Counselling Psychologist job description

To ensure the systematic provision of a high quality specialist clinical psychology service. To supervise and support the psychological assessment and therapy provided by other psychologists and other clinical members of the team who provide psychologically based care and treatment. To work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service/team. To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research. To propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the team/service.

Clinical:

1. To provide highly specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the inpatient unit, based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex psychological 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 the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods of proven efficacy, across the inpatient unit.

3. To be responsible for implementing a range of highly specialised psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, 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. Whilst remaining aware of the restrictions imposed by working in a secure environment.

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 highly specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.

7. To ensure that all members of the treating team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of clients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.

8. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide general advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.

9. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, complex and sensitive information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.

10. To provide specialist expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.

11. With the clients consent to communicate psychological advice and guidance in the form of written reports incorporating complex psychological formulations for the purpose of clients accessing further treatments such as rehab or social service interventions. The post holder will also provide representation to multi-agency meetings as appropriate.

12. To coordinate specialised psychological interventions with care packages offered by other care agencies such as social services, probation, and voluntary sector, to ensure that the complex needs of the clients are met, and to provide highly specialist psychological advice and guidance within these care pathways.

13. To plan and organise the provision of highly specialist psychological interventions for a case load that is based throughout the directorate and involves co-ordinating and organising clinics in a variety of different areas and settings. This involves frequent travel to different venues, transportation of psychological materials required at each clinic such as assessment measures, and liaison with various teams to secure clinic space in appropriate secure and confidential venues.

14. To undertake highly specialised assessment and interventions for complex cases.

15. To keep updated in the latest evidence-based interventions and assessments.

16. To maintain a high level of coordination within the multi-disciplinary team to ensure the clients complex multi-dimensional psychological, medical and social needs are met

17. To engage in regular “management of Aggression” and “Breakaway” training to deal with the frequent high level of risk and exposure to verbal and physical aggression.

18. For substantial periods the postholder will be required to sit for long periods and maintain high levels of intense concentration.

Teaching, training and supervision

1. To provide clinical placements or part placements for trainee clinical psychologists, ensuring that trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good mental health care and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.

2. To provide post-qualification training (CPD) and clinical professional supervision to recently qualified clinical psychologists attached to the team.

3. To provide advice, consultation and training and clinical supervision to other members of the team for their provision of psychologically based interventions to help improve clients’ functioning.

4. To provide pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical psychology as appropriate.

5. To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional pre- and post-graduate training and clinical supervision.

6. To provide specialist advice, consultation and training to staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.

7. To provide training on aspects of psychology to other professionals within the directorate such as nursing and medical staff.

8. To seek and fully engage in appropriate arrangements for clinical supervision in accordance with good practice guidelines.

9. To engage fully in CPD in line with professional and Organisation requirements.

10. To participate fully in organisation KSF/PDR processes in common with all psychologists.

Management, recruitment, policy and service development

1. To participate as a senior clinician in the development of a high quality, responsive and accessible service including advising both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.

2. To exercise delegated responsibility for managing the psychological resources available to a team, whether in the form of additional qualified and unqualified graduate psychology staff, or in the form of psychological materials employed in the assessment and treatment of patients.

3. To exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service/team.

4. To participate as appropriate in staff recruitment, both in the short-listing process and as a member of interview panels for assistant, trainees and qualified clinical psychologists.

IT Responsibilities

1 Development and maintenance of a data base.

Research and service evaluation

1. To take the psychology lead, as a senior clinician, in the evaluation, monitoring and development of the team’s operational policies, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit and ensuring incorporation of psychological frameworks for understanding and provision of high quality care.
2. To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other team members.

3. To undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research.

4. To initiate project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within and across the service to help develop and improve services to clients and their families.

5. To seek to publish research in referred journals and other relevant publications and to disseminate within the organisation.

6. To engage in devising questionnaires for service level evaluation.

7. To evaluate own practice utilising clinical outcome/validated quantitative/qualitative assessment tools.

General

1. To ensure the development, maintenance and dissemination of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes.

2. To ensure the development and articulation of best practice in psychology within the service area and contribute across the service by exercising 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 clinical psychology and related disciplines.

3. To maintain and promulgate the highest standards 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 and Organisation policies and procedures.

4. 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.

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Qualifications

Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical/counselling psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology.
Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice.

Experience
Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care, in-patient and residential care settings severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.

Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients’ psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care coordinator and also within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan.
Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision.

Experience of representing psychology within the context of multi-disciplinary care.
Experience of assessing and treating clients across the full range of care settings.
Experience of working with people with mental health problems in a CMHT setting

Skills & Abilities
Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.

Well developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, highly technical, and clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues.
Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.

Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex multivariate data analysis as practiced within the field of clinical psychology.

Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health.
Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS.

Formal training in supervision of other psychologists.
 
Well-developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, dual diagnoses, substance misuse, people with additional disabilities etc).

Knowledge of the theory and practice of highly specialised psychological therapies and assessment methodologies.