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Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To provide highly specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the team. This is to include appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a range of sources including independent use and scoring of psychometric assessments (e.g. cognitive assessments and neurological assessments), clinical questionnaires, self-report measures and observations of clients’ behaviour. To undertake clinical interviews with clients (and carers) in order to gain a thorough and holistic understanding of client’s needs, current and past experiences

• To work as an independent, autonomous practitioner with full responsibility for highly complex clinical work

• To be accountable for all clinical decisions whilst following BPS and HCPC guidelines, including the obligation for continued supervision.

• To be responsible for undertaking highly specialist assessments for legal purposes, such as assessments contributing to parenting assessments, residency issues, consent etc, as appropriate.

• To formulate and implement plans for the highly specialised psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s problems, based upon a thorough holistic assessment. The formulation should include consideration of the client’s presenting difficulties, personal, social and developmental history, strengths and needs, environmental factors, intellectual ability and level of social support and independence. To consider, evaluate and decide upon a range of interventions and theoretical models across the full range of care settings, including consideration of evidence of efficacy, and to decide upon the most appropriate intervention in liaison with the client or staff or carer.

• To be responsible for providing a range of highly specialist psychological interventions for clients, including individual therapy, group and family/couple therapy, psychological advice, behavioural interventions and formal training to carers and other staff, working towards optimizing well-being for clients and their families. Therapies offered are based on different theoretical models/approaches depending on clients’ needs and based on best practice, including positive behavioural support, CBT and systemic models. To use specialist skills to tailor/adapt interventions to be appropriate to the client’s level of learning disability and presenting problem (e.g. depression, anxiety).

• To have full responsibility and autonomy for the appropriate assessment, formulation and intervention package provided for the client, communicating with the referral agent and others involved with the care on a regular basis. Within learning disabilities this is likely to involve liaison with an extensive network of mental health professionals, social care professionals, voluntary agencies and families.

• To provide expertise and highly specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.

• To provide expertise, consultation and specialist advice to professional colleagues on the psychological assessment and treatment of people with learning disabilities and to promote a psychological perspective of their needs. To provide access, advice and consultation on psychological knowledge, research and research methods to other professionals in the team.

• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for relevant individual clients and to provide both general and specialist advice for psychologists and other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.

• To act as care co-ordinator where appropriate, including under the Care Programme Approach (CPA) framework, ensuring the provision of a care package appropriate for the client’s needs. This is to include co-ordinating the work of others involved with care, arranging clients’ care reviews as required and communicating effectively with the client, his/her family and all others involved in care; and to monitor progress during the course of multi-disciplinary interventions.

• To provide expert consultation about the psychological care of the client group to staff and agencies outside of the integrated team and StGeorge’s NHS Trust including advice, consultation and support to clinical staff in mainstream health services to enable them to offer best evidence based practice to adults with learning disabilities accessing their service. These may include organisations such as the local Mental Health Trusts, independent sector agencies and social services.

• To work with other disciplines and agencies, to provide a coherent and effective service for people with learning disabilities.