Principal Clinical Psychologist and Mentalization-Based Treatment Lead

ELFT has long been recognised as a centre of excellence for mental and health care, innovation and improvement. Our mission is to make a positive difference to people's lives by improving quality of life for all we serve. Our values are: We Care, We Respect, We are Inclusive – so we are looking for people who live and breathe these qualities when supporting service users and carers, and in their relationships with colleagues in the Trust and our partner organisations.

An opportunity has arisen within East London Foundation Trust’s (ELFT) Bedfordshire and Luton Complex Needs Service for a Principal Clinical Psychologist with specialist skills in the ongoing development, delivery and supervision of Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) for people with complex emotional needs (diagnosable as ’personality disorder’). The successful applicant will lead the MBT group-based programme which sits alongside the DBT programme, and will report to the Clinical Lead for Complex Needs Service. They will be committed to co-producing and monitoring the quality of service developments, growing the lived experience workforce, and providing advice, consultation and supervision to core mental health teams.

An important part of this role will involve developing the knowledge and skills of professionals and colleagues within ELFT, partnership agencies, voluntary community groups and social enterprises, embedding trauma-informed and psychosocial approaches in service delivery with the aim of promoting the recovery and social inclusion of service users with complex emotional needs, including those transitioning from acute inpatient care and specialist out of area placements back to local community settings.

The successful applicant will work as part of a specialist and multi-disciplinary Complex Needs Service that includes a Medical Psychotherapist, Clinical Psychologists, Psychological Therapists (with core social work and occupational therapy professional registrations), a Lived Experience KUF Development Lead, Assistant Psychologists, and Peer Support Workers. The team is based at Mountbatten House, Dunstable and operates as a hub, in-reaching to community mental health services in Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Luton to provide specialist advice, training, consultation and supervision to other professionals and colleagues. The team also offers assessments and evidence-based interventions (MBT and DBT) to a small caseload of service users who have the most complex emotional needs and engage in severe self-harming and suicidal behaviour.

The post holder will be based with the team at Mountbatten house, Dunstable and will be required to offer consultation, supervision, assessment and intervention. This will require travel to CMHT bases, inpatient units and other sites across Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Luton, as well as occasional travel to East London.

The post is being offered on a full-time or part-time basis, with a minimum of 22.5 hours a week (0.6 wte). The days and hours will be negotiated by the Clinical Lead and the successful candidate.

The full Job Description and Person Specification for this post can be found in the attached documentation. The post holder will work across Bedfordshire and Luton to develop and provide direct and indirect highly specialist clinical psychology and psychotherapeutic services for adults with complex emotional needs (associated with a diagnosis of ‘personality disorder’) and their families and carers.

Education/ Qualification/ Training

• Doctorate in Clinical Psychology or equivalent training as an applied practitioner
• HCPC registration as a Practitioner Psychologist
• MBT Practitioner training accredited by the Anna Freud Centre, and willingness and capacity to train as a MBT Supervisor
• Training in clinical supervision for doctoral clinical psychology trainees
• Post-doctoral training in one or more relevant specialist areas of psychological practice.
• Leadership Training
• Quality Improvement Training

Experience

• Substantial experience of working as a qualified Practitioner Psychologist with people with complex emotional needs associated with a diagnosis of personality disorder in a range of settings.
• Substantial experience of conducting trauma-informed assessments, risk assessments and collaborative safety planning in a community mental health care setting.
• Substantial experience of assessment, formulation and treatment of people with complex emotional needs/’personality disorder’.
• Experience in delivering MBT to people with complex emotional needs, diagnosable as ‘personality disorder’, who present with severe and repeated suicidal and self-harming behaviour.
• Substantial experience of working with those who support people with complex emotional needs (staff, carers, friends and family).
• Experience of liaison and joint work with other statutory and voluntary agencies, including crisis management.
• Experience of working with mental health teams and team leads in a range of settings to provide highly specialist psychological consultation, advice, and support.
• Experience of working with service users, carers, teams and organisations to identify training needs and co-produce and deliver training.
• Experience of completing audits and/or service evaluations to inform service improvements.
• Experience of supervising professional and clinical practice of qualified and unqualified staff.
• Experience of supervising the delivery of interventions for people with complex emotional needs associated with personality disorder across a range of settings.
• Experience or recruiting and managing staff.
• Experience of developing and delivering specialist training programmes.

Knowledge and Skills

• Highly developed knowledge of the theory and practice of Mentalization-Based Treatment for people with complex emotional needs/’personality disorder’.
• Demonstrable leadership and change management skills, including the ability to understand the wider implications of actions.
• Demonstrable and well developed skills in outcome evaluation, audit, research and/or clinical governance.
• Ability to assess, plan, implement and evaluate service developments.
• Competence in use of IT equipment and software packages.

Personal

• Ability to contain and work with organisational stress and be able to identify, provide and promote appropriate support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and severely challenging behaviours.
• Ability to concentrate intensely for a substantial proportion of working time, during assessment and delivery of psychological therapy, teaching/supervision sessions, team meetings, preparing written work etc.
• Ability to actively self-reflect and use clinical and professional supervision to facilitate personal and professional development.
• Ability to contain the stress of colleagues and other relevant persons.
• Ability to de-escalate, contain and effectively manage high levels of expressed emotion and conflict.
• Ability to adopt a respectful, caring and inclusive approach to service users, families, carers, colleagues and other professionals.

Other

• Willingness and mobility to travel to various sites across Bedfordshire and Luton.
• Driving license, access to a vehicle and insurance for business travel.

Quality Improvement is a key part of our work to improve our services and refine how we do things. We have a global reputation for our quality improvement work and we don’t stand still! So we offer a fantastic opportunity for our staff to learn, lead and contribute towards improving our services.

We launched our Five Year Strategy in April 2018, which identified four main strategic outcomes to improve: population health outcomes, experience of care, staff experience and improve value. This complements the NHS Long Term Strategy and sets out our direction of travel.

We provide a wide range of community health and mental health inpatient services to children, young people, adults of working age, and older adults in The City of London, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Bedfordshire and Luton. We also provide psychological therapy services to the London Borough of Richmond, and provide Forensic services to the whole of North East London. We provide services in urban and rural settings, sometimes in our inpatient units, but mostly in the community close to where people live. Integrated care is key in making the best use of resources and providing effective care.

We were rated ‘Outstanding’ by the CQC in 2016, were proud to be rated ‘Outstanding’ again in 2018 and continue to be rated 'Outstanding' in 2021. We were named in the HSJ’s Top 10 best places to work in healthcare and were voted Provider Trust of the Year in 2018.

We strive to ensure that staff feel valued by the Trust and as they are truly pivotal in delivering better outcomes for our patients and service users. Our aspiration is to help to make ELFT the best place to work. This Trust is clinician-led and provides the highest possible level of clinical expertise throughout its services. We pride ourselves on our service user involvement.

ELFT Is committed to being a diverse organisation and our workforce is reflective of the population and communities we serve. We believe that having colleagues with a range of backgrounds and life experiences enriches and adds value to the outcomes we have set out to achieve.

As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that’s job share, part time or another flexible pattern.