Clinical Psychologist Intensive Support Team | Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust

We are looking for an enthusiastic, dynamic, dedicated Band 7 Clinical/Counselling Psychologist to join our Intensive Support Team (IST) for adults with learning disabilities, based in Peterborough. This team offers you a unique opportunity to develop your skills and understanding both of working with adults with learning disabilities and of the system and partners. This is a development post with the opportunity for you to move to an 8a post once you have demonstrated the appropriate skills and competencies.

Our team supports adults with learning disabilities who have complex needs. Our goal is to support our service users to remain in their community at a time or crisis, by offering additional mental health support, therapy, and treatment. We work to source appropriate accommodation for service users to allow them to return from out of area placements and work closely with services supporting young people to prevent them having to leave Peterborough unnecessarily.

You will be responsible for implementing psychological assessments and providing therapeutic interventions. As mentioned above, you will be supporting the wider team to develop psychological understandings of people's difficulties through consultation, supervision, and training. Supervision of an assistant psychologist and doctoral trainees on placements will also be an exciting part of the role.

You will be supported by the Consultant Psychologist. Professionally CPFT psychologists have a wide and active range of supervision and research groups which will be available to you. The trust also has strong links with the UEA Clinical Psychology Doctoral Training Programme and the University of Cambridge.

We are a small team who are dedicated to supporting the development of our staff. If you are successful, you will have access to CPD opportunities, as appropriate to the role, and will have the opportunity to arrange a flexible work schedule to ensure a work/life balance that suits you.

You will also receive the relevant support and experience to ensure that successful you will be able to transition into an 8a clinical psychology post after demonstrating significant post-qualifying experience and meeting the requirements for the role.

Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust is a health & social care organisation dedicated to providing high quality care with compassion to improve the health & wellbeing of the people we care for, as well as supporting & empowering them to lead a fulfilling life.

Our clinical teams deliver many NHS services not only via inpatient and primary care setting but also with the community. These services include Children, Adult & Older Peoples mental & physical health, Forensic & Specialist mental health, Learning Disabilities, Primary Care & Liaison psychiatry, Substance misuse, Social care, Research & Development.

To achieve our goal, we look to recruit high calibre candidates that share our vision & values. As an equal opportunities employer, we encourage applications from all sectors of the community, particularly from under-represented groups including disabled people & members of our ethnic minorities & LGBTQ+ communities.

Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details of responsibilities.

To provide highly specialist psychological assessments of adults with Learning Disabilities referred based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex psychological data from a variety of sources including psychological and neuropsychological assessments, 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 and welfare.

To develop psychological formulations of presenting problems or situations that integrate information from assessments within a coherent framework that draws upon psychological theory and evidence and which incorporates cognitive, interpersonal, societal, cultural and biological factors.

To design and implement plans for the psychological treatment and/or management of a client's behaviour, emotional wellbeing, mental health problems, safety/vulnerability and/or the risks they may pose to others based on an appropriate conceptual framework of the client's problems and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.

To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams, adjusting and refining psychological formulations, drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.

To evaluate and make decisions about intervention options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family, carers or group.

To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, direct interventions and discharge of clients, and to manage and maintain a caseload in line with service guidelines.

To provide highly specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients' assessments, formulations and intervention plans.

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 professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures.

To adhere to Trust policy and guidance around the completion of CPA assessments and care plans and when appropriate, to act as care coordinator, ensuring the provision of a care package appropriate for the client's needs, coordinating the work of others involved with care, tasking responsibility for arranging CPA reviews as required and communicating effectively with the client, his/her family and all others involved in the network of care, and to monitor progress during the course of multidisciplinary interventions.