Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Clinical Lead, PIH

Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Clinical Lead, PIH

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust

This is the Clinical Lead, Consultant Clinical Psychologist post for the SLaM Psychology in Hostels (PIH) Service. This is an innovative multi award-winning specialist homeless psychology service. For 14 years PIH has led in the development of ‘Psychologically Informed Environments’ (PIEs) delivering ‘Trauma Informed Approaches’ and developing best practice for working with excluded and multiply disadvantaged populations across Lambeth and Westminster in partnership with the third sector.

The client group experience multiple disadvantage and have high levels of complex trauma and interpersonal difficulties coupled with substance misuse issues and risk-taking behaviour. To support them we deliver a ‘PIE’ approach. A PIE takes into consideration how the psychological and emotional needs of the clients are affected by the environments they inhabit and how services support them. This includes the approaches adopted by hostel and outreach staff; the training and support offered; the psychology specific interventions delivered and the integration of psychological and trauma informed approaches to the design of services. The current PIE psychology model uses Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) as well as other evidence-based treatments for working with complex needs populations (Incl. DBT, CBT, Narrative, Systemic).

Main duties of the job

About the role:

This role will lead, manage and plan the delivery of highly specialist psychology and psychotherapy services for Psychology in Hostels (PiH) partnership services delivered across Lambeth and Westminster.

The postholder will:

• Lead on winning bids, grants, tendering and commissioning, and support recommissioning, funding management and contract delivery.
• Contribute to enabling other staff, service users and carers from diverse backgrounds to flourish by working to create psychologically safe environments.
• Be responsible for the good clinical governance, quality and appropriateness of the work of PiH services.
• Supervise and line manage other qualified staff and oversee supervision and line management in the team.
• Support the PiH service to be a national leader in service design and delivery for working with homeless people and those experiencing multiple disadvantage through the continued development of PIE practice, the evidence-base and the national agenda for the development of homeless psychology services.

This Clinical Lead role will sit within a wider Psychology in Hostels team based across Westminster and Lambeth and includes: a team administrator, Principal grade psychologist, five Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologists, seven Specialist Clinical/Counselling Psychologists, a Nurse Psychotherapist, an Art Therapist and several Trainee Clinical Psychologists. The service is also supported by SLaM management structures.

About us

About the location:

This post will oversee a team based across third sector run accommodation sites (hostels and shared housing) within Lambeth and Westminster. The team has an admin base in Brixton and is also involved in home working.

Our Trust headquarters is located at Denmark Hill less than 5 minutes from the train station (zone 2). We also provide services and operate across other locations, such as London boroughs of Croydon, Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark; and substance misuse services for residents of Bexley, Lambeth, Greenwich and Wandsworth.

We are committed to ensuring our staff get the most out of their benefits package and understand the importance of a healthy work-life balance. There is an extensive range of excellent benefits for you and your family. We want you to feel like you are part of a close-knit team at SLaM. It’s important to us that you feel valued and appreciated and that is why we have a comprehensive benefits package on offer.

Some of our benefits are highlighted here:

• Generous pay, pensions and leave
• Work-life balance
• Car lease
• Accommodation
• NHS discounts

Other benefits include:

• Counselling services
• Long service awards
• Cycle to work scheme
• Season ticket loan
• Staff restaurants

Job responsibilities

Key Responsibilities:

Clinical and Client Care

• Plan, organise and ensure the delivery of psychology and psychotherapy services in Psychology in Hostels (PIH) services.
• Deliver Mentalisation-Based Treatment within the PIH team and oversee the delivery of an MBT-informed PIE PIH service.
• Provide and oversee the delivery of evidence-based and culturally appropriate psychological interventions with carers or families of referred clients when required.

Teaching, Training, and Supervision

• Be responsible for planning, organising, and the delivery of teaching and training of pre- and post-qualification psychologists and specialist training to other professions in the PiH team.
• Contribute to the development of the knowledge and skills base within the PiH teams by maintaining an active awareness of current developments in psychology, psychological therapies, Homelessness, PIEs, Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) and by implementing knowledge gained in practice.
• Provide clinical, professional and managerial supervision to senior members of the team for all aspects of their work.
• Coordinate and oversee the provision of a PIE training programme for third sector partners across Lambeth and Westminster delivered by the PiH team.

Team and Service Clinical Functioning

• Work with the leads/managers of other SLaM and CNWL services and of other agencies services (particularly the homeless sector) to plan and deliver joint services that are integrated around the needs of service users.
• Ensure the effective working of the team or service and a psychologically informed framework for the service.
• Advise other members of the service on specialist psychological care of clients.
• Lead recruitment of all staff including the psychology and psychotherapy staff in the PiH teams.
• Support the wellbeing of the PiH teams through formal and informal systems used to identify and address issues.

Clinical and Client Care Policy and Service Development

• Lead on winning bids, grants, tendering and commissioning, and support recommissioning, funding management and contract delivery.
• Lead on developing service sustainability models, recommissioning and grant applications, including working with relevant SLaM Corporate, Legal and Contracts teams and directorate leadership as required.
• Initiate, implement and ensure appropriate service developments to improve the quality and delivery of PiH services and in partnership organisations and services.
• Support the PiH service to be national leaders in service design and delivery for working with homeless people and those experiencing multiple disadvantage through the continued development of innovative Psychologically Informed Environments (PIE) practice.
• Be responsible for applying clinical governance standards within the PiH teams and ensure that these are maintained and improved.
• Take a lead role in ensuring that services to clients are of a high quality and are managed efficiently, according to the overall requirements of the Trust, NHS and government guidance and standards and local authority commissioners and direct provider contracts.

Service Leadership

• Provide leadership to psychologists, psychotherapists and other professionals in the PiH teams.
• Contribute to support a service culture and values in line with Trust values as well as the team’s vision of addressing health inequalities and multiple disadvantage of people experiencing homelessness, and the value of cross-sector partnership working as ways of improving clinical practice and service delivery.

Research and Service Evaluation

• Provide expertise in the highly specialist research area which contributes to PiH and PIE more broadly.
• Develop and maintain a strong research culture that values the use of outcome measures and mixed-method evaluations as a way of improving clinical practice.
• Disseminate research and service evaluation findings through presentations and published articles.

Professional Responsibilities

• Receive regular clinical and professional supervision according to HCPC, BPS, or other relevant professional requirements and in-line with Trust guidelines.
• Ensure professional registration with the HCPC (for psychologists). For other therapists, ensure professional accreditation with their relevant registry body is maintained.
• Ensure that all psychology and psychotherapy staff for whom the post-holder has leadership or management responsibility maintain professional standards and continuing professional development.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (or equivalent) and extensive demonstrable practice in this field.
• Additional training beyond entry-level qualification in a specialised area of psychological practice through formal post-qualification training (PG Diploma or equivalent) OR a combination of specialist short courses and an evidenced portfolio of supervised practice-based learning in a specialist area of clinical practice, assessed by a registered body and/or an experienced clinical supervisor to be of equal level to a Postgraduate Diploma or higher.
• Registered with HCPC and evidence of continuing professional development.
• Additional postgraduate training in other relevant specialist psychological models (DBT, Systemic).
• Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT) trained.

Experience

• Evidence of having worked as a clinical lead or service lead under supervision in an area of relevance (incl. complex trauma, homelessness, substance misuse and/or personality disorder).
• Experience of leading on the design, development and delivery of ‘Psychologically Informed Environments’ (PIEs) and/or ‘Trauma Informed Care’ in homeless sector settings and organisations.
• Experience of highly specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients with a range of psychological needs of a complex nature in PiH homeless services.
• Experience of designing services and supporting clinical teams to work with hard-to-reach clients or marginalised populations.
• Significant experience in staff management including line management, performance management and appraisal.
• Experience of working with homeless organisations, services, and teams.
• Experience of working with commissioners and writing bids and winning grants.

Knowledge

• Advanced knowledge of psychological assessment and clinical psychometrics relevant to PiH and homeless psychology services.
• Knowledge of factors affecting acceptability and accessibility of mental health care and models of care required to reach diverse, excluded, and marginalised populations.
• Doctoral level knowledge or equivalent of psychological research methodology and statistical analysis.

Skills and Abilities

• Highly developed verbal and written communication skills including communicating complex, highly technical and sensitive information to clients, families and colleagues.
• Highly developed skills in providing teaching and training to psychologists and other professional groups using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings, including to doctoral level.
• Skills and experience in organisational consultancy, service design and strategic leadership.
• Ability to hot desk in busy working environments.
• Significant skills in designing clinical audit projects, managing internal evaluations, external evaluation teams, implementing change and taking responsibility from end to end.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust

£82,462 to £93,773 a year pro rata per annum inclusive of HCAS

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