Principal Clinical / Health / Counselling Psychologist - Neonatal

at  Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Principal Clinical / Health / Counselling Psychologist - Neonatal, Band 8b
15 hours a week (0.4wte)

A newly permanent Band 8b opportunity has arisen for an experienced Practitioner Psychologist (Clinical, Health or Counselling) to take a lead in providing and evaluating a highly specialist psychological support to babies, their families and staff on the Neonatal Care Unit at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital.

• To liaise closely with the multi-disciplinary team to provide specialised advice and consultation on psychologically informed care for babies and families to non-psychologist colleagues.
• To provide psychological assessment and therapy
• To work systemically, supporting the neonatal MDT to deliver psychologically informed care to babies and their families.
• To contribute to the delivery of teaching, training and supervision for non-psychologist colleagues, in order to enable them to identify families who will benefit from early specialist input. For example, developing and promoting screening tools for bedside staff to use.
• To formulate plans to support families and staff where there might be a breakdown in communication or relationship.
• To utilise research skills for the purposes of audit, policy development and research, joined with other practitioner psychologists in the South West Neonatal ODN as well as with the Lead Psychologist in the ODN.
• To contribute to service evaluation and service development in line with service objectives and with the aim of meeting national and local guidelines and targets, joined with other practitioner psychologists in the South West Neonatal ODN as well as with the Lead Psychologist in the ODN.
• To liaise with multidisciplinary team colleagues, other health and social care agencies and staff involved with the care group, and with other psychologists both locally and nationally for professional development.

1. Clinical
   1.1. To provide highly specialist psychological assessments to families while they are currently on the Neonatal Unit. This will be based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex 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 families and others involved in the baby’s care.
   1.2. To advise on appropriate psychoeducation and training to staff to help them to provide high quality psychologically informed support to all families.
   1.3. To provide psychological support and supervision for staff working on the unit. This may be in the form of group sessions by providing a safe space for reflection and providing tools and/or signposting for further support. This may also include either supporting, or leading small group debrief sessions following an emotionally traumatic clinical situation.
   1.4. To develop psychological formulations of presenting problems or situations that integrate complex information from assessments within a coherent framework that draws upon psychological theory and evidence, and which incorporates interpersonal, societal, cultural and biological factors, across the full range of care settings.
   1.5. To develop and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a family’s psychological difficulties, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the presenting problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.
   1.6. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for families and groups, within and across teams, adjusting and refining psychological formulations, drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
   1.7. 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 family’s experience.
   1.8. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, psychological formulation, treatment and discharge of families, and to manage and maintain a caseload in line with service guidelines.
   1.9. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to the family’s formulation and treatment plan.
   1.10. To ensure that all members of the treating team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of families in the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.
   1.11. To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all families in the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.
   1.12. To undertake risk assessment and risk management where appropriate and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures. To assess families for referral onto Mental Health Services should their needs be more relevant for management by those teams.
   1.13. To communicate in a highly skilled and sensitive manner to families and others, as appropriate, information that may be contentious or highly distressing concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of families under their care.
   1.14. To monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care, and to provide appropriate reports on this.
   1.15. To provide highly specialist expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.
   1.16. To work in partnership with other disciplines and to maintain links with statutory and non-statutory and primary care agencies, as appropriate.
   1.17. Will be required to sit in a constrained position for therapy and extended assessment.
   1.18. Will be required to deal with the intense emotional atmosphere surrounding therapy contacts which may be frequently highly distressing, and to work with frequent intense concentration for much of the clinical sessions of assessment and therapy.
2. Teaching, training and supervision
   2.1. In common with all Practitioner Psychologists, to receive regular clinical supervision and monthly management supervision, in accordance with good practice and BPS guidelines.
   2.2. To continue to gain wider post-qualification experience of applied psychology in line with BPS policy on CPD; in particular, to make links with other Practitioner Psychologists working in neonatal care regionally and nationally, and to attend relevant special interest groups and training sessions.
   2.3. To develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training and supervision and to provide supervision to other MDT staff’s psychological work, as appropriate.
   2.4. To provide professional and clinical supervision of assistant/graduate psychologists and Trainee Clinical/ Counselling/ Health Psychologists, as appropriate.
   2.5. To support placements for Trainee Clinical/Counselling/ Health Psychologists, ensuring that trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good psychological care and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.
   2.6. To contribute to the pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical, health, counselling and other applied psychologists, as appropriate, through contact within the locality with other Practitioner Psychologists.
   2.7. Where appropriate, to offer clinical and/or professional supervision to qualified practitioner psychologists working elsewhere within the organisation.
   2.8. To provide advice, consultation, supervision and training to staff working with families across a range of agencies and settings for the provision of psychologically based interventions to help improve family member’s functioning.
   2.9. To contribute to the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the postholder’s professional and service manager(s).
   2.10. To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional pre- and post-graduate training and clinical supervision.
3. Leadership and management
   There are no specific budgetary or management responsibilities attached to this post.
   3.1. To contribute to the analysis, development, evaluation and monitoring of Key Performance Indicators to highlight the added value of psychology through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.
   3.2. To be involved, as appropriate, in the shortlisting and interviewing of assistant/graduate/ recently qualified psychologists.
   3.3. To exercise responsibility with team members for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service/team.
   3.4. To ensure the development and articulation of best practice in psychology within the service area and contribute across the service by exercising the skills of a reflexive and reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal, and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the field of neonatal psychology and related disciplines.
4. Research and development
   4.1. To bring forward matters of psychology, as a senior clinician, in the evaluation, monitoring and development of the team’s operational policies, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit