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This role involves joining the new Forensic Intellectual and Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (FIND) Community Team, which collaborates with the Oak Unit, a Learning Disability and Autism Ward. The FIND Team aims to provide smooth and safe transitions for inpatients returning to the community, offering specialized assessment, treatment, and consultation for individuals with mental illnesses, offending histories, and learning disabilities, including those with neurodevelopmental disorders.
Key responsibilities include:
- Conducting comprehensive psychological assessments using various tools and techniques, with an emphasis on neuropsychological testing.
- Developing and implementing psychological treatment plans based on evidence-based approaches.
- Providing psychological interventions to clients, families, and groups, adapting therapeutic models as necessary.
- Offering specialist advice and consultation to other professionals to support clients' care and treatment planning.
- Participating in risk assessments and management, advising on psychological aspects relevant to public protection.
- Contributing to service development and training within the Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT).
Candidates will receive specialized training and engage with colleagues across the South London Mental Health and Community Partnership to enhance best practices for service-users with learning disabilities. The position emphasizes collaboration, innovative service delivery, and improving client pathways and outcomes.
This is an exciting and unique opportunity to join the newly developed Forensic Intellectual and Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (FIND) Community Team in South-West London & St George's Mental Health Trust (SWLSTG).
The FIND Team will work closely with the newly developed Oak Unit, a Learning Disability and Autism (LDA) Ward, one of the four inpatient wards, which comprise the South-West London & St George's Forensic Service. Providing a safe transition for inpatients discharged from the Forensic Service is the Forensic Outreach Service (FOS) and the FIND Team will sit within FOS in order to provide specialist assessment, treatment and consultation to the Forensic Service in order to ensure a smooth, safe and clinically justified pathway to individuals with mental illness, offending history and learning disability with or without neurodevelopmental disorder.
The three forensic services of SWLSTG, South London and Maudsley (SLaM) and Oxleas together comprise the South London Mental Health and Community Partnership (SLP). The SLP's overarching goals centre on bringing care closer to home, improving patient pathways and outcomes by delivering excellent care in better environments. The SLP has a track record of delivering highly effective, clinically informed service developments in order to better meet the needs of service-users.
You will provide psychological expertise to the SWLSTG FIND Multi-Disciplinary Team, comprising responsible clinician and other medical input, occupational therapy, social work, speech and language therapy and nursing. Following on from the completion of specialist neurodevelopmental assessments and interventions that help the transition of service-users to less restrictive environments, the FIND Team Psychologist will provide consultation to the MDT and other agencies on all factors which will help the service-user remain in the community. For example, the suitability of community placements, the nature of ongoing support and care, meaningful activities and the establishment of a supportive social network.
There will be opportunities for engaging in the service-development of the FIND Team, such as the operational procedures; how the FIND Team interfaces with the inpatient wards and FOS. There will also be opportunities to be involved in training members of the MDT and other Forensic Service colleagues in order to increase knowledge of specialist psychological assessments and interventions and to increase awareness of the FIND Team and their role.
The postholder will receive specialist training in accordance with the role and will have the opportunity to liaise with other SLP colleagues and other agencies on enhancing best practice for service-users with learning disabilities with or without neurodevelopmental disorder within Forensic Services in South London.
About us1. To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the SWLSTG FIND Team 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 clients, family members and others involved in the clients care. There will be significant emphasis on neuropsychological testing in order to validate and update the assessment of neurodevelopmental disorder and cognitive functioning.
2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a clients mental health problems and offending behaviour, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the clients problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
3. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams, employed individually and in combination, adjusting and reformulating the therapeutic models as appropriate on the basis of feedback and follow up, drawing on a number of different explanatory theoretical models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
4. 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.
5. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
6. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to the clients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
7. To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.
8. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide specialist advice to other professionals in the NHS on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management, as well as to other external agencies concerned with Public Protection, such as Social Services, Probation, Multi Agency Public Protection Panels (MAPPPs).
9. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor progress during the course of multi-disciplinary care.
This is an exciting and unique opportunity to join the newly developed Forensic Intellectual and Neurodevelopmental Disabilities (FIND) Community Team in South-West London & St George's Mental Health Trust (SWLSTG).
The FIND Team will work closely with the newly developed Oak Unit, a Learning Disability and Autism (LDA) Ward, one of the four inpatient wards, which comprise the South-West London & St George's Forensic Service. Providing a safe transition for inpatients discharged from the Forensic Service is the Forensic Outreach Service (FOS) and the FIND Team will sit within FOS in order to provide specialist assessment, treatment and consultation to the Forensic Service in order to ensure a smooth, safe and clinically justified pathway to individuals with mental illness, offending history and learning disability with or without neurodevelopmental disorder.
The three forensic services of SWLSTG, South London and Maudsley (SLaM) and Oxleas together comprise the South London Mental Health and Community Partnership (SLP). The SLP's overarching goals centre on bringing care closer to home, improving patient pathways and outcomes by delivering excellent care in better environments. The SLP has a track record of delivering highly effective, clinically informed service developments in order to better meet the needs of service-users.
You will provide psychological expertise to the SWLSTG FIND Multi-Disciplinary Team, comprising responsible clinician and other medical input, occupational therapy, social work, speech and language therapy and nursing. Following on from the completion of specialist neurodevelopmental assessments and interventions that help the transition of service-users to less restrictive environments, the FIND Team Psychologist will provide consultation to the MDT and other agencies on all factors which will help the service-user remain in the community. For example, the suitability of community placements, the nature of ongoing support and care, meaningful activities and the establishment of a supportive social network.
There will be opportunities for engaging in the service-development of the FIND Team, such as the operational procedures; how the FIND Team interfaces with the inpatient wards and FOS. There will also be opportunities to be involved in training members of the MDT and other Forensic Service colleagues in order to increase knowledge of specialist psychological assessments and interventions and to increase awareness of the FIND Team and their role.
The postholder will receive specialist training in accordance with the role and will have the opportunity to liaise with other SLP colleagues and other agencies on enhancing best practice for service-users with learning disabilities with or without neurodevelopmental disorder within Forensic Services in South London.
About us
1. To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the SWLSTG FIND Team 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 clients, family members and others involved in the clients care. There will be significant emphasis on neuropsychological testing in order to validate and update the assessment of neurodevelopmental disorder and cognitive functioning.
2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a clients mental health problems and offending behaviour, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the clients problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
3. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams, employed individually and in combination, adjusting and reformulating the therapeutic models as appropriate on the basis of feedback and follow up, drawing on a number of different explanatory theoretical models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
4. 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.
5. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
6. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to the clients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
7. To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.
8. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide specialist advice to other professionals in the NHS on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management, as well as to other external agencies concerned with Public Protection, such as Social Services, Probation, Multi Agency Public Protection Panels (MAPPPs).
9. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor progress during the course of multi-disciplinary care.
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