Specialist Clinical/Counselling Psychologist

Job Summary

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust is seeking a highly motivated and passionate Clinical/Counselling Psychologist to join our expanding psychological therapies team. This specialist post is offered within the acute pathway, and sits across the Home Treatment Team and Mental Health Emergency Assessment Centre.

The Acute Psychology Pathway provides integrated and high-quality psychologically informed care to service users with acute mental health presentations; including psychosis, complex emotional needs, and PTSD. The successful candidate will play a key role in the urgent assessment of service users presenting to acute services, and the development of creative, multi-disciplinary care plans to support these service users outside of hospital.

The successful applicant may have contact with patients or service users. As an NHS Trust, we strongly encourage and support vaccination as this remains the best way to protect yourself, your family, your colleagues, and of course, patients and service users when working in our healthcare settings.

Main Duties of the Job

The post-holder will also be expected to take a leading role in the ongoing development of Harrow's Trauma-Informed Approaches (TIA) model for the adult mental health services. This approach has been established in Harrow acute services over the last six years, recently published (Nikopaschos et al. 2023), and now also influencing National Policy (see NHSE Guidelines for Acute Inpatient Mental Health Care for Adults and Older Adults, 2023).

The Harrow Home Treatment Team and Mental Health Emergency Centre work closely together with the inpatient wards and Community Mental Health Hub as a cohesive system, which provides holistic intervention to adults with mental health difficulties in Harrow.

The post-holder will be expected to work as a senior member of the multi-professional team, including the provision of consultation, co-working, teaching, training, supervision, and research, as well as developing specific training to enhance the systematic provision of psychological interventions offered to service users by all members of the team within a 'stepped-care' framework.

Specialist supervision is offered in EMDR, DBT, NET, CBT, Open Dialogue, CAT, systemic, and psychodynamic models.

About Us

CNWL provides NHS services throughout a person's life, in physical and mental health, and everything in between, at GPs and hospitals to the community and in their own home.

The majority of our services are provided in the community, which means treating people in their homes or from clinics close to home. In this sense, we are a very modern part of the NHS, something the new Long Term Plan wants to see more of, with better integration and coordination of care, delivered as close to home as possible.

Where community care is not possible, we offer a number of facilities to treat people in hospital or residential environments. We also provide healthcare in prisons in London and the surrounding areas.

Partnerships are central to what we do here - with patients and their families, with staff, and with other organisations, especially commissioners and providers but also with local authorities, GPs, universities, and the voluntary sector. We envisage more in the years to come.

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.

Job Responsibilities

Job Purpose:

To provide a specialist psychology service to service users of the Harrow Home Treatment Team (HTT) and Mental Health Emergency Assessment Centre (MHEAC), including specialist assessment, treatment, planning, implementation, and monitoring of outcomes.

To contribute to enabling other staff, service users, and carers from diverse backgrounds to flourish by working to create a psychologically safe environment.

To provide clinical supervision and consultation as appropriate.

To undertake service evaluation, audit, and research.

To work as an autonomous professional within BPS and HCPC guidelines and codes of conduct, and guided by the policies and procedures of the service, taking responsibility for own work, including treatment and discharge decisions, with support of clinical supervisor.

Key Responsibilities:

KR 1 Clinical and Client Care

To provide specialist psychological assessments, formulations, and interventions for clients under the care of the Harrow HTT and MHEAC.

To provide culturally appropriate psychological interventions with carers or families of referred clients when required.

To assess and monitor risk and draw up appropriate risk management plans.

Where appropriate, to act as named worker and take responsibility for initiating planning and reviewing of care plans and co-ordination of multi-professional meetings.

KR 2 Contributing to team or service clinical functioning

To contribute to the effective working of the Harrow HTT and MHEAC, and to a psychologically informed framework for the service.

To contribute to the team or services delivery of accessible and acceptable services to diverse local communities.

To be proactive in challenging discrimination and support the development of culturally competent services.

To liaise with referrers, GPs, and other professionals concerned with clients in order to develop and review care plans.

KR 3 Policy and service development

To implement policies and procedures in own area of work, and to propose improvements or beneficial changes.

To contribute to the consultation and engagement of service users in planning and delivering services which meet the needs of local communities.

To contribute to service development through undertaking and participating in appropriate projects.

KR 4 Care or management of resources

To take care of, and use carefully, the Trust's equipment and physical resources.

To ensure that the post-holder has sufficient resources by estimating future needs and requesting or ordering supplies as needed.

KR 5 Management and supervision

To be responsible for the allocation and/or clinical supervision of the work of an assistant psychologist if required, under supervision from a more senior psychologist.

To supervise trainee applied psychologists within own area of specialism after completion of the relevant Training Courses Supervision Training.

KR 6 Teaching and Training

To provide occasional specialist training in psychological approaches to care to other professions as appropriate.

To disseminate research and service evaluation findings through presentations and published articles.

KR 7 Record-keeping and Information Governance

To ensure that all information generated by own work is recorded as required by Trust policies and local procedures.

To maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping and report writing, according to professional and Trust guidelines, including electronic data entry.

KR 8 Research and development

To undertake regular complex service evaluation, audits, or research relevant to service needs.

KR 9 Maintaining professional standards and continuing professional development

To receive regular clinical and professional supervision from a more senior psychologist according to HCPC and Trust guidelines.

To ensure own Continuing Professional Development in line with BPS and Trust Personal Development Plan requirements and the HCPC Standards for Continuing Professional Development.

To maintain an up-to-date knowledge of current developments in professional and clinical practice and of relevant legislation and policies.

To comply with the HCPC Standards of Conduct, Performance, and Ethics and Standards of Proficiency, and ensure professional development in line with these.

To adhere to the BPS's Professional Practice Guidelines and Trust policies and procedures.

KR 10 General

To travel within the Harrow area for home visits as appropriate and across the Trust when required.

To be aware of risk relating to aggressive and challenging behaviour amongst the client group, and follow trust policies relating to its management.

To respond appropriately and professionally to emotionally distressing situations and to support others involved in such situations.