Band 4 Assistant Psychologist

at  Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust

We are looking for an Assistant Psychologist to provide psychology provision to the Adult wards within the St Charles Mental Health Centre based in North Kensington. The service has four open acute wards, a male-only Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and a female only PICU. The unit primarily works with patients who are resident in Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster (KCW).

The post holder would be expected to support and enhance the professional psychological care of clients within the service. They would help provide psychological assessment and psychological interventions of a routine nature, under the direct supervision of a qualified professional psychologist drawing on their supervisor’s expertise and intervention as and when advised and directed. This might include joint and individual direct work with clients and families, group work, indirect interventions on the ward and consultation to other MDT members. They would work according to a plan agreed with a qualified psychologist and within the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures. They would assist in clinically related administration, conduct of audits, collection of statistics, development of audit and/or research projects, teaching and project work.

• To provide psychological assessments for clients in the adult acute psychology inpatient services under the close supervision of a practitioner psychologist including psychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with clients, family members and others involved in the client’s care; and development & implementation of the trauma informed approach within KC acute and urgent care mental health services.
• To provide protocol based individual psychological interventions for clients in the KC acute and urgent care mental health services including trauma informed approach by assisting in the formulation and delivery of routine care plans involving the psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s problems, under the direct supervision of a qualified professional psychologist.
• To assist, arrange, schedule, coordinate and provide protocol based therapeutic group psychological interventions for clients in the adult acute psychology inpatient services including trauma informed approach interventions.
• To assist the psychologists in the development of individual or group clinical materials or training materials.

To attend and contribute to appropriate multi-disciplinary meetings, and to work with other staff to assess inpatients and review their care in preparation for multi-disciplinary reviews.
The Acute Psychology Pathway in Kensington & Chelsea provides integrated psychological care to services users from our six adult inpatient wards at the St Charles Mental Health Unit and other parts of the urgent care pathway including Home Treatment Teams (HTT) and Mental Health Crisis Assessment Services. Continuity of psychological care is delivered across the whole system, with intervention from this pathway following service users’ treatment journey from acute services to the community Hubs and other community support.
Work includes liaison and working with both client systems and professional networks involved in working with clients with enduring organic and/or functional mental health difficulties which may involve emotional and behavioural disturbance, acute and chronic physical and mental illness, personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities (autistic spectrum disorders), some progressive (e.g. dementia) where the resolution of the problem is not possible.
The post-holder will be expected to provide continued facilitation and ongoing development of a Trauma-Informed Approaches (TIA) model for the adult acute mental health services. This approach is well established in acute and urgent care services.
To work following guidelines and the policies and procedures of the service, while closely supervised and regularly seeking help from clinical/professional supervisors or managers.

KR 1 Clinical and Client Care

• To provide psychological assessments for clients in the adult acute psychology inpatient services under the close supervision of a practitioner psychologist including development and implementation of the trauma informed approach within KC acute and urgent care mental health services
• To provide protocol based individual psychological interventions for clients in the KC acute and urgent care mental health services including trauma informed approach
• To arrange, schedule and provide protocol based group psychological interventions for clients in the adult acute psychology inpatient services including trauma informed approach interventions.
• To assist the psychologists in the development of individual or group clinical materials or training materials.

KR 2 Contributing to team or service clinical functioning

• To contribute to the effective working of the KC acute and urgent care mental health services by registering new referrals; creating databases to track processes or progress through pathways and keeping them up-to-date; contributing to the training and support of other staff in developing and providing psychological care of clients
• To act in a manner that supports a psychologically informed framework for the service.
• To participate in the team or service’s delivery of accessible and acceptable services to diverse local communities.

KR 3 Policy and service development

• To follow policies and procedures in own area of work
• To participate in the consultation and engagement of service users in planning and delivering services which meet the needs of local communities.

KR 4 Care or management of resources

• To take care of, and use carefully, the Trust’s equipment and physical resources.
• To ensure that the post holder has sufficient resources by estimating future needs and requesting supplies as needed.
• To be responsible for safe-keeping of equipment or stock provided to the post holder and informing the supervising psychologist or manager when stock requires replenishing may apply to psychometric tests, specialised stationery etc

KR 5 Teaching and Training

• To participate in demonstrating work methods to newly recruited Assistant Psychologists and to support their development of necessary skills.
• To disseminate research and service evaluation findings through presentations or published articles.
• To (arrange, schedule and) co-facilitate training to employees of the Trust or employees of partner agencies in order to support service improvement

KR 6 Record-keeping and Information Governance

• To ensure that all information generated by own work is recorded as required by Trust policies and local procedures.
• Under the supervision of the practitioner psychologist to maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping and report writing, according to professional and Trust guidelines, including electronic data entry.
• To maintain data bases and enter data, and perform analyses and produce reports.

KR 7 Research and development

• To assist in the design and implementation of audit and research projects to inform the service Psychologist and others in the development of Trust psychology and other services, training provision and research activities.
• To undertake data collection, analysis, the production of reports and summaries, using IT and statistical programmes
• To undertake searches of evidence-based literature and research to assist in the development in the Trust of evidence based practice.
• Under guidance to conduct surveys with service users and carers to gather views on service provision

KR 8 Maintaining professional standards and continuing professional development

• To receive regular clinical and professional supervision in accordance with professional practice guidelines
• To gain wider experience of professional psychology within the NHS over and above that provided within the principal service area where the post-holder is employed.
• To develop skills and competencies that assist in the delivery of current duties.
• To undertake personal training relevant to the post in agreement with the supervising psychologist and the manager.

KR 9 General

• To be aware of risk relating to aggressive and challenging behaviour amongst the client group, and follow trust policies relating to its management
• To respond appropriately and professionally to emotionally distressing situations, such as challenging behaviour, abuse etc and to support others involved in such situations.

Please refer the Job description for details