Principle Clinical Psychologist

Are you a skilled and experiencedClinical Psychologist looking to lead and shape psychological services? This role offers an exciting leadership opportunity, as an 8b Principal Psychologist, to provide high-quality psychological care, develop innovate clinical pathways, and support staff and service users within the Norfolk Early Intervention in Psychosis Service.

The role will involve working alongside a diverse multi-professional team, providing clinical oversight of the psychological therapies offered within the team and offering direct clinical supervision to the 8a Clinical Psychologists and Systemic Family Therapists.

The Norfolk Early Intervention in Psychosis Service is a county-wide service with five distinct teams, four of which are Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) teams and one At Risk Mental State team (TIDES). Each team has a Clinical/Counselling Psychologist, CBTp Therapists and Assistant Psychologists embedded within them.

The EIP teams are based at Northgate Hospital in Great Yarmouth, Chatterton House in Kings Lynn and the remaining two are at Unthank Road in Norwich. TIDES are currently based on the Hellesdon Hospital site and cover the county. Whilst your main base will be in Norwich, you will need to travel to each of the base sites periodically to provide support, supervision and clinical oversight to each team.

Main duties of the job

You will take a lead role for Psychology within the Early Intervention in Psychosis Service, working to develop psychological provision for service users under the care of the service, through service development and the recruitment of psychology staff, and to provide professional management, support, guidance and clinical supervision to psychology staff within the service; as well as supporting the psychological thinking and interventions of non-psychology staff.

You will be an integral part of the Early Intervention in Psychosis Service, who work with service users with a diagnosis of, or who may be developing, a First Episode of Psychosis, and who often present with complex mental health, social and relational difficulties. You will be expected to contribute fully, as an autonomous clinician, offering highly specialist psychological assessment, formulation, intervention and evaluation to individuals and families, as well as offering specialist advice and consultation to the team and other professionals.

You will be responsible for maintaining accurate and up to date records of your clinical activity and for collecting statistics relating to your work; and taking a lead role in developing audits, research and service evaluation activity.

Qualifications

• Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology, or its equivalent, including eligibility for chartered status with the BPS
• Further post qualification, postgraduate training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice
• Registered as a Practitioner Psychologist with the Health Care Professions Council (HCPC)
• Evidence of CPD in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice

Experience

• Specialist complex psychological assessment and treatment of people with a wide range of mental health problems, of varying severity and complexity.
• Application of psychology in different cultural contexts
• Extensive experience of working as a qualified clinical psychologist and evidence of specialist knowledge gained through practice and ongoing training

Skills

• Use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management.
• Assessment, evaluation and management of risk associated with mental ill health and related psychopathology
• Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively complex, highly technical and clinically highly sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS

Knowledge

• Well-developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, dual diagnosis, people with additional disabilities etc.)
• Practitioner level knowledge of at least two models of psychological therapy
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS

other

• Capacity to exercise careful clinical judgement whilst having the ability to work with and to hold the stress of others in the work setting
• Able to identify, and employ appropriate clinical governance mechanisms for the support and maintenance of clinical practice
• Ability to travel independently

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.