Practitioner Psychologist / Psychotherapist | South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust

The SLAM Addictions Clinical Academic Group, and South London Partnership (SLP) are collaborating to support the needs of those with co-occurring mental health and substance use needs on the inpatient rehabilitation wards within the SLP footprint:Barefoot Lodge (Oxleas); Heather Close, Westways and Tony Hillis Unit (South London & Maudsley); and Burntwood Villas and Phoenix (Southwest London & St George's). The Co-occurring Mental Health and Addictions Rehabilitation Team (COMHART) has been coproduced with the SLP and the wards to ensure integration into the units' model of care. COMHART and inpatient multidisciplinary teams are working together to create a trauma-informed, anti-racist team culture with consistent ways of working to optimise recovery outcomes of people with mental health and substance use needs. The post holder will work under the supervision of psychology and other clinical staff within the service and alongside established staff on the rehabilitation wards to ensure there is a full multi-disciplinary response. This pilot project has been extended to June 2025 and can be arranged a secondment. The project and post may be extended beyond this date. The post holder will be expected to help plan and engage in the evaluation process. The service's usual working hours are Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm. The post holder will provide a qualified specialist psychology/psychotherapy service to people admitted to the mental health inpatient rehabilitation units across the SLP footprint. They contribute towards supervising Assistant Psychologists. They will deputise for the Principal Clinical Psychologist to provide day to day support to other clinical staff funded within the service. This is to ensure that there is a full multi-disciplinary response and ensuring that good quality clinical and professional supervision is maintained. The post holder will support the senior leadership team to develop service evaluation processes, contribute to the collection of evaluation and outcome data, as well as ensuring that the service works alongside a newly commissioned peer support offer to each of the wards. South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) provide the widest range of NHS mental health services in the UK as well as substance misuse services for people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. We work closely with the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN), King's College London and are part of King's Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre. There are very few organisations in the world that have such wide-ranging capabilities working with mental illness. Our scope is unique because it is built on three major foundations: care and treatment, science and research, and training., Clinical & Client Care

• To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the team based upon the appropriate use, interpretation & integration of complexdata from a variety of sources including psychological & neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct & indirect structured observations & semi-structured interviews with clients, family members & others involved in the client's care.
• To formulate & implement plans for the formal psychological treatment &/or management of a client's mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client's problems, & employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
• To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological/psychotherapy interventions for individuals, carers, families & groups, within & across teams employed individually & in synthesis, adjusting & refining psychological/psychotherapy formulations drawing upon different explanatory models & maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
• To evaluate & make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical & therapeutic models & highly complex factors concerning historical & developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment & discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
• To provide specialist psychological/psychotherapy advice, guidance & consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients' formulation, diagnosis & treatment plan.
• To contribute directly & indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding & care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings & agencies serving the client group.
• To undertake risk assessment & risk management for individual clients & to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment & risk management.
• To communicate in a skilled & sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation & treatment plans of clients under their care & to monitor progress during the course of both uni- & multi-disciplinary care.
• To provide culturally appropriate psychological/psychotherapy interventions with carers or families of referred clients.
Responsibilities for team or service clinical functioning
• To contribute towards the development of psychologically, anti-racist & trauma-informed framework for the service.
• To contribute towards the service's delivery of accessible & acceptable services to diverse local communities.
• To be proactive in challenging discrimination & support the development of culturally competent services.
• To advise junior members of the service on specialist psychological care of clients.
• To liaise with referrers, GPs & other professionals concerned with clients in order to develop & review care plans.
Teaching, Training & Supervision
• To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist &, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.
• To develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training & supervision & to provide supervision to other MDT staff's psychological work, as appropriate.
• To provide professional & clinical supervision of assistant/graduate psychologists &, as appropriate, to contribute to the supervision of individual cases for trainee clinical psychologists.
• To contribute to the pre- & post-qualification teaching of clinical &/or counselling psychology, as appropriate.
• To provide advice, consultation & training to staff working with the client group across a range of agencies & settings, where appropriate.
• To contribute to the development of the knowledge & skills base within the service & the rehabilitation wards by maintaining an active awareness of current developments in psychology & addictions & by implementing knowledge gained in practice.
• To disseminate research & service evaluation findings through presentations & published articles.
Management, Recruitment, Policy & Service Development
• To implement policies & procedures in own area of work.
• To identify any aspects of the service which could be improved & propose changes to practices or procedures that affect the rehabilitation offer on the wards & with partner agencies.
• To contribute to the development, evaluation & monitoring of the team's operational policies & services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation & audit.
• To advise both service & professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological &/or organisational matters need addressing.
• To manage the workloads of assistant & graduate psychologists, within the framework of the team/service's policies & procedures.
• To be involved, as appropriate, in the shortlisting & interviewing of assistant/graduate psychologists.
• In the absence of senior psychologists to co-ordinate (& chair) meetings for the team to ensure effective functioning & review these structures across the wards when appropriate.
• To contribute towards the consultation & engagement of service users in planning & delivering services which meet the needs of local communities.
Research & Service Evaluation
• To utilise theory, evidence-based literature, & research to support evidence-based practice in individual work & work with other team members.
• To undertake appropriate research & provide research advice to other staff undertaking research.
• To undertake project management, including complex audit & service evaluation, with colleagues within the service to help develop service provision.