Senior Counsellor

This is a role within the senior management team of Haringey Talking Therapies and as such the post-holder will be responsible for line managing a team of therapists. The post is based in Haringey which is an ethnically diverse population with pockets of high social deprivation and need. The IAPT service has approximately 100 permanent staff consisting of CBT therapists, counsellors and PWPs, plus some clinical and counselling psychologists and non-clinical staff. Specialist clinicians with further post-graduate training in psychotherapy provide clinical and supervisory/training input from within specific therapeutic modalities. As such, it is one of the largest psychotherapy/psychological therapies services in London.
All clinicians will work a combination of some days from home and some in clinic.
To provide a qualified Psychological Therapy service specialising in at least one NICE recommended Counselling for Depression models (Person Centred Counselling for Depression, Dynamic Interpersonal Psychotherapy, Interpersonal Psychotherapy or Short-term Psychodynamic Counselling) to clients of the Haringey Talking Therapies service, including assessment and treatment. To provide line management and clinical supervision to qualified counsellors and at times to trainee and other staff in the service. To provide duty supervision and screening supervision of new referrals into the service and deal with a range of issues arising of a clinical and professional nature. To offer advice and consultation on clients’ psychological care to colleagues and to other, non-professional carers, working autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures. To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the area served by the team/service.
Whittington Health serves a richly diverse population and works hard to ensure that all our services are fair and equally accessible to everyone. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the way we look after our staff. We aim to employ a workforce which is as representative as possible of this population, so we are open to the value of differences in age, disability, gender, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, race, sexual orientation, and religion or belief. The Trust believes that as a public sector organisation we have an obligation to have recruitment, training, promotion and other formal employment policies and procedures that are sensitive to these differences. We think that by doing so, we are better able to treat our patients as well as being a better place to work.
Clinical
1. To provide specialist Counselling assessments in at least one NICE recommended counselling for depression model of clients referred to the team 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 clients, family members and others involved in the client’s care.
2. To formulate and implement plans for at least one NICE recommended counselling for depression model and/or management of a client’s emotional and mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
3. To be responsible for implementing a range of Counselling interventions for individuals, groups families and carers, adjusting and refining psychological formulations, drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
4. 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 that have shaped the individual, family or group.
5. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
6. To provide specialist psychological advice and consultation regarding at least one NICE recommended counselling for depression model to other members of staff, and to clients contributing directly in formulation, diagnosis and treatment plans when required.
7. To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.
8. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
9. To communicate highly complex and potentially highly contentious information in a highly skilled and sensitive manner in situations with patients who may be extremely hosti