Psychologist/Psychological Therapist

Job overview

The post holder will be required to support the delivery of care currently in the form of New Models of Care, enabling the service to meet the London Wide service specification standards for Prison Healthcare.

The post holder will support the therapies team to ensure they work to an agreed operational policy and offer integrated triage, assessment and intervention to individuals within our prison settings who are presenting with mental health problems in line with the New Models of Care.

T he post holder will provide a qualified specialist psychology service to patients under the care of the Mental Health team and Therapies Service within the Prison. The role includes providing specialist psychological assessment and therapy, at the same time as offering advice and consultation on clients’ psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues, working autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures. The post holder will provide supervision to unqualified psychology staff and support senior staff to further develop the service. Finally, the post holder will utilise research skills for audit, policy, service development and research within the area served by the team/service.

Main duties of the job

Please kindly refer to the job description and person specification by clicking on the JD/PS attachment in the advert.

Working for our organisation

The partnership between Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust (BEH) and Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust (C&I) forms the North London Mental Health Partnership. Why choose to join the Partnership?

• By working together, our two Trusts can achieve more for the residents of North Central London and our patients than we can by working apart.
• Deliver the best care using the most up-to-date practise in supporting those with mental health illnesses.
• Transforming and creating a positive environment for our service users, staff and visitors.
• Creating and working together to become a great place to work for all staff.
• Offer flexible working, a wide range of health and wellbeing initiatives, NHS Pension.
• Generous Annual Leave Allowance
• NHS Discounts in a large variety of retail stores and services.
• Excellent internal staff network support groups.

The postholder will need to be comfortable working in an environment of complex matrix management arrangements and will at all times behave and align with our Trusts’ values and cultural pillars:

• We are kind
• We are respectful
• We work together
• We keep things simple
• We empower
• We are proudly diverse

In order to meet the needs of the new Partnership services you may be required from time to time to work at different locations to your normal place of work. The Trust reserves the right to require staff to work at such other places or locations as it considers reasonable and necessary on a temporary or permanent basis.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please kindly refer to the job description and person specification by clicking on the JD/PS attachment in the advert.

Person specification

Qualifications and Experience

Essential criteria

• Doctoral level training in clinical, counselling, forensic psychology OR UKCP accredited psychotherapist

Desirable criteria

• Experience of working within a forensic setting/service (ideally prison environment) either in a B7 role, or as a trainee.
• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across a range of care settings
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity
• Experience of teaching, training and providing supervision.
• Well developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
• Able to work autonomously as well as under supervision and with colleagues.
• Creative in approach as well as reflective about their own practice.
• Able to contain, explore and formulate an understanding of high levels of distress both directly with patients and indirectly via supervision or case reviews with other staff.