Principal Clinical Psychologist

This post entails a leadership role assisting the Lead Consultant Clinical Psychologist to ensure clinical psychology expertise and governance is monitored and maintained within Newham MHCOP, across all parts of the service - Community Mental Health Team (CMHT), Memory Clinic and Dementia Assessment Service, inpatient wards and outpatients.
The post holder will ensure the systematic provision of a high quality comprehensive specialist psychology service to the service users of Newham MHCOP and their carers. They will ensure that all members of the multidisciplinary team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding the needs of people presenting to the service through advice, consultation, supervision, teaching and training of psychological research and theory.

Main duties of the job
The post holder will be an active member of Newham's Mental Health Care of Older Adult's service including the centralised MHCOP inpatient wards and wider East London MHCOP Psychology and Arts therapies professional group.
They will work closely with psychologists and other professionals in the team, maintaining a standardised approach to the assessment and care of Service Users with complex needs across community and inpatient settings. As part of this, they will contribute to the provision of a specialist psychological perspective for the work of the team, providing highly specialist psychological advice and consultation to other members of the team as well as consultation into the borough's residential and nursing homes.
They will be responsible and accountable for the systematic provision of a highly specialist psychology service for people with severe, complex and enduring mental health and dementia related difficulties and their families, presenting to the service and across community and inpatient settings.
They will develop working partnerships with other members of psychology services locally and across East London boroughs, relevant statutory and voluntary agencies, locality services and providers/commissioners as appropriate., + Be responsible for choosing and providing appropriate highly specialist psychological assessments including general mental health, risk and neuropsychological.
+ Neuropsychological assessments are carried out to aid in the diagnosis and management of dementias and other neurological conditions through timely pre-assessment, assessment, and diagnosis for people of any age with dementia. Post-diagnostic support is provided to help people to live well with their diagnosis and for their relatives, including helping to make sense of some of the more confusing and distressing symptoms that can arise in dementia and to consider their self-care as they support their relative.
+ Employ a broad theoretical knowledge base to analyse, interpret and compare complex information in order to develop a highly specialist understanding of people's difficulties and needs and to design psychological treatments and interventions tailored to individual need.
+ Be responsible for direct delivery of a broad range of specialist psychological interventions and treatments, and be able to modify and amend these as required and as practice and experience demands.
+ Be responsible for providing and receiving highly complex, sensitive, distressing and emotional information in relation to mental health issues, where there may be barriers to acceptance.
+ Spend sustained amounts of time with service users who may be aggressive and hostile, who may have poor communication skills and self-care and special physical and/or mental health needs.
+ Communicate across language and cultural barriers using interpreters where indicated.
+ Be responsible for recording, monitoring and reporting on clinical work and communicating complex clinical information to a variety of recipients, e.g. service users, families and carers, other professionals and other statutory and voluntary organisations, orally, in writing and/or electronically, and as specified by the service.
+ Take into account the particular needs of people from minority ethnic groups and adapt assessment, formulation and intervention as appropriate.
INDIRECT CLINICAL WORK
+ Use a broad theoretical knowledge base and highly specialist clinical skills to develop and support the psychological skills of others (assistant, trainee and other psychologists and members of other staff groups, particularly community and inpatient based staff) via the development and delivery of teaching, training, supervision, support and consultation.
+ Be responsible for providing a 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, e.g. CPA meetings, case discussions, team meetings etc.
+ Provide advice, guidance and support in more general ways, to staff in the community and wards, and to families and carers.
+ Be responsible for developing and maintaining knowledge of local resources and developing working relationships with 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.
+ Supervise clinical/counselling psychologists in training, (from two years post qualification) and other staff as appropriate.
+ Supervise qualified clinical/counselling psychologists as appropriate.
+ Participate in the organisation and delivery of training events and consultancy covering this highly specialist area, and including work with local voluntary organisations.
+ Participate in the evaluation of services, including collection of monitoring information as required.
+ Contribute to service development, raising the profile of Older Adult Mental Health at a borough level.
+ Formulate and undertake service related research and audit and support other staff in research activities.
+ Receive regular clinical and management supervision in accordance with good practice guidelines to ensure high quality work, to engage in the Individual Performance Review process and continuing professional development, and generally work within a clinical governance framework.
Making Things Better
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.
Our Community
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.
Aiming High
We were rated 'Outstanding' by the CQC in 2016, were proud to be rated 'Outstanding' again in 2018 and continue to be rate '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.
Staff and Service Users United
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. A service user will be on your assessment centre and interview panel if you are invited to meet us.
We especially welcome people with lived experience of health difficulties, with insight and understanding of different backgrounds, cultures and lifestyles in our population as we believe that this will equip staff to deliver a high standard of care to our service users and patients.
Diversity
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. Having partnered and endorsed by organisations who are representative and experts in various areas of equality and diversity, we can ensure we are meeting the pre-set standards all the way from recruitment stage throughout the career journey of our employees by being accessible, having fair inclusive practices and a host of staff networks to support, nurture and celebrate our valued staff in the workplace.
Other reasons to apply
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.
As part of the relocation scheme we presently have, the Trust could support you with offering up to £10,000 for removal and associated expenses. This is subject to change and terms and conditions apply.

ELFT has long been recognised as a centre of excellence for mental and health care, innovation and improvement. So it is a very exciting time for you to come and work for us. 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., Our mission is to make a positive difference to people's lives by improving the 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.