Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologist / Senior Psychotherapist | Mersey Care Nhs Foundation Trust

We have an exciting opportunity for a Clinical / Counselling Psychologist or Senior Psychotherapist to join us in Spring House, our psychotherapy and PD hub team – we are a specialist community service supporting people who attract a diagnosis of personality disorder. Our service utilises the principles of therapeutic communities and offers a wide range of psychotherapeutic models.
We are looking for a senior therapist with interest and experience working with complexity including personality difficulties and trauma. Interest and experience in group working – both skills and therapy would be advantageous. Experience in relational and systemic therapies would also be welcome.
The successful candidate will join a dedicated psychotherapy team which is attached to PD hub services offering a wide range of evidence-based treatments and psychological therapies. We are looking for a caring and committed therapist who is a team worker and can participate in delivering outstanding care for our service users - demonstrating both our service and Trust values in our culture of compassionate care.
Supervision and training of staff will be an integral part of the post. We value and provide fantastic opportunities for supervision, CPD and development. culture of compassionate care.
If you have this experience, we would be interested in hearing from you and would welcome you visiting our service too.
The post holder will apply and maintain those skills acquired through further specialist training and experience to monitor and ensure the systematic provision of highly specialised psychological services, provide a service to clients referred to the team, across all sectors of care, within an equality and human rights framework care, and supervise and support the other clinical members of the team who provide psychologically based care and treatment. The post holder will exercise delegated management responsibilities where appropriate and work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic
governance of psychological practice within the team. The post holder will utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research and propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the team.
A work plan will be developed with the post holder which will be reviewed on a regular basis depending on the needs of the service. It will be anticipated that you may have a trainee from the Clinical Psychology courses (Liverpool, Lancashire and Manchester).
Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.
We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.
At the heart of all we do is our commitment to ‘perfect care’ – care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We’re currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.
Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.
To provide specialist psychological assessments of service users referred to the team based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with service users, and others involved in the service user’s care.
To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a service user’s psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the service user’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.
To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological therapies and interventions for individuals, carers, and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
To evaluate, monitor progress and make highly skilled evaluations and decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, or group.
To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of service users whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment and treatment of service users whose problems are managed by psychologically based enhanced care plans.
To provide specialist psychological advice guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to service users’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plans.
To ensure that all members of the clinical team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of service users, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.
To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users and to provide both general and specialist advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, highly complex information concerning the assessment, formulation, and treatment plans of service users under their care where there may be conflicting views, high emotion and significant barriers to understanding and change, and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both Unidisciplinary and Multidisciplinary care.
To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.
Please refer to the attached Job Description for a full list of duties and repsonsibilities.
This advert closes on Sunday 25 Feb 2024