Principal Practitioner Psychologist - Resilience Hub

Job content

We are recruiting to a Band 8B Principal Practitioner Psychologist within our Cheshire and Merseyside Resilience Hub on a secondment or temporary basis until 31stMarch 2023. We welcome applicants who are a Clinical Psychologist, Health Psychologist, Counselling Psychologist or Forensic Psychologist registered with the HCPC as a Practitioner Psychologist.

The Hub adopts a holistic approach and offers a service to staff working within NHS, Social Care, Primary Care and Emergency Services across Cheshire and Merseyside to provide high quality self-care and self-help resources, clinical triage, assessment and signposting as well as clinical intervention when required.

The Hub delivers specialist training, advice, consultation and clinical supervision on an individual or team basis to enhance knowledge and skills amongst professionals to promote and build resilience in the workforce.

Shortlisting date is planned for 20th December 2021

Interview date is planned for 6th January 2022

The post holder will provide clinical leadership for all staff in the Resilience Hub and provide advice and consultation on clients psychological care to non psychological services colleagues and to others involved in a clients care, working autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures.

The post holder will utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the area served by the team/service and provide teaching and training within the service and to other groups as required.

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 11 million people.

We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.

At the heart of all we do is our commitment to ‘perfect care’ – care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We’re currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

• To provide highly specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the Resilience Hub based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological tests, self-report measures, history, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations, psychodynamic, adult attachment and semi-structured interviews with clients, family members and other involved in the client’s care.
• To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of clients’ complex mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the clients’ problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficiency, across the full range of care settings.
• To be responsible for implementing a range of specialised psychological interventions for individuals and groups, within and across teams, adjusting and refining psychological formulations, drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
• To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models, legal obligations and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individuals, family or group.
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, triage, treatment, signposting or referral and discharge of clients who problems are managed by psychologically based care plans.
• To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals which contributes directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
• To provide directly and indirectly, a psychologically grounded framework of understanding to guide care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.
• To ensure that comprehensive risk assessments on all clients within the service are carried out in line with policy. To contribute to multi-disciplinary diagnostic assessment of complex cases, and to share advice and recommendations.
• To communicate and record in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor progress during the course of care.
• To clinical lead interventions for people within the Resilience Hub; to revise and manage the referral process and waiting list. To lead on assessment, intervention, evaluation and risk assessment.
• To provide clinical leadership within the Resilience Hub that serves the population of staff employed by health, social care, primary care and emergency services to bolster the health and wellbeing offer and provide specialist training, supervision, consultation and reflective practice when required, including supporting the development of workforce resilience.
• To support the development of clinical pathways within the Resilience Hub, including mapping the current psychological offer across Cheshire & Merseyside, developing online resources and resources to be used within the Resilience Hub that are clinically sound.
• To receive regular clinical and professional supervision from professional colleagues.
• To gain additional highly specialist experience and skills relevant to psychological needs as agreed with the Lead Consultant Clinical Psychologist.
• To apply and continue to develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training supervision and to provide supervision to other MDT staff’s psychological work as appropriate.
• To provide professional clinical supervision of student and trainee staff.
• To contribute to the pre and post qualification teaching of clinical colleagues, as appropriate, including the development of reflective practice interventions, enhanced by PhD. Study outcomes.
• To provide advice consultation and training to staff working with client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.
• To contribute to the management of psychological services staff working within the resilience hub.

To develop and apply professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit to enhance development, evaluation and monitoring of the multidisciplinary team’s operational policies and services.

• To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where colleagues and/or organisational matters need addressing.
• To be involved, as appropriate, in the shortlisting and interviewing of new staff.
• To listen to feedback from users of the service and collaborate with services across Cheshire and Merseyside to ensure that these are coordinated and meet the needs of people accessing them.
• To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
• To undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research.
• To undertake project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within the service to help develop service provision.
• To contribute to the dissemination of any work undertaken by promoting the evidence base and by publishing the work in accredited journal and speaking at relevant conferences/workshops.
• To support the monitoring of service key performance indicators and reporting of these, including data for research and other projects.
• To contribute to the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the post holder’s professional service manager(s).
• To contribute to the development and articulation of best practice in colleagues’ approaches across the service, by continuing to develop the skills of a reflexive and reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the field of all disciplines.
• To maintain the highest standard of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry and recording, report writing and the responsible exercise of professional self-governance in accordance with professional codes of practice of the British Psychological Society, Health and Care Professions Council, and Trust policies and procedures.
• To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to both the specific client group and mental health.
• To undertake a reasonable duty of care for Trust equipment and facilities used in the course of routine work.