Job summary
- Main area
- Forensics
- Grade
- Band 8b
- Contract
- 10 months (Fixed term)
- Hours
- Full time
- Part time
- Job ref
- 277-7190958-FOR
- Employer
- Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Bracton Centre
- Town
- Dartford
- Salary
- £67,950 - £78,028 pa inc
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 01/06/2025 23:59
Employer heading
Highly Specialist Psychological Therapist
Band 8b
Job overview
We are seeking to recruit a fixed term Highly Specialist Psychological Therapist at the Bracton Centre.
This is an excellent opportunity to develop and expand leadership skills. We welcome secondment opportunities where existing managers agree.
The post holder will be one of the senior psychological therapists at the secure inpatient services at the Bracton Centre and Memorial Hospital. You will provide clinical input to a pre-discharge ward and line manage / clinically supervise qualified and pre-qualified psychological therapists in the service. You will undertake wider leadership roles within the service.
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. Staff 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. There is a focus on attachment, trauma and systemic approaches with expert supervision available for evidence-based therapy modalities such as MBT and EMDR. We offer a unique range of training opportunities and will invest in supporting you to extend your knowledge and expertise.
Main duties of the job
- To work closely with the inpatient psychology lead to embed psychologically informed practices, and deliver a psychological assessment and intervention service across the Bracton Centre and Memorial
- To clinically deliver psychological services to a caseload of inpatient and community service users.
- To offer psychological advice and consultation to multi-disciplinary colleagues and other agencies that promotes patient, carer and staff safety and wellbeing.
- Responsibility for supervising and professionally managing qualified psychologists, psychological therapists and assistant psychologists, and responsibility for overseeing others deliver supervision and line management
- Supervising and oversight of the supervision of trainees and students
- Develop and oversee high quality clinical risk assessments using structured tools.
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
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
- To provide specialist psychological assessments of service users with mental health difficulties, personality difficulties and high harm offending histories referred to the service 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, family members and others involved in the their care.
- To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a service user’s clinical problems and risk, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
- To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families 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.
- Enable all staff, service users and carers from diverse backgrounds to flourish by working to create a psychologically safe environment.
- To be responsible to the inpatient psychological therapies lead for delegated tasks pertaining to governance, contracts, monitoring and service developments.
- To work autonomously with professional guidelines and the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures.
- To deputise for the inpatient psychological therapies lead in their absence.
- To utilise research skills for audit, research, and policy and service development within the forensic specialties directorate.
- Act as a role model and champion the Trust’s vision and values.
- Provide a service where people feel valued, developed and supported.
Please see Job Description for full details of the job.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Entry-level qualification in applied psychological therapy/mental health/social welfare profession or equivalent and demonstrable practice in this field (ie professional Doctorate, or combination of MSc plus PG Diploma level/supervised practice/additional training) that has been accepted for the purposes of professional registration.
- Additional training beyond entry-level qualification in a specialised area of psychological practice (through formal post-qualification training (PG Diploma or equivalent), OR a combination of specialist short courses and/an evidenced portfolio of supervised practice–based learning in a specialist area of clinical psychological therapy practice, assessed by a registered body and/or an experienced clinical supervisor to be of equal level to a Postgraduate Diploma or higher
- Completed training course in clinical supervision and/or accredited to supervise qualified psychological practitioners in relevant discipline
Desirable criteria
- CPD in leadership.
Professional Registration
Essential criteria
- Registered with professional body or regulatory body as appropriate to psychological therapy discipline ie HCPC/UKCP/BABCP
Experience
Essential criteria
- Completion of a minimum of four years full-time (or equivalent part-time) post-doctoral / post qualification supervised experience (including 2 years at a highly specialist level) in relevant settings
- Experience of undertaking leadership roles
- Evidence of having worked as a clinical specialist under supervision in adult mental health or forensic services
- Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients with a range of psychological needs of a complex nature in adult mental health or forensic services
- Experience of supervising psychological assessments / interventions
Desirable criteria
- Experience of having worked specialist services for forensics, mood disorders or personality disorder / complex trauma
- Experience of working in forensic and / or prison settings
Supervision
Essential criteria
- Qualifications to supervise qualified psychologists, psychological therapists, doctoral trainees and assistants
- Experience of supervising doctoral trainees and assistants
Desirable criteria
- Experience of supervising qualified psychologists / psychological therapists
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Applicant requirements
You must have appropriate UK professional registration.
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Theresa Connolly
- Job title
- Consultant Clinical Psychologist
- Email address
- [email protected]
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