Lead Psychologist Hollybank Rehabilitation Service in Havant

This is a new position within Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust working as the Lead Psychologist within a Rehabilitation Service in the Secure, Acute and Crisis Division. The post holder will provide senior clinical, professional and strategic psychological leadership to Hollybank Rehabilitation Service Level 2. They will support the wider MDT to ensure psychological thinking is embedded throughout the rehabilitation pathway and people receive trauma informed, formulation-driven and recovery-focused care. The role will enable the post holder to develop a psychological model of mental health rehabilitation, help support the development of the Level 1 Rehab Service in Forest Lodge and provide professional leadership/oversight.

The post holder will be required to work closely with the Elmleigh psychology team, rehab multidisciplinary team to promote recovery, independence, positive risk-taking and successful transition into community living. As a key member of the senior leadership team, this role will have significant autonomy to establish, lead, direct and develop all aspects of the Rehab psychology related offer. The post holder will provide highly specialist psychological assessment, formulation and psychologically informed intervention for people with severe and enduring mental health difficulties, in psychosis, and complex rehabilitation needs. You will work directly with service users and families/carers where specialist psychological intervention is needed.

The post holder will provide expert consultation regarding complex clinical presentations, risk, rehabilitation planning and barriers to recovery, and will influence the wider system around the individual, including inpatient, community, social care, housing and other partner organisations. The role will have a particular focus on ensuring that Hollybank functions as a Level 2 therapeutic rehabilitation environment rather than simply a place of residence, with psychological formulation informing assessment, specialist assessments including neuropsychological assessment, care planning, risk management and rehabilitation goals.

They will provide reflective and formulation led clinics to ensure wider workforce and people undergoing Rehab are held in a psychologically safe and effective therapeutic space. This is an exciting new role to help develop and shape Level 2 Rehab offer at Hollybank & Level 1 offer at Forest Lodge. The psychology element is a new and essential component to our revamped model and the postholder will have an opportunity to be part of an exciting new therapeutic development for our HIOW communities.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust provides joined-up mental and physical healthcare for around two million people across our communities. With over 13,000 staff working in the community and local hospitals, we deliver care at every stage of life, helping people live their best and healthiest lives. Our mental health services include community-based support and early intervention in psychosis (EIP) for both adults and young people, alongside a network of specialist inpatient wards covering forensic, learning disability, eating disorder and older person's care. We deliver extensive physical health services too, from urgent community response teams helping frail and older patients remain safely at home, to hospitals at home teams providing acute-level care in familiar surroundings. Our neurological services offer rehabilitation and treatment for conditions including Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease, Motor Neurone Disease, Head Injury, Cerebral Palsy and Stroke. Across Hampshire, our community hospitals provide inpatient rehabilitation as a step down from acute care, and our dedicated teams also staff Treetops Sexual Assault Referral Centre in Portsmouth, offering expert, compassionate support. Everything we do is underpinned by our CARE values of compassion, accountability, respect and excellence.

The post holder will hold clinical responsibility and provide highly specialist psychological/neuropsychological assessment, formulation and intervention for people with complex and enduring mental health difficulties, such as psychosis, as part of Hollybank Level 2 Rehab offer. They will take clinical responsibility for a small caseload of highly complex individuals where specialist psychological expertise is required. The post holder will provide expert consultation to the MDT regarding complex presentations and will work with emotionally challenging clinical presentations and contextual situations including repeated admissions, long periods of institutional care, significant functional impairment, difficulties transitioning from hospital to community, placement breakdown and complex interpersonal and relational difficulties.

The work with MDT will also include regular reflective practice, support with relational and interpersonal difficulties within the therapeutic environment, understanding team responses to complex service users, supporting staff to maintain therapeutic boundaries, translate formulations into practical rehabilitation goals and psychologically informed care plans. The post holder will provide specialist psychological advice regarding risk assessment and management and support the MDT to undertake positive and proportionate risk-taking where this facilitates recovery and independence.

The post holder will provide psychological leadership in complex case reviews, CPA meetings, discharge planning and placement discussions. They will work directly with service users and families/carers where specialist psychological intervention is indicated. The post holder will lead the development and implementation of a coherent psychological model for Hollybank establishing shared psychological language across the MDT. This will involve embedding formulation within routine rehabilitation practice, developing trauma informed & recovery-orientated rehabilitation plans, supporting staff to understand the psychological function of presenting challenges, and developing approaches to reduce institutionalisation and increase autonomy.

The post holder will provide psychological leadership to the rehabilitation process from admission through to discharge. This will include establishing psychological and functional rehabilitation needs, identifying barriers to progression and understanding factors contributing to repeated admissions or placement breakdown. The postholder will play a key role in fostering independence, supporting emotional regulation, coping, social functioning and confidence, supporting engagement with meaningful activity and community participation. They will help develop interventions around avoidance, dependency and loss of confidence.

The postholder will play a critical role in supporting transition and timely progression into suitable community services, at times overseeing the care into the community. They will support psychologically informed discharge planning and ensuring shared formulation in the transfer between services, identifying psychological risks associated with transition and contributing to relapse management and crisis planning. The postholder will play a critical part in strengthening the pathway into wider system by developing effective relationships with other local services such as the Forest Lodge, Acute and, forensic & secure, community and social care and VCSE services.

The postholder will help take lead and support service development including supporting reduction in restrictive practice, developing outcome measures demonstrating the impact of psychology and oversee development of group and programme-based psychological interventions. The postholder will provide leadership support into Level 1 Rehab programme in Forest Lodge including supporting the development of psychology offer. This will include clinical/professional and/or operational supervision of psychology staff in Forest Lodge. They will contribute psychological expertise to strategic discussions regarding bed capacity and flow, community rehabilitation and supported accommodation.

Qualifications:

• Doctoral level qualification in Clinical or Counselling Psychology, or equivalent recognised professional qualification.
• HCPC registration as a Practitioner Psychologist.
• Evidence of post-qualification specialist psychological training.
• Qualification/training in supervision.

Experience:

• Significant post-qualification experience as a Clinical/Counselling Psychologist.
• Substantial experience working with people with severe and enduring mental health difficulties.
• Significant experience of complex psychological assessment, formulation and intervention.
• Experience of working within inpatient and/or rehabilitation services.
• Experience of working with complex risk.
• Experience of providing psychological consultation to MDTs.
• Experience of supervising psychologists and/or psychological practitioners.
• Experience of service development and evaluation including setting up services.
• Experience of working across organisational boundaries.
• Experiences of working autonomously.
• Experience of pathway redesign.
• Experiencing of working and providing treatment for severe and enduring mental health difficulties.

Skills:

• Ability to manage the most complex psychological presentations autonomously.
• Ability to influence how an entire MDT understands and responds to psychological need.
• Ability to influence and lead without relying solely on formal authority.
• Ability to balance safety, autonomy, recovery and positive risk-taking.
• Ability to develop the psychological capability of non-psychology professionals.
• Ability to design, implement and evaluate new models of psychological care.
• Ability to understand the interaction between the individual, MDT, service and wider system.
• Ability to translate psychological formulation into meaningful functional rehabilitation.
• Skills in the use of highly complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Ability to use the highest level of interpersonal and communication skills to convey and receive highly complex / sensitive information effectively requiring empathy and reassurance in a highly emotive atmosphere.
• High level ability to communicate effectively at both a written and oral level complex, highly technical and clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and a wide range of lay and professional persons within and outside the NHS.
• Skills in providing consultation and supervision to other multi-disciplinary professional and non-professional groups.
• Ability to manage staff (including line management) and negotiate specialty issues.
• 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 and its implications for both clinical practice and professional management.
• Ability to design and implement policy for services and to propose service changes that impact beyond that area of activity.
• Ability to plan a clinical service and to formulate a long term strategic plan which may involve uncertainty.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS.
• Experience in the supervision and line management of other Psychologists, Psychological Professionals and other disciplines.
• Highly developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific complex or difficult to treat groups.
• Good understanding of NHS strategy, regulation, workforce challenges, and policy context.
• Strategic thinking with the ability to translate psychological insight into organisational action.
• Excellent leadership, facilitation and communication skills.
• Ability to articulate and interpret clearly the role of the psychological professions based upon a good understanding of the framework of government and national professional policy.
• Demonstrable commitment to supporting and promoting the needs of a diverse population.