Deputy Lead for Psychological Therapies Service

We are seeking an experienced Clinical/Counselling Psychologist to step into a Deputy Lead role and to provide clinical and strategic leadership on embedding trauma informed care across Newham. The post holder will hold some operational management responsibility for the specialist Psychological Therapies Service (SPS) and will deputize where needed for the Consultant Psychological Lead for Newham.
The post holder will support the operational management of the specialist psychotherapy service (SPS) including holding budgetary responsibilities where appropriate, manage healthroster, respond to training requests and support investigations of complaints, grievances, capability and disciplinary procedures as required by senior managers. The clinical aspect of this role will involve working directly and indirectly supporting service users presenting with complex trauma as well as contributing to strategic leadership for embedding trauma trauma informed approaches across the borough.
You would be joining a wider Psychological Therapies Service within Newham which offers a variety of specialist services such as CBT, psychodynamic therapy, systemic therapy, art therapy, schema therapy, CBT and MBT. You will have access to management support from the Consultant Lead for Psychological Therapies, Newham and specialist clinical supervision where required.
Clinical
Direct:

• provide specialist psychological/psychotherapeutic assessments and treatments for service users with severe, enduring and complex trauma presentations;
• formulate and recommend plans for the specialist psychological/psychotherapeutic treatment and/or management of patients’ mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of those problems derived from a broad theoretical knowledge of psychology, and employing methods based upon evidence of proven efficacy, across the full range of care settings;
• recommend a range of specialist psychological/psychotherapeutic interventions for individual patients, carers and groups, within and across teams, employed singly and in combination, adjusting and refining psychological formulations as practice and experience demand, and drawing upon different explanatory models to maintain a number of provisional hypotheses;
• evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical, developmental and cultural processes and systems which have shaped the individual, family or group;
• be responsible for providing and receiving highly complex, sensitive, distressing and emotional information in relation to mental and physical health issues, where there are often difficulties in terms of acceptance or understanding;
• communicate across language and cultural barriers, including working for sustained periods of time by communicating with patients, carers or groups through professional interpreters or advocates;
• be responsible for recording, monitoring and reporting on clinical work and communicating, in a skilled and sensitive manner, complex clinical information (including assessment, formulation, treatment plans and progress) to a variety of recipients (e.g. patients, carers, other professionals, formal panels, statutory and voluntary organisations) orally, in writing and electronically;
• undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual patients as appropriate;
• act as a service user advocate where necessary, as well as supporting service users in accessing appropriate independent advocacy services;
• ensure that services offered are responsive to all needs of users, including their religious, cultural and linguistic needs and the needs of disabled service users.
• employ a broad theoretical knowledge of psychological approaches and specialist clinical and professional skills to develop and support the psychological skills of others (including Assistant, Trainee, qualified Clinical/ Counselling Psychologists, Psychotherapists, PSI Practitioners);
• provide specialist psychological supervision, training and consultation to other professionals working with psychological trauma, including complex trauma;

Indirect

• provide specialist psychological advice, support, supervision, guidance and consultation to those professionals contributing directly to the formulation and treatment plans of individual patients including advice and supervision on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management;
• contribute to the psychological perspective/psychological expertise for service or team activities, including clinical care, team or service dynamics, systems, health promotion, team or service organisation, in a range of settings;
• be responsible for developing and maintaining knowledge of local & national psychological trauma resources within relevant statutory, voluntary and community groups and organisations;
• be responsible for proposing innovative responses to identified community needs and developing these in consultation with senior colleagues;
• develop and deliver, jointly with more experienced clinical psychologists where necessary, teaching events for clinical psychology Doctoral training programmes;
• ensure that the relevant guidelines for professional practice are followed appropriately including the receipt of regular clinical supervision.

Operational

• Hold responsibility where required for updating and managing healthroster
• Budgetary responsibilities

Management and Human Resources and Service Development

• Agree work/caseload levels with team manager and professional lead, and manage own workload to meet expected activity levels.
• Exercise line management and supervision responsibility, delegated where appropriate, for other psychologists, psychological therapists, trainee psychological therapists and assistants in the service and agreed with team manager, where appropriate.
• Participate in appraisal and development planning, identifying and agreeing training needs for self and for other staff as required.
• Maintain up to date knowledge of relevant legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to the provision of services.
• Take a lead and support service development and quality improvement initiatives within the directorate, in line with directorate priorities and in response to identified local need.
• Attend regular psychological therapy meetings to develop and maintain high standards of professional knowledge and practice in services.
• Attend multidisciplinary team meetings related to service governance and development as required.
• Lead and support HR investigations held under the Complaints, Disciplinary, Competency policies.

Performance and Quality (including research and service evaluation)

• Support systems for evaluation, monitoring and development of the directorate’s Psychological Therapies Services to ensure services are delivered in line with Trust policies, national guidance and evidence based practice.
• Use skills in undertaking research, audit and evaluation analyse and interpret highly complex data, identifying trends and opportunities for improvement.
• Lead, develop and implement service related Quality Improvement and/or academic research or service evaluation projects, and advise/support other staff undertaking research and evaluation activities. Ensure that relevant clinical research, service evaluation and audit are undertaken in accordance with national and local NHS and professional requirements.

Financial and Physical Resources

• Contribute to the responsible management of equipment and resources required for the ongoing provision of a high standard of psychological service to the directorate.
• Take delegated responsibility for the management of Service budgets.

Teaching, training and supervision

• Use a theoretical knowledge base and specialist clinical skills to support the psychological skills of others (assistant, trainee and other psychologists and members of other staff groups) via the development and delivery of teaching, training, supervision, support and consultation across the service.
• Comply with governance systems in place for the provision and monitoring of clinical and professional supervision of qualified and unqualified psychological practitioners across the directorate.
• Ensure practice within relevant guidelines for professional practice (BPS/HCPC/BABCP etc).
• Provide well developed and highly skilled consultation, teaching, training and (where agreed) clinical supervision to other multidisciplinary professionals for their provision of psychologically-based interventions for service users.
• Ensure the personal development, maintenance and development of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes.

Job Description Agreement
This job description is intended as a guide to the main duties of the post and is not intended to be a prescriptive document. Duties and base of work may change to meet the needs of the service or because of the introduction of new technology. This job description may be reviewed from time to time and changed, after consultation with the post-holder.