Clinical/Forensic/Counselling Psychologist or Psychological Therapist | Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust

The post is based at HMP Wandsworth where you will work with a team of psychological therapists and multi-professional mental health colleagues to embed psychologically informed care in the prison. The role is dynamic, with clinical tasks, staff support, supervisory roles and non-clinical responsibilities carried out with the support of the psychology leadership. The postholder will be able to demonstrate a keen interest in working with people who have led chaotic lives and who present with complex mental health needs and forensic histories. The postholder will supervise pre-qualified psychological therapists including assistant psychologists, students and trainees.

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children’s centres, schools and people’s homes. We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people. Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:

• Main Responsibilities

• To provide direct psychological care (assessment and intervention) and support the delivery of psychologically informed care by all disciplines within the service.
• To provide highly specialist psychological therapy assessments, formulations and interventions.
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of community clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans, including taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans with input from clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.
• To provide culturally appropriate psychological therapy interventions with service users, carers or families of referred clients when required.
• To communicate, in a highly skilled and sensitive manner, to clients family carers and others as appropriate, information that may be contentious or highly distressing concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care.
• To produce reports on clients, in a timely manner, that convey the key findings of psychological assessment and formulation and treatment outcome in a way that does justice to the complexity of the problems described, but that are understandable to the recipients of the reports, including clients and referrers.
• To undertake psychometric and neuropsychological testing as appropriate, including selecting the appropriate tests, administering and scoring the tests in accordance with the manual, and interpreting the findings in the context of all relevant information.
• To undertake risk assessment, risk monitoring and risk management for individual clients in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures, and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
• To work in partnership with other disciplines and to maintain links with statutory and non-statutory agencies as appropriate.

• Management responsibilities

• To provide line management to designated assistant psychologists.
• Provide supervision to students and trainees and to multi-disciplinary colleagues delivering psychological interventions.
• To support recruitment of assistant psychologists to the service for those line managing, to ensure local standards are implemented for the allocation and review of work, job planning, review of performance sickness management and initial stages of grievance or disciplinary action.
• To oversee quality line management and supervision within the team structure, ensuring that staff and trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to health care, and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.
• To provide highly specialist advice, consultation and training of staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate. This may include work with the Criminal Justice System and Children’s Services.

• Leadership

• To provide and support specialist clinical placements for students and trainees in applied psychological practice.
• To contribute to the delivery of teaching and training to junior psychological practitioners and specialist training to other professions.
• To contribute to the development of the knowledge and skills base within the service by maintaining an active awareness of current developments in psychological therapy and risk assessment / management and to implement knowledge gained in practice.
• To disseminate research and service evaluation findings through presentations and published articles.
• To continue to gain wider post-qualification experience of psychological therapies and risk assessment / management, over and above that provided within the principal service area where the post-holder is employed.

• Research

• To undertake the planning, initiation and completion of research, service, evaluation and audits, and quality improvement projects relevant to the service and the directorate research agenda.
• To oversee the planning, initiation and completion of research, service evaluation and audits by students and trainees.
• To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other team members.

• Communication

• To communicate, in a highly skilled and sensitive manner, to clients, family carers and others as appropriate, information that may be contentious or highly distressing concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care.
• Liaise with other team members including members of other disciplines and agencies responsible for a client’s care.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION, PLEASE READ: All applicants must be willing to undertake National Security Vetting in order to work in a Prison Setting. This will be completed as part of the pre-employment checks through Oxleas and the prison vetting team. You will need to provide: Proof of right to work documentation, Proof of ID, needs to include 1 photographic ID, Proof of address documentation. Non-UK passport holders will need to have correct documentation (right to work in the UK) and a Home office Share code. Address History: 5 years address history will be needed. Applicants that are not UK Passport holders who provide less than 5 years UK address history will need to provide a Police Certificate which must be in English from where they resided previously. Applicants who are UK Passport holders who have lived abroad for a period of more than six months during the last three years will need to provide a certificate of good conduct or an overseas police check in English from the countries resided in or visited.