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Job description

Central & North West London NHS Foundation Trust is a Top Employer Award Winner & works in partnership to provide responsive & dependable primary care, mental health, intellectual disability & substance misuse services to the diverse & culturally rich communities we serve.

We are seeking to recruit an enthusiastic, dedicated & motivated Psychologist or Psychological Therapist to join our Perinatal Mental Health team.

This post offers a very exciting opportunity to contribute to the establishment of a high quality perinatal mental health provision within our female prison service line. The post holder will form a key part of the multi-disciplinary team & will be able to demonstrate a range of skills & qualities that can help with the ongoing development of our specialist Perinatal Mental Health Team, which has now been live for 2 yrs.

Our service offers multidisciplinary perinatal mental health assessment & treatment to women during pregnancy, who give birth while in custody & those who reside with their infants on the Mother & Baby Unit at HMP Bronzefield. As part of this, we offer a range of interventions including EMDR, CBT, DBT, Video Interaction Guidance and the Circle of Security Parenting Programme.

You will either be an experienced clinician seeking an 8A position or a more newly qualified therapist who we will support from band 7 to achieve the 8A role.

There will be a strong focus on trauma-informed psychological approaches, as well as formulating and working with the complex relational dynamics commonly elicited by those within forensic settings. As such, there will be opportunity for direct clinical work as well as working with the system around our service users. This can include wider prison staff, midwifery services and voluntary organisations. There is an emphasis on providing training, supervision and consultation to the environment to support the wellbeing of women in prison.

Patients who access our service, typically have complex attachment histories, including early developmental and later adult trauma and therefore often present with severe and enduring mental health needs. It is also not uncommon for our patients to have experienced a history of complex perinatal or child losses of multiple types, alongside domestic violence and substance misuse difficulties, predisposing them to further vulnerability within the perinatal period. The successful applicant will therefore be making an important contribution to disrupting the intergenerational transmission of trauma.

As part of the role, you will also be supervising Assistant Psychologists and Trainee Clinical Psychologists.

CNWL’s Health and Justice Services are led by a highly motivated team with vast experience in healthcare within secure environments. We employ a range of psychologists and psychological therapists with clinical, counselling and forensic trainings. Psychologists work within the mental health services in numerous sites, across prisons, YOIs and secure hospitals, with children and adults, men and women and across the range of security categories. Psychologists also lead four specialist Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) commissioned services and Sexual Behaviour Services in the youth estate. Joining a large, forward-thinking Trust will bring successful candidates excellent development opportunities, an exciting career structure, and job satisfaction. Psychologist and Psychological Therapists from across Health and Justice come together for professional and clinical development. We actively encourage and support continuous professional development and have access to specialist supervision.

The Perinatal Mental Health Service operates across 3 women’s prisons, (HMP Bronzefield, HMP Send, HMP Downview).This post will be based at HMP Bronzefield but travel between sites will be part of the role. The post attracts HCAS.

Expertise and experience in perinatal mental health is desirable but not essential as we provide a comprehensive training package to all new starters within the first year.

Main Clinical Responsibilities:
1. To carry out specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the service, based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex psychological 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, in order to reach a psychological formulation of the client’s difficulties.
2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s 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 synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
4. To provide specialist assessments of clients presenting with cognitive impairment due to a variety of causes or organic conditions, including pre-assessment counselling and neuropsychological and functional assessments, and to be able to adjust psychological interventions to work effectively with people presenting with complex needs due to cognitive impairment and organic disorders.
5. To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.
6. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulations, diagnoses and treatment plans.
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, formulation and management for individual clients with complex presentations and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment, formulation and management.
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 both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.
10. To promote and participate in multi-disciplinary team working, development and liaison.
11. To promote actively, user and carer involvement in care planning and service development.
12. To be up to date with both de-escalation, physical breakaway and PMVA techniques appropriate to the service environment.