Clinical Psychologist Band 7 / 8a Preceptorship

We wish to recruit a band 7/8a preceptorship Clinical Psychologist for Halton Recovery Team. We are a large team of psychologists, psychological therapists, nurses, occupational therapists, psychiatrists, pharmacist and support workers. We provide needs led care and therapy to adults in Runcorn and Widnes with complex mental health needs.

The successful candidate will join a passionate and welcoming team and provide trauma-informed interventions to clients and carers aged 18 upwards with a range of difficulties.

The post being advertised is full-time.

The post holder will provide, supervise and support the highly specialised psychological assessment and therapy provided by other psychological professions and other members of the team who provide psychologically based care and treatment.

The post holder will exercise delegated management responsibilities where appropriate and work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the team.

The post holder will utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research and propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the team.

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.

We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.

At the heart of all we do is our commitment to 'perfect care' - care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We're currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the 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 client's care.

To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client's psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client's problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.

To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models

and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses where appropriate.

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.

To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.

To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment and treatment of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based enhanced care plans.

To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients' formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.

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.

To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.

To act as care coordinator, where appropriate, taking responsibility for initiating planning and reviewing of care plans under enhanced CPA including clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.

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 both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.