Rough Sleepers Senior Psychologist/Psychotherapist

The CQC rates us as an Outstanding organisation for Caring with an overall rating of Good. Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust (KMPT) offer a range of ongoing benefits to our valued workforce across the Trust. From an active health and wellbeing programme to regular recognition events, we work hard to provide varied benefits that make a difference to your work-life balance.

Would you like to work flexibly? In the NHS, we are reminded every day of how important life is. As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us, for our patients and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement.

KMPT have an exciting opportunity to come and work with the Rough Sleepers Initiative service covering West Kent and Medway. The team works closely with West Kent and Medway Councils to enhance the homelessness services for vulnerable rough sleepers and those at risk of sleeping on the streets. The project provides the opportunity to tackle the ongoing needs of vulnerable rough sleepers who have fallen out of services or who will not engage with traditional pathways of support and housing, often with chaotic lives and a history of offending, drug and alcohol use, and being excluded from mainstream services.

With estimates ranging from 40%-80% of the rough sleeping population living with mental illness, it is a major contributory factor to people not being able to find or maintain a home. As rough sleepers' average age of death is 43, we cannot let this need go unmet. We are looking for an experienced Clinical/Counselling Psychologist or Psychotherapist with a passion for making sure these people do not carry on living without access to appropriate support.

Main duties of the job:

• Formulate and implement plans of brief psychologically informed treatment or management of client’s mental health problems based on a multi-factorial psychological understanding and current evidence-based best practice.
• Undertake a range of psychological therapeutic interventions, drawing on a range of psychological models and employing a range of modalities (individual, family and group) adapted and tailored to the needs of the individual and the context and the ongoing evaluation of the outcomes of the intervention.
• Be responsible for providing a specialist psychological perspective in the assessment of service users and their families and contribute specialist psychological advice and support regarding referral decisions for mental health intervention.
• Contribute highly specialist psychological advice to the multi-disciplinary formulation of appropriate therapeutic approaches or intervention plans, and to be involved in, or oversee specialist psychological aspects of their implementation in collaboration with other staff.
• Offer supervision and training to staff on trauma-informed interventions.
• Take a major role in evaluating the Rough Sleepers Initiative service using clinical outcome measures and by designing and undertaking service-related research and evaluation projects, as agreed with the Operational Lead.

Experience working as a qualified specialist psychologist / psychotherapist for a minimum of one year. Experience of working in a range of mental health settings with a range of levels of disability and full range of age groups. Experience of teaching, training and/or providing clinical supervision.

Knowledge and Skills:

• Ability to comprehend and communicate verbally and in writing highly complex and sensitive information in a manner appropriate to a range of settings and audiences, including complex highly emotive situations and those with significantly impaired communication capacities.
• Ability to analyse and manage complex multi-factorial clinical information from a range of sources integrating it into a formulation utilising a variety of psychological perspectives.
• Ability to drive.
• Postgraduate level knowledge of research methodology, research design and specialist research techniques appropriate for the study of psychotherapeutic process.
• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.

Your employer pays 23.7% towards your pension and life assurance benefits. 27 days for full time or pro rata if part time. After 5 years NHS service: 29 days full time or pro rata if part time. After 10 years NHS service: 33 days full time or pro rata if part time. Plus bank holidays, that’s up to 41 days - more than 8 weeks paid time off!

Medical staff have national Terms and Conditions. Buying and selling of annual leave is also available as part of our flexible approach to staff benefits. Statutory and occupational maternity, paternity or adoption leave dependent on length of NHS service.

KMPT offers a face-to-face counselling service for any issues not just work-related problems. Staff can sign up for Red Guava, PS discounts and Health Service Discounts to receive a variety of discounts in travel, fashion, technology, mobile phone contracts, food and drink, days out etc.

In addition to the mandatory subjects, there are a number of leadership, management and staff topic areas, including coaching and mentoring. KMPT is committed to supporting all new staff and this includes a comprehensive Induction programme.

The programme's duration depends on role and can be from 2 days to 4 weeks (not always consecutive days). The Induction programme will provide an excellent opportunity for new staff to meet and engage with KMPT’s subject specialists and include the required training.

New employees external to Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust are subject to a six-month probationary period. To deliver an effective service it is essential in some of our roles that you are able to travel between work bases in a timely manner.

KMPT takes a systematic zero-tolerance approach to tackle any unwanted, inappropriate and/or harmful sexual behaviours within the workplace and in our care provision. We are committed to sexual safety which encompasses prevention, support and decisive action against perpetrators.

KMPT is creating an environment for equal opportunities for all, where we can ALL be ourselves. We take pride in our services – which are underpinned by our Trust values:

• Respect - We value people as individuals, we treat others as we would like to be treated.
• Openness - Work in a collaborative, transparent way.
• Accountability - We are professional and responsible for our actions.
• Working together - We work together to make a difference for our service users.
• Innovation - We find creative ways to run efficient, high quality services.
• Excellence - We listen and learn to continually improve our knowledge and ways of working.