Specialist Clinical Psychologist inPlymouth inPlymouth PUBLISHED 12 NOV 2024

37.5 hours per week

The CLDT covers the vibrant city of Plymouth. As an 8a psychologist, you'll work in a highly skilled, multi-disciplinary service, connecting providers who offer residential, day, and respite care. You'll also work closely with Adult Social Care services to make an impact on people and their families.

From complex capacity, risk, and neuropsychological assessments to tackling a broad spectrum of mental health challenges in individuals with learning disabilities, you'll play a role in enhancing the lives of people and the systems that support them.

• Use your skills to assess and support individuals with learning disabilities, helping them lead more fulfilling lives.
• Dive deep into complex cases, from neuropsychological assessments to capacity assessments and more, ensuring no two days are the same.
• Bring your compassionate leadership to guide and inspire both the CLDT and provider teams, while delivering psychological advice that transforms care.
• Your creativity will be valued as you help shape tailored interventions and innovative care plans for service users.

Please note that Livewell may close the job adverts earlier than the specified deadline if a high number of applications are submitted. We recommend you submit your application at the earliest opportunity.

All Livewell staff are expected to be able and willing to work across a 7-day service.

Job Share(s) Considered

Please note that this role may not be eligible for sponsorship under the Skilled Worker route.

The post-holder will work as part of an MDT across a wide range of settings. They will provide a specialist Clinical Psychology service to service users aged 18 and over with a Learning Disability who are accepted into the Community Learning Disability Team.

The post holder will be responsible for the assessment and treatment of their own caseload of clients with variety of complex problems including mental ill-health, behaviours that challenge, personality difficulties, autism spectrum disorders and neurological problems. This particularly includes families and paid carers in a wide range of independent sector provision.

They will offer highly specialist psychological interventions, formulations and treatment plans to carers and professional colleagues, provide leadership from a psychological perspective to the MDT, and provide professional support, guidance and clinical supervision to clinical psychology staff (including trainee's and undergraduate placement students)and non-psychology staff within the CLDT.

They will be expected to develop specialist responsibilities on a specific area of expertise that balances their experience, interests, and needs of the service.

They will support planning, organising, auditing and developing policy and strategies for the delivery of a specialist psychology service within the multidisciplinary CLDT. The post holder will also contribute to teaching and initiating and maintaining research and development projects.

About us

As a lead specialist, responsible for assessment and treatment of own specialist caseload of clients with variety of complex problems including mental ill-health, behaviours that challenge, personality difficulties, autism spectrum disorders and neurological problems. This particularly includes their families and paid carers in a wide range of independent sector provision.

As a lead specialist, responsible for providing, developing and managing highly specialist psychological interventions to clients and for communicating psychological formulations and treatment plans to carers and professional colleagues.

Responsible for planning, organising and auditing and developing policy and strategies for the delivery of a specialist psychology service within the multidisciplinary CLDT.

The postholder would be expected to develop specialist responsibilities and provide leadership from a psychological perspective on a specific area of expertise that balances their experience, interests, and needs of the service.

Responsible for providing professional support, guidance and clinical supervision to other clinical psychology staff (clinical psychologists, assistant psychologists, trainee psychologists, undergraduate placement students) in the CLDT and in other parts of the service as required by their level of experience.

Responsible for the planning, delivery and clinical supervision of a specialist clinical training placement for trainees on the postgraduate Doctoral Courses in Clinical Psychology from the Universities of Plymouth and Exeter.

Responsible for providing specialist consultation, advice and clinical supervision to other non-psychology staff within the CLDT, on psychological understanding, interventions and evaluations.

Responsible for developing and delivering teaching on psychological work and care for trainee clinical psychologists and qualified members of clinical psychology and other professions in Livewell Southwest.

Responsible for initiating and maintaining research and development projects relevant to furthering both clinical knowledge and service evaluation and delivery.

Responsible for working within the Guidelines for Professional Practice of the Health & Care Professions Council and the British Psychological Society Division of Clinical Psychology, and for adhering to policies and procedures of Livewell Southwest.

Responsible for participating in an annual appraisal with Psychology Lead plus a group manager.

Responsible for continuing professional development (CPD) in line with the annual appraisal Professional Development Plan PDP, the Knowledge and Skills Framework KSF and the British Psychological Societys requirements for CPD Logs and Practicing Certificate.

Responsible for keeping aware of and being knowledgeable about current developments within the profession of clinical psychology.

Responsible for keeping up to date with legislation, national directives, policies and NICE guidelines in relation to the work.

Key Tasks and Responsibilities

Clinical Skills

To possess and practice a high level of communication and relationship skills in situations where emotional distress, and risk of self-harm and of life-threatening behaviour can be expected.

Responsible for overcoming a variety of barriers to communication when working with clients who are fearful of others, unable to articulate their problems or who think within a very different frame of reference, requiring imaginative and sensitive approaches towards engagement.

To be able to identify and manage the need for more complex reformulation of the clients difficulties and to promote a realistic treatment plan.

To identify and be able to complete formal psychometric assessments with ones own clients and those of other team members, where this is appropriate.

To be able to communicate, by talking and by writing, psychological formulations and treatment plans to the client and to appropriate professional colleagues and to family members and carers, as appropriate.

To be able to prepare and provide complex medico-legal reports and reports for child protection and vulnerable adults meetings.

To have knowledge of and skill within several psychological models of understanding and managing clinical problems.

To be able to add both an understanding of psychosocial factors and an appropriate intervention to the planning of treatment for clients referred to the service but not on psychologists caseload.

To be able to manage an appropriate caseload whilst also being able to negotiate and manage the need for waiting lists for assessment and treatment so that there is steady movement of clients through the stages of referral, assessment, treatment and discharge.

To be able to develop highly specialised individual treatment plans or packages of care for clients with complex psychological problems such as autistic spectrum disorder, severe challenging behaviour, offending profiles, dementia, the long-term effects of childhood trauma, personality disorders, severe and chronic depression, and other mental illnesses.

To be able to manage the emotional impact of working, often one-to-one, with people who can be in crisis and who can show high levels of arousal and can be actively self-harming or threatening to others.

To be able to analyse complex situations and think through an appropriate pattern or sequence of strategies to respond therapeutically.

To ensure receipt of clinical and personal supervision in accordance with good practice guidelines for all clinical psychologists.

Policy and Service Development

To be responsible for promoting the need to plan and develop specialist psychology services within the CLDT.

Through membership of the psychology specialty, to be responsible for contributing to the planning and development of specialist psychology services across the service.

As a member of the CLDT to be responsible for promoting the need to plan and develop the multidisciplinary response to clinical demands and expectations on it.

To attend the Psychology meetings and other relevant meetings regularly.

Human Resources

To be responsible for providing clinical supervision and professional support and guidance as required to Clinical Psychologists within the service who are less experienced.

To be responsible for providing clinical supervision to non clinical psychology members of the service as appropriate.

To be responsible for supervising qualified clinical psychologists from other specialties, as required, in relation to their work with clients who may have learning disabilities.

To be responsible for planning and supervising the work of undergraduate psychology students on year long and short term placements.

To be responsible for the supervision of the work of Assistant Psychologist/s.

To be responsible for planning and providing a clinical training placement to trainees on the postgraduate Doctoral Course in Clinical Psychology of the Universities of Plymouth and Exeter. This clinical placement requires liaison with Human Resources to arrange appropriate DBS checks, honorary contracts and IT access as well as completion of Livewell Southwest and service inductions. It also requires a sensitive awareness to the impact on trainees of induction to being members of a large and complex organisation as the context for learning and practising their professional skills.

To teach on the postgraduate Doctoral Courses in Clinical Psychology at the Universities of Plymouth and Exeter if required and on pre and post qualification professional courses for other disciplines represented within Livewell Southwest as required.

To ensure the development, maintenance and dissemination of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external Continuing Professional Development - CPD training and development programmes and courses.

Research and Development

To conduct and supervise research and audit and evaluation relevant to the provision of specialist psychological services for people with learning disabilities..

To initiate and implement project management techniques and tools in order to achieve completion of evaluations, audits, research and service developments.

To collaborate with Universities of Plymouth and Exeter in setting up and conducting Doctoral level long-term research projects on learning disability issues, and providing teaching.

To use SPSS and other packages in the analysis of data and to write up the information in a meaningful format that is accessible and understood by the target audience.

To prepare and present information from audits, evaluations and research to professional audiences within and outside the organisation.

To prepare papers for publication based on audit, evaluation, research and development work.

To utilise theory, evidence based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with team members in the CLDT and Clinical Psychology.

Information Technology

To be responsible for the maintenance and development of office systems and procedures within the clinical psychology service.

To be able to use a range of software packages including Word, Excel, Access, Powerpoint and SPSS.

To be responsible for maintaining appropriate service statistics and records of work within the requirement of policies covering the CLDT including where applicable the Care Programme Approach.

To ensure that SystmOne computer data bases are kept up to date.