Clinical Lead- Offender Personality Disorder

Due to career progression we have an exciting opportunity to join a progressive, psychology led and trauma informed team.

We are seeking a part time clinical or forensic psychologist to provide specialist psychological support for the Offender Personality Disorder Pathway (OPD) in North Staffordshire.

The OPD pathway is a psychologically-led, joint initiative between His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) and NHS England for high risk offenders who experience coexisting personality related difficulties.

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced clinical or forensic psychologist to become the new clinical lead within our community OPD pathway.

As well as working within our established OPD pathway, this role will allow for close liaison with other partnership and support agencies, providing a fully holistic, psychologically informed care pathway for our cohort.

We also facilitate staff well-being sessions and reflective practice sessions for colleagues within the probation service.

This post is for 22.5 hours a week - Days and hours of working can be flexible.

Opportunity to work remotely for PART of the role.

The OPD pathway has three aims;
1. To reduce levels of re-offending
2. To improve the psychological health and wellbeing of this client group
3. To improve the skills, confidence and attitudes of the workforce

The role therefore involves providing consultation to probation officers and approved premises staff, developing formulations of this client group, developing and delivering relevant training and completing time-limited joint working with clients and probation staff.

In addition, there will be regular opportunities for consultation, providing training and supervision of assistants and trainees.

As the OPD service continues to evolve, the post holder gain opportunities to contribute to service development and leadership within the team.

Our Trust is on an incredible journey of innovation and we’d like you to be part of it. To excel you will be an enthusiastic, caring and compassionate registered professional who is looking to work within a Trust that is ambitious to perform well and has been told by the Care Quality Commission that it is the fastest improving Mental Health Trust in the Country. Whether you are about to qualify, newly qualified or an experienced practitioner, we want to meet you and discuss the possibility of you joining this great Team.

Our vision is ‘To be Outstanding in all we do and how we do it.’ Our teams pride themselves on compassion, team work and resilience.

To work autonomously in undertaking highly specialised single case consultations with individual probation service staff to develop an understanding of the offender’s presentation, symptoms and related management difficulties within a psychological framework. The post holder will be required to provide consultation in relation to the most complex clients, exhibiting the most challenging behaviour where assessing and managing risk will be a very high priority. The post holder will be consulting on cases where there is a history of physical and/or sexual abuse and the emotional demands of the role will extremely high.

To utilise highly specialist psychological skills to develop case formulations that provide detailed psychological understanding of the offender’s presentation, symptoms and related management issues taking into account different theoretical models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that will inform safe and effective future care and management.

To make highly skilled decisions in advising probation service staff and partners, in the development of evidence-based management plans for offenders who have personality disorder and to sensitively monitor the efficacy of the management plans through regular consultations with staff, adjusting and refining psychological formulations and maintaining a number of different provisional hypotheses.

To utilise highly specialist psychological skills to contribute to risk assessment and management in cases where the cost of errors is high, placing particular demands on the post-holder’s professional judgements, decision-making and clinical skills.

To maintain a high level of professionalism despite regular exposure to highly emotive, distressing and disturbing material including first and second hand accounts of serious violent and sexual offending.

To work autonomously with probation service staff within a highly specialist clinical field to identify offenders who have personality disorder and to support staff in recognising cases where a psychological understanding will contribute to effective and safe care and management.

To develop excellent working relationships with the Senior Probation Officer (SPO) and probation service staff that will underpin effective liaison, communication and learning.

To work with the SPO to develop screening methods to aid the identification of o