.
General:
- To ensure the development, maintenance and dissemination of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes.
- To ensure the development and articulation of best practice in psychology within the service area and contribute across the service by exercising the skills of a reflexive and reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the field of clinical psychology and related disciplines.
- To maintain and promulgate the highest standards of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry and recording, report writing and the responsible exercise of professional self-governance in accordance with professional codes of practice of the British Psychological Society and Trust policies and procedures.
- To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to both the specific client group and mental health.
Person specification
Education & Qualifications
Essential criteria
- 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.
- Registered with the Health Professions Council as a Clinical Psychologist
Desirable criteria
- Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice
- Post-qualification accreditation in particular psychotherapeutic approaches e.g.: cognitive analytic psychotherapy, DIT, couples therapy, dialectical behaviour therapy, MBT, VIP, VIPP etc
Experience
Essential criteria
- Assessed experience of post qualification experience within the designated specialty where the post is located
- Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care, in-patient and residential care settings severity including maintaining
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