Complex Emotional Needs Lead (Clinical/Counselling Psychologist)

at  Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust

Here at CNWL we encourage our psychological professions staff to pursue leadership opportunities in senior roles. Various prominent leadership roles within the Trust are currently held by Psychologists including: Director of Strategy and Integration, Chief Information Officer, & Clinical Directors. We facilitate the development of our psychological professions staff across all areas. The professional group is led by our Director of Therapies and our Chief Psychologist, both Consultant Clinical Psychologists.
We are looking for applications from highly motivated and enthusiastic psychologists who are committed to delivering patient-focused care and treatment and having a lead role within our Complex Emotional Needs area. Our staff work pro-actively, with confidence, motivation and initiative We find that they are often flexible, robust and resourceful and able to manage the challenges of working in an environment which can be demanding.
We are looking for a highly motivated and innovative Clinical/Counselling Psychologist to join our friendly established multi-disciplinary Therapies Pathway to work and lead on complex emotional needs.
As part of the national programme of mental health service transformation, Milton Keynes mental health services have created a new Mental Health Hub, bringing together a number of teams to deliver care to clients in a more timely and accessible way. The service is needs-led, offering medical, social and psychological interventions within a stepped care model. The therapies pathway offers evidence-based interventions for complex trauma and mood presentations including Personality Disorder and Psychosis.
The post holder will have strong leadership skills and clinical expertise in complex mental health difficulties and significant experience working with complex emotional needs (CEN), with clients who often attract a diagnosis of personality disorder. The post holder will have a key role in contributing to the ongoing development and delivery of the specialist Complex Emotional Needs (CEN) pathway and ensuring the development and systematic provision of a high-quality specialist psychological therapies service. The post holder will lead on management of referrals and allocation to specialist treatment pathways. They will also deliver psychological interventions in their key areas of skill e.g. DBT or MBT.
CNWL NHS Trust is committed to staff personal development, with a trust wide culture change and leadership programme that has staff wellbeing at its core.
An opportunity to work for one of the top 10 NHS employers
Flexible working
Variety of work
Access to a variety of CPD opportunities
We encourage staff input and ideas in relation to moving services forward, improving care pathways and meeting the client group’s needs.
As a Trust we are committed to investing in our staff through a range of initiatives, both profession-specific and organisation wide. Psychological professions staff are able to access a range of trust-wide CPD initiatives. We have partnered with Bespoke and Contextual Consulting to provide some of the profession specific CPD, alongside additional CPD sessions we commission as part of CNWL CPD programme for Psychological Professions. CNWL also has seven established staff networks supporting a range of individual needs.
The successful applicant may have contact with patients or service users. As an NHS Trust we strongly encourage and support vaccination as this remains the best way to protect yourself, your family, your colleagues and of course patients and service users when working on our healthcare settings.
To provide specialist assessments of referred service users based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex psychological 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 service user’s care. This will include providing working formulations with recommendations where appropriate and relevant.
2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal, but brief, psychological treatment and/or management of a service user’s mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the service user’s problems, and employing methods of proven efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
3. To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.
4. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, brief treatment and discharge of service users whose problems and/or concerns are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
5. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to service users’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
6. To ensure that all members of the treating team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of services users, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.
7. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users and to provide general advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.
8. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of service users under their care and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.
9. To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.
10. To act as lead professional or care coordinator, ensuring the provision of a care package appropriate for the service users needs, coordinating the work of others involved with care, talking responsibility for arranging CPA reviews as required and communicating effectively with the service user, his/her family and all others involved in the network of care, and to monitor progress during the course of multi-disciplinary interventions

Please refer the Job description for details