Consultant Clinical Psychologist - Intensive Autism Support

at  Norfolk Suffolk Foundation Trust

Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust provides child and adult mental health services, learning disability, wellbeing, older people’s and eating disorder services across Norfolk and Suffolk.
At any one time, around 23,000 people in Norfolk and Suffolk are receiving care and attention from the Trust. We believe in whole life care - seeing people in the context of their whole lives, understanding the importance of good physical health, friends, family, spirituality, culture, home, work, education and a sense of purpose and achievement to experience good mental health.
Nearly 3,800 full and part-time practitioners care for our service users in hospitals, in the community and in their own homes, whilst an additional 1,400+ staff provide non-clinical support, including cleaning, catering, delivering supplies, ward administration, information technology, human resources and financial services.
We are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion and want to reflect the diversity of our local communities within our teams. We welcome applications from all talented individuals with the relevant qualifications, skills, knowledge and experience.
We are committed to delivering quality driven mental health services. Every individual makes a valuable contribution. We are proud of our staff who have been commended for the care they provide. Do you value working positively, respectfully and together? If so, we’d love you to join us!
We will consider flexible working arrangements for our roles, please indicate in your application if this is something you require

JOB DESCRIPTION/PERSON SPECIFICATION

Please read the job description/person specification carefully and ensure your application reflects the knowledge, skills and experience needed.

JOB OVERVIEW

We are seeking to recruit an 8c Consultant Practitioner Psychologist (0.6wte) to a new role within a small resource offering intensive support to those presenting in our urgent and emergency care pathways with a diagnosis of autism. The consultant will be based in Central Norfolk CRHT alongside a Learning Disability and Autism specialist nurse and an assistant psychologist. The intensive support resource will work with those service users with comorbid autism and mental health difficulties in a formulation-led and recovery-oriented way for up to a year. We are expecting that many of the service users will be in the 18-25 age group on the basis of our local service utilisation data.

APPLICANT REQUIREMENTS

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.
The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions

MAIN DUTIES OF THE JOB

The post will involve direct work with service users and their carers and families, and also supervision of the other roles in this small team. The postholder will work with the other providers in the system to create a formulation-led care package to support the service user on discharge from this intensive support offer. The postholder will support the wider CRHT in their work with people with autism on a consultation basis. The post will be supported by an experienced 8c Consultant Psychologist who works across inpatient and CRHT services.

DETAILED JOB DESCRIPTION AND MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES

There will be the opportunity to shape the pathway and the model in order to better support people with autism. For the first twelve months, the team will have a capped caseload as a pilot study. The postholder will be expected to return data to our commissioners on activities and patient outcomes, as well as service utilisation data. The model will be reviewed at the 12 month point and adapted according to early learning from the first pilot cohort.
There will be opportunities to write and present reports at senior-level meetings and contribute to improving services for people with autism via a Norfolk and Waveney Neurodevelopmental group. There will also be opportunities to support wider services via the provision of training.
We would support the successful candidate to train in DBT and contribute to making our DBT programme more effective and accessible for people with autism.
To ensure equity of access across Norfolk and Waveney, the post, although based in Norwich, needs to have adequate geographical reach across the whole ICB footprint. Joint working with our key system partners for LD, Autism and Mental Health will be key to this role.
The postholder will be an experienced practitioner psychologist with at least six years post-qualification experience. They would be expected to have highly specialist skills in diagnosing autism and in providing therapeutic interventions that are autism friendly. They will also bring highly specialist knowledge about autism to the service and system. Experience of working in more than one clinical setting, and of working across the provider system would be highly advantageous. Specialist supervision will be provided to support this new role.