Clinical Forensic Counselling Psychologist / Psychological Therapist

Oxleas Forensic Psychological Therapies department is an unusually large, long established and nationally well regarded specialty. Psychological therapists are highly valued within the wider directorate and trust and occupy a variety of service-wide leadership roles, including as Responsible Clinicians. Staff in the Forensic and Offender Healthcare Directorate report the highest levels of job satisfaction in a Trust recognised for positive employee feedback. The Psychological Therapies team is warm and friendly, whilst also being dynamic and innovative.
Within the psychological therapies department, there is a focus on attachment, trauma and systemic approaches with expert supervision available for several evidence-based therapy modalities such as Mentalisation based Therapy (MBT) and Eye Movement Desensitisation therapy (EMDR).
This post is primarily based within HMP Elmley.
The post holder will supervise pre-qualified psychological therapists., · To provide highly specialist psychological therapy assessments, formulations and interventions.
· To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of community clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans, including taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans with input from clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.
· To provide culturally appropriate psychological therapy interventions with carers or families of referred clients when required.
· To communicate, in a highly skilled and sensitive manner, to clients, family carers and others as appropriate, information that may be contentious or highly distressing concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care.
· To produce reports on clients, in a timely manner, that convey the key findings of psychological assessment and formulation and treatment outcome in a way that does justice to the complexity of the problems described, but that are understandable to the recipients of the reports, including clients and referrers.
· To undertake psychometric and neuropsychological testing as appropriate, including selecting the appropriate tests, administering and scoring the tests in accordance with the manual, and interpreting the findings in the context of all relevant information.
· To undertake risk assessment, risk monitoring and risk management for individual clients in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures, and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
· To work in partnership with other disciplines and to maintain links with statutory and non-statutory agencies as appropriate.
· To ensure that all services provided are acceptable and accessible to the diverse communities served.
· Implement outcome measurement as determined by the local service.
· Attend and contribute to psychological therapies and directorate meetings and forums.
Responsibilities for team and service clinical functioning
· Under the supervision of a senior psychologist, to lead the family and carers strategy for the Directorate.
· To facilitate a family and carers forum.
· To support the inpatient ward team in the effective working of the team and a psychologically informed framework for the team.
· Deliver accessible and acceptable services to diverse local communities.
· To be proactive in challenging discrimination.
· To advise other members of the service on specialist psychological care of clients.
· To liaise with the service/s MDT and other professionals including to liaise with referrers, GPs and other professionals concerned with clients in order to develop and review care plans.
· To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research.
· Work within the remit of relevant policies and procedures for the safe running of the service.
Policy and service development
· To implement clinical governance standards within the service and ensure that these are maintained and improved.
· Ensure that services to clients are of a high quality and are managed efficiently, according to the overall requirements of the Trust, NHS and government guidance and standards.
· To undertake quality improvement projects relevant to the role.
· To ensure the engagement of service users in planning and delivering services.
Management and supervision
· To provide line management to pre-qualified staff and to supervise students and trainees.
· To support recruitment of psychological therapies staff to the service.
· For staff line managed, to ensure local standards are implemented for the allocation and review of work, job planning, review of performance, sickness management and initial stages of grievance or disciplinary action.
· To oversee quality line management and supervision within the team structure, ensuring that assistant psychologists and trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to health care, and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.
· To supervise psychological work carried out by other professionals as appropriate.
· To provide highly specialist advice, consultation and training of staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate. This may include work with the Criminal Justice System and Children's Services.
Teaching and Training
· To provide and support specialist clinical placements for students and trainees in applied psychological practice.
· To contribute to the delivery of teaching and training to psychological practitioners and other professions.
· To contribute to the development of the knowledge and skills base within the service by maintaining an active awareness of current developments in psychological therapy and risk assessment / management and to implement knowledge gained in practice.
· To disseminate research and service evaluation findings through presentations and published articles.
· To continue to gain wider post-qualification experience of psychological therapies and risk assessment, over and above that provided within the principal service area where the post-holder is employed.
Record-keeping and Information Governance
· To ensure that all information generated by own work is recorded as required by Trust policies and local procedures.
· To ensure the highest standards of clinical record keeping and report writing, according to professional and Trust guidelines, including electronic data entry, in those parts of the service for which the post-holder has management or leadership responsibility.
Research and development
· To undertake the planning, initiation and completion of research, service evaluation and audits, and quality improvement projects relevant to the service and the directorate research agenda.
· To oversee the planning, initiation and completion of research, service evaluation and audits by students, trainees and colleagues.
· To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION, PLEASE READ:
All applicants must be willing to undertake National Security Vetting in order to work in a Prison Setting. This will be completed as part of the pre-employment checks through Oxleas and the prison vetting team.
You will need to provide:
Proof of right to work documentation
Proof of ID, needs to include 1 photographic ID
Proof of address documentation
Non-UK passport holders will need to have correct documentation (right to work in the UK) and a Home office Share code.
Address History:
5 years address history will be needed.
Applicants that are not UK Passport holders who provide less than 5 years UK address history will need to provide a Police Certificate which must be in English from where they resided previously.
Applicants who are UK Passport holders who have lived abroad for a period of more than six months during the last three years will need to provide a certificate of good conduct or an overseas police check in English from the countries resided in or visited.
In order to assist you in obtaining a Police Certificate, guidance can be sought from:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/criminal-records-checks-for-overseas-applicants

Working for our organisation
Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children's centres, schools and people's homes.
We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.
Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:
+ We're Kind
+ We're Fair
+ We Listen
+ We Care