Senior (Specialist) Clinical / Counselling Psychologist

The Leeds Childrens Hospital (LCH) is seeking to recruit a substantive Clinical Psychologist to work across the Children and Young Peoples Diabetes and Epilepsy Services. LCH is one of the largest paediatric centres in the country, providing a range of high profile and specialty clinical services. It is an exciting time for the Trust as it builds hospitals of the future, including a state-of-the-art building, designed around the needs of children, young people and their families
LCH is seeking to recruit a substantive Clinical Psychologist to work across the Children and Young Peoples Diabetes Team based at St James University Hospital and Paediatric Epilepsy Team at Leeds General Infirmary. The post-holder will work alongside existing Senior and Principal Clinical Psychologists and become a valued member of the multi-disciplinary teams which include, Medical Consultants, Specialist Nurses, Specialist Dietitians, Youth Workers and Play Specialists. The post-holder will offer both in patient and out-patient psychological therapy, consultation, MDT working and MDT liaison, as well as teaching and training and supervision of assistant/graduate psychologists and professionals from other disciplines as appropriate. The Diabetes and Epilepsy teams are friendly and supportive and work together to provide a service to enable children, young people and their families to live well with condition. Psychological support is thoroughly integrated within the MDT and quality improvement, service development and research are actively promoted. A job plan will help organise the delivery of the post and there will be regular meetings with line-managers and supervisors.
This post is hosted in the Department of Paediatric Psychology (DPP), which currently has over 30 clinicians working in specialty teams, who have been at the forefront of digital developments (digital clinics, short courses and record keeping). The DPP is academically ambitious with links to the expanded DClinPsych Programme and Schools of Psychology, Medicine and Healthcare at the University of Leeds. Many staff have ring-fenced academic time in their job plan, as scholarly activity is an important part of what we do.


Were a friendly group who value the balance between work & home life. Where we can, we support flexible, agile working which can include, for example, partial home-working, compressed hours & varied start/finish times. The Trust offers child-care voucher and cycle-to-work schemes, a salary-sacrifice, lease car arrangement and a healthcare-fund program, as well as on-site facilities (such as day care nurseries & gyms).


Leeds Teaching Hospitals is committed to our process of redeploying 'at risk' members of our existing workforce to new roles. As such, all our job adverts are subject to this policy and we reserve the right to close, delay or remove adverts while this process is completed. To provide a qualified Clinical Psychology service to children and young people living with diabetes or epilepsy and their families in Leeds and across all sites and sectors of care by:


a) providing specialist psychological assessment and therapy to patients and their families living with diabetes or epilepsy.


b) offering advice and consultation on patients psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues and to other non-professional carers


c) using research skills for audit, policy and service development and leading on research projects within the areas served by the teams/service


d) working autonomously in the execution of these duties and within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the Psychology Teams, Department and Trust policies and procedures.


To provide specialist psychological assessments of patients based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex 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 patients, family members and others involved in the patients care.


To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a patients psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the patients problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings, including full integration into multidisciplinary team clinics.


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, as well as diabetes and epilepsy specific factors, that have shaped the individual, family or group.


To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of patients whose difficulties are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.


To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all patients of the services, across all settings and agencies serving the patient group.


To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual patients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management with particular reference to deliberate self-harm.


To act as care coordinator, where appropriate, taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans under enhanced CPA (or its equivalent in the acute physical health care setting) including patients, their carers, referring agents and others involved the network of care.


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


Teaching, training, and supervision:


To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues*.


* Please note that all post holders of clinical psychology posts receive clinical supervision. To develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training and supervision and to provide supervision to other multidisciplinary staffs psychological work, as appropriate.


To provide professional and clinical supervision of assistant/graduate psychologists and, as appropriate, to contribute to the supervision of individual cases for trainee clinical psychologists.


To contribute to the pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical and/or counselling psychology, as appropriate.


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


Management, recruitment, policy and service development:


To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of Trust and the Department operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.


To advise the Senior/Principal or Lead Consultant Clinical Psychologist on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.


To manage the workloads of assistant and graduate psychologists within the framework of the Trust and the Departments policies and procedures.


To be involved, as appropriate, in the short listing and interviewing of assistant / graduate psychologists.


To lead on research projects within the area served by the team/service.


To undertake project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within the service to help develop service provision.
Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology


Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology


Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of patients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and inpatient settings
Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology

Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision
Knowledge of legislation in relation to the patient group and mental health
Experience of providing psychological assessments and intervention in a Paediatric Health Care Setting, working alongside Medical MDT's

Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non professional groups
Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings
Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to patients, their families and carers

Leeds Teaching Hospitals