Duty Counsellor

**Job Title**: Duty Counsellor
**Location**: Hybrid working in London, with travel
**Salary**: Starting salary FTE £33K rising to £37,500K once accredited with BACP - Support provided for those to be accredited which will be required prior to probation signoff. Salary is dependent on accreditation and experience.
**Contract Type**: Permanent
**Hours**: Part time - 3 days per week or full time - 5 days per week

**About Us**

Optima Health is a UK market leader in Occupational Health and well-being services with the ambition to improve the health and wellbeing of the UK workforce.

**Role Summary**

An exciting opportunity has arisen within the MPS Trauma support team for a full time Duty counsellor. We are seeking highly motivated, enthusiastic and experienced mental health professionals' practitioners to provide psychological risk management and advice to MPS staff. They will work collaboratively with other multi-specialist occupational health teams, which is essential in order to ensure a comprehensive service is provided to the MPS staff.
Experience of undertaking effective risk assessment, risk management and collaborative working with other professionals at point of crisis is essential in this role. The practitioner will attend case management meetings on the small caseload of officers they will carry. They will deliver trauma intervention as required. As a member of the team, the post holder will need to manage high levels of responsibility.
We will consider experienced counsellors and mental health practitioners' professionals from other disciplines such as Mental Health Nurses, Occupational Therapists, are encouraged to apply.

**Main Duties and Responsibilities**
- Psychological risk Assessment for referrals received from managers and other wider occupational health departments and act according to MPS risk management protocol
- Taking part in time the Duty on-call rota as role develops
- Maintaining various clinical mailboxes
- Health promotion activities when required
- Triage in coming referral and maintain small caseload
- Delivery of training of MPS trauma support intervention
- To take responsibility for own personal development and update knowledge and skills, with support from Optima Health, to perform the role at an effective level.
- Advice/support to managers/ staff about accessing counselling services and managing high risk cases.
- To deliver trauma interventions to major and critical incidents as are reported working within with Optima and MPS policy
- Provide crisis counselling based on case-by-case need as specified by the Clinical Lead
- Offer practical problem solving guidance and sign-post to other external agencies or internal multi-specialist occupational health team
- Highlight key routes for onward referral for officers identified with significant risk
- To assess officers' needs, plan effectively, monitor and evaluate interventions using evidence-based practice applied to individual needs
- To establish and maintain good liaison and partnerships with other OH departments
- To participate in individual and group clinical supervision and be responsible for their own development and updating their professional development.
- To ensure that they cascaded clinical standards to all staff
- To collect and provide statistical data as required.
- To maintain comprehensive case records in line with GDPR requirements
- To effectively implement organisational policies and procedures and ensure adherence to them.
- To have a working knowledge of relevant legislation and government guidelines, which include: Mental Health Act 1983, Risk Assessment/Management Policy & Safeguarding Policy, Evidence based practice
- Awareness of current development in the field of practices
- To ensure communication systems are fully utilised and affective to facilitate high-quality standards of communication with officers, managers

**Experience, skills and knowledge required for the** **role**
- Experienced in working in a highly demanding environment
- BACP Accredited or working towards accreditation
- Evidence of delivery of Psychological risk Assessment
- Experience of delivering a brief counselling model.
- Understand of the use of IAPT measurement form.
- Experience of delivery of supervision
- A knowledge of clinical governance and risk management
- Evidence of being able to work independently and as part of a multi-professional/multi-agency team
- Demonstrates excellent written, verbal communication skills
- Understanding is use of psychiatric assessment measurement tools such as IAPT, Impact Risk Assessment, DES-II
- Ability to communicate specialist condition related information to employees, other health professional and non-clinical customers
- It skills
- competent in use of Microsoft outlook and word.
- Proven ability to work with other disciplines and organisations
- Good negotiation skills and problem-solving skills

**What we can offer you?**
- Competitive salary
- Excellent training and