Consultant Clinical Psychologist

at  Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust

ESSENTIAL CRITERIA

• Extensive experience working an applied psychologist
• Experience working in a physical health setting
• Experience working with children, young people, families and staff
  Your application: Please ensure that you have read the job description and person specification and that your supporting statement reflects these, as your application will be assessed and scored against these criteria.
  References: You will be required to provide 3 years of employment/educational history. We do not accept references from personal email addresses such as Hotmail, Gmail etc. therefore please ensure you are providing professional working email addresses within your application form. If you are unable to provide professional email addresses and are invited to an interview, please ensure you advise the interviewers of this - otherwise, this may delay your pre-employment checks.
  Closing date: In order to streamline recruitment within our Trust, we reserve the right to expire vacancies prior to the advertised closing date once we have received a sufficient number of applications.
  Shortlisting: You will only be contacted via e-mail/SMS by the SWL Recruitment Hub if you are successfully shortlisted for this post. Please ensure that you check your Trac registered e-mail regularly.
  DBS: We are committed to safeguarding children and adults who are at risk of abuse. As such, if this post will have access to children or vulnerable adults, you will be required to undertake an Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service check. However, all employees have a responsibility for safeguarding children and vulnerable adults in the course of their duties and for ensuring that they are aware of the specific duties relating to their role.

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.

MAIN DUTIES OF THE JOB

To ensure the systematic provision of a high quality psychology service based on current evidence based guidelines to children and families with psychological difficulties relating to physical/medical health conditions within a paediatric service.
To work autonomously, within professional guidelines, and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of the paediatric psychology service. As a major requirement of the job, act as a highly specialized resource to the paediatric psychology and medical team.
To develop, propose and implement policy and service development changes within the paediatric service to continually improve the service and manage demand and capacity.
To lead on planning and developing the service within SW London and Surrey including liaising with local service developers, development of business plans, leading on recruitment and ensuring appropriate mechanisms of support and supervision are in place for multi-disciplinary team members recruited within the service/sector for which the post holder has designated professional responsibility.
To ensure that service continues to offer evidenced based intervention in line with other services nationally.

DETAILED JOB DESCRIPTION AND MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES

• To provide highly developed specialist psychological assessments of patients referred to the service, based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with patients, members of the multi-disciplinary paediatric team, family members and others involved in the client’s care
• To formulate plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a patient’s psychological needs as they relate to a medical diagnosis, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings
• To be responsible for implementing a range of highly specialized psychological interventions for patients, carers, families and groups, employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses
• To make highly skilled evaluations and 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.
• To exercise full responsibility and autonomy for the treatment of and discharge from the psychological service, ensuring appropriate assessment, formulation and interventions, communicating with the referral agent and all other professional groups in the paediatric
• medial team as appropriate and others outside the team involved with the care as appropriate
• To provide expertise and highly specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan
• To ensure that all members of the clinical team have access to a psychologically based framework for the understanding and care of paediatric patients, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological knowledge, research and theory
• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for relevant individual patients and to provide both general and specialist advice for other professionals on psychological and neuropsychological aspects of risk assessment and management.
• To act as care co-ordinator, where appropriate, ensuring the provision of a care package appropriate for the patient’s needs, co-ordinating the work of others involved with care, arranging patient’s care reviews as required and communicating effectively with the patient, his/her family and all others involved in care; and to monitor progress during the course of multi-disciplinary interventions.