Assistant Psychologist

Job Summary/Purpose

The Greater Manchester Specialist Perinatal Service is a well-established multidisciplinary community team providing a range of tailored approaches to meet the mental health needs of women, birthing people, and their families in the perinatal period.

Our core purpose is to work with women/birthing people to address identified moderate to severe mental health difficulties and mitigate any impact on the unborn baby/infant. We aim to provide a timely, integrated, high quality, and effective service.

The post holder will join a multidisciplinary team and support the provision of psychological assessments and interventions under the supervision of a qualified clinical psychologist.

The service has an emphasis on coproduction, collaboration, and working alongside our experts by experience.

There are several other assistant psychologists employed within the Specialist Perinatal Service. As a result, the post holder would join a supportive community of peers, with established structures for peer support well-embedded within the service.

This is a full-time, permanent role. The post-holder will be required to work across the four boroughs that the team covers (central and south Manchester, Trafford, and Stockport).

Psychological therapies are well-integrated within the Specialist Perinatal Service and are highly valued by our colleagues within the MDT. Opportunities will exist to hold a small individual caseload utilising structured, manualised interventions under the supervision of a qualified clinical psychologist. In addition, there will be opportunities to contribute to our programme of group-based psychological therapies by providing group screens, collection of outcome data, and co-facilitation, as appropriate.

There will be opportunities to support the development and implementation of staff training; service development projects; and audit and research projects.

Working for our organisation

Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GMMH) is one of the leading mental health trusts in the UK.

Serving a population of 1.2million people, the Trust employs around 4750 people who make a difference across 130 locations.

Situated in one of the most exciting and affordable cities in Europe, GMMH provides community and inpatient mental health care, alongside substance misuse services across the North West.

GMMH provides a range of specialist services including prison in reach across the North of England, a specialist centre for mental health and deafness and inpatient perinatal mental health care.

GMMH is also one of the most active research trusts in the UK, with one of the highest levels of recruitment to clinical trials for mental health. This puts our staff and service users at the leading edge of new mental health treatments.

Important Information about working for GMMH

GMMH is committed to safeguarding children, young people and vulnerable adults and requires all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

Clinical

To contribute to the service delivery and targets, objectives and priorities of the Specialist Perinatal Service.

To ensure the most efficient and effective utilisation and contribution of psychological knowledge and practice.

To complete, under clinical supervision, psychological assessments of people referred to the Specialist Perinatal Service, including the administration of self-report measures, rating scales and semi-structured interviews.

To write reports following assessments to clients and referrers and, where appropriate, other family members and other professionals involved in client’s care. To ensure adequate written clinical records and related administration are complete and up to date.

To assist in the delivery of intervention plans involving the psychological treatment and management of a client’s problems, under the supervision of a qualified psychologist. This may involve aspects of psychological therapy for trauma.

To attend and contribute to appropriate multidisciplinary meetings.

Teaching, Training and Support

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

To support the delivery of training to staff within the team and to staff in other services in the wider network (e.g. maternity staff).

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

I.T. Responsibilities

To enter, integrate and extract data using a computer system and to present information in a variety of formats for dissemination when required, including using an electronic patient record system.

To undertake data collection, the production of reports and summaries using I.T. and statistical programmes.

To analyse data and produce summaries when required.

To assist in the identification of any omissions or inconsistencies concerning clinical activity