Specialist Psychological Therapist

Thank you for taking an interest in our Specialist Psychological Therapist post.

An exciting and unique opportunity has arisen within our Dorset cluster prisons, to provide psychological therapies into HMP/YOI Portland. The Dorset Cluster prisons are set-in beautiful countryside, and Jurassic coastal areas respectively. The locality offers quirky market towns, opportunities to engage in water sports on the coast, desirable locations to live and nearby beautiful cities such as bath and Salisbury to explore.

Within the psychological therapies department, there is a focus on attachment, trauma and systemic approaches with expert supervision available for several evidence-based therapy modalities such Mentalisation based Therapy (MBT) and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing therapy (EMDR). We offer a unique range of training opportunities and will invest in supporting you to extend your knowledge and expertise.
- To provide direct psychological care (assessment and intervention) and support the delivery of psychologically informed care by all disciplines within the service.
- To provide highly specialist psychological therapy assessments, formulations and interventions.
- To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of community clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans, including taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans with input from clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.
- Attend and contribute to directorate level meetings and forums, as directed.
- Contribute to the delivery of accessible and acceptable services to diverse communities.
- To be proactive in challenging discrimination.
- To engage in service improvements through audits and quality improvement initiatives.
- To ensure the consultation and engagement of service users in planning and delivering services which meet the needs of local communities.
- Advise professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.

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
- To provide culturally appropriate psychological therapy interventions with service suers, carers or families of referred clients when required.
- To communicate, in a highly skilled and sensitive manner, to clients, family carers and others as appropriate, information that may be contentious or highly distressing concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care.
- To produce reports on clients, in a timely manner, that convey the key findings of psychological assessment and formulation and treatment outcome in a way that does justice to the complexity of the problems described, but that are understandable to the recipients of the reports, including clients and referrers.
- To undertake psychometric and neuropsychological testing as appropriate, including selecting the appropriate tests, administering and scoring the tests in accordance with the manual, and interpreting the findings in the context of all relevant information.
- To undertake risk assessment, risk monitoring and risk management for individual clients in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures, and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
- To work in partnership with other disciplines and to maintain links with statutory and non-statutory agencies as appropriate.