Lead Adult Psychotherapist

Job Overview

Please note remote interviews will not be offered for this post due to the nature of the role. If you have additional support needs, we have supportive adaptations in place for face to face attendance.

As part of the national programme of mental health service transformation, Milton Keynes mental health services have created a Mental Health Hub, bringing together a number of teams to deliver care to clients in a more timely and accessible way. The service is needs-led, offering medical, social and psychological interventions within a stepped care model.

The therapies pathway offers evidence-based interventions for complex trauma and mood presentations including Personality Disorder and Psychosis. The post holder will have strong leadership skills and clinical expertise in complex mental health difficulties. The post holder will have a key role in ensuring the development and systematic provision of high-quality psychodynamic psychotherapy.

The post holder will take a lead role in ensuring adherence to a good quality service model that supports more people access psychological therapies. They will lead on management of referrals and allocation to treatment pathways. They will also deliver and provide supervision for psychodynamic psychotherapy.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will work collaboratively with the therapies manager and the lead psychologist in the continued development of psychotherapy provision within the mental health service.

The post holder will be expected to clinically supervise and support the professional development of qualified psychotherapists, MBT therapists, trainees and assistants working within the Mental Health Hub. The post holder will be expected to provide consultation, training and teaching within and beyond the team. The role will entail close working with other mental health colleagues and teams across Milton Keynes

Service evaluation, research and audit will be a key part of this role and the post holder will be responsible for measuring the effectiveness of the model against key deliverables such as patient safety and improved quality and effectiveness of care. The post holder will provide regular service updates and evaluation to the lead psychologist and director of mental health services.

Working for our organisation

CNWL is recognised locally, nationally and internationally for providing high quality, innovative healthcare. We aim to employ in line with our values, our experts are frequently called upon to contribute to national health strategy and policy, and many models of our care have been adapted for use in other countries. With us, you will get -

A Trust committed to staff personal development, with a trust wide culture change and leadership programme that has staff wellbeing at its core.

An opportunity to work for one of the top 10 NHS employers.

Detailed Job Description And Main Responsibilities

To provide specialist assessments of referred service users based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex psychological data from a variety of sources including self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with service users, family members and others involved in the service user’s care. This will include providing working formulations with recommendations where appropriate and relevant.

To formulate and implement plans for the fixed-term psychotherapy and/or management of a service user’s mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the service user’s problems, and employing methods of proven efficacy, across the full range of care settings.

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 service users whose problems and/or concerns are managed by psychologically based standard care plans

To provide specialist psychodynamic consultation to other professionals contributing directly to service users’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan

To ensure that all members of the treating team have access to a psychodynamic framework for understanding and care of services users, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychodynamic research and theory.

To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users and to provide general advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management

To act as lead professional or care coordinator, ensuring the provision of a care package appropriate for the service users needs, coordinating the work of others involved with care, talking responsibility for arranging CPA reviews as required and communicating effectively with the service user, his/her family and all others involved in the network of care, and to monitor progress during the course of multi-disciplinary interventions.

Teaching, training and supervision

To provide long case clinical placements for resident doctors, psychodynamic psychotherapy trainees, ensuring those trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good mental health care and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.

To provide training (CPD) to other mental health staff.

To provide pre- and post-qualification teaching of psychotherapy as appropriate

To provide CPD and clinical supervision to other qualified psychotherapists for their provision of psychodynamically-informed interventions to help improve service users’ quality of life and wellbeing. To contribute to personal development / performance reviews / appraisals for qualified psychotherapists.

To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional pre- and post-graduate training and clinical supervision.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Qualifying training in psychodynamic psychotherapy (group or individual)
• Eligible for Column C of the SCOPED framework.
• Accreditation/registration with the BPC, UKCP, BACP.

Desirable criteria

• Post-qualification training in one or more additional psychotherapy modalities e.g. MBT, DIT, IPT
• Leadership and professional management training
• Supervision training
• Training Psychotherapist/ Group Analyst

Experience

Essential criteria

• Experience of the application of psychotherapy in different cultural contexts.
• Experience of application of psychodynamic psychotherapy with highly complex service users
• Experience of leadership and management within a mental health therapies service.
• Experience of representing psychotherapy within the context of multi-disciplinary care.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care, in-patient and residential care settings severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.
• Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients’ psychotherapy both as a professionally qualified care coordinator and also within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision.

Desirable criteria

• Experience of supervising junior doctors in psychodynamically – informed therapy
• Experience of managing both mental and physical health care needs concurrently
• Experience of service evaluation
• Experience of use of outcome measures (CORE 34/others)

Knowledge and Skills

Essential criteria

• People skills: ability to support, influence, persuade and gain support from colleagues especially where financial constraints are impacting collegiate working.
• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychotherapeutic assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Well-developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialist psychotherapy in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc).
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by your professional body e.g. BPS or BABCP.
• Ability to develop and use complex multi-media materials Application and Interview. for presentations in public, professional and academic settings.
• Ability to identify, and employ, as appropriate, clinical governance mechanisms for the support and maintenance of clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.

Desirable criteria

• Knowledge of the theory and practice of highly specialised psychological therapies and assessment methodologies.
• Knowledge of research design and methodology.
• Skills in articulating the distinct contribution of psychotherapy to colleagues, commissioners, managers at MDT and SMT levels
• Well developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, highly technical, and clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and nonprofessional groups.