Psychologist in Gender

Mersey Care NHS Trust has an exciting opportunity for a clinical or counselling psychologist with an interest in gender healthcare to join our Trans Support Service. This service supports individuals explore their gender identity and any associated issues they may have, by providing direct interventions and also signposting to other services if appropriate. The use of data and outcome measures is paramount in developing the service further, alongside our commissioners and the practitioner will be supported in these using these processes to the fullest.
The successful individual will benefit from having close professional, clinical and managerial support in managing their caseload and that of the overall service. Mersey Care has considerable experience in delivering this service alongside other gender services and this experience will support the individual and the service to develop further.
Shortlisting planned for: 29 May 2024
Interview planned for: 7 June 2024, 1. To provide specialist psychological assessments of service users 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 service users, family members and others involved in the service user's care.
2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a service user's psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the service user's problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.
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 evaluate, monitor progress and make highly skilled evaluations and 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.
5. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of service users, 1. To provide specialist psychological assessments of service users 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 service users, family members and others involved in the service user's care.
2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a service user's psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the service user's problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.
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 evaluate, monitor progress and make highly skilled evaluations and 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.
5. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of service users whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
6. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment and treatment of service users whose problems are managed by psychologically based enhanced care plans.
7. To provide specialist psychological advice guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to service users' formulation, diagnosis and treatment plans.
8. To ensure that all members of the clinical team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of service users, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.
9. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users and to provide both general and specialist advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
10. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, highly complex information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of service users under their care where there may be conflicting views, high emotion and significant barriers to understanding and change, and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.
11. To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.
Teaching, training and supervision
1. To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.
2. To provide clinical placements for trainee clinical and/or counselling psychologists, ensuring that 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.
3. To provide post-qualification training (CPD) and clinical professional supervision to qualified clinical psychologists and other psychological services staff.
4. To provide advice, consultation and training and clinical supervision to other members of the team for their provision of psychologically based interventions to help improve service users' functioning.
5. To provide pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical psychologists and/or other psychological services staff as appropriate.
6. To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional pre- and post-graduate training and clinical supervision
7. To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the service user group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.
Management, recruitment, policy and service development
1. To manage the workloads of Assistants, Trainees and recently qualified psychological services staff, where appropriate, within the framework of the Clinical Business Unit's and team's/service's service policies and procedures.
2. To participate as a senior clinician in the development of a high quality, responsive and accessible service including advising both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
3. To exercise delegated responsibility for managing the psychological resources available to a team, whether in the form of additional qualified and unqualified graduate psychology staff, or in the form of psychological materials employed in the assessment and treatment of patients.
4. To exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the team.
5. To participate as appropriate in staff recruitment, both in the short-listing process and as a member of interview panels, for assistants, trainees and recently qualified psychological services staff.
6. To act up for line manager as appropriate.
7. The post holder will be expected to make full use of IT packages available within the work area, for example, microsoft office, email, internet and statistical packages. Reasonable adjustments will be made for employees who ate unable to comply due to sensory impairment.
Service Governance
1. To take the psychology lead, as a senior clinician, in the evaluation, monitoring and development of the team's operational policies, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit and ensuring incorporation of psychological frameworks for understanding and provision of high quality care.
2. To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
3. To undertake appropriate research as agreed with Operational and Professional managers and provide research advice to team colleagues undertaking research.
4. To initiate project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within and across the service to help develop and improve services to clients and their families.
5. To undertake a defined role in local Service Governance structures as agreed.
General
1. To ensure the development, maintenance and dissemination of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external and external CPD training and development programmes and to provide evidence of CPD undertaken, eg in the form of CPD log book.
2. To ensure the development and articulation of best practice in psychology within the team and contribute across the service by exercising the skills of a reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the field of clinical psychology and related disciplines.
3. To maintain and promulgate the highest standards of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry and recording, report writing and the responsible exercise of professional self-governance in accordance with professional codes of practice of the British Psychological Society, Health Professions Council, Clinical Business Unit and Trust policies and procedures.
4. To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to both the specific client group and mental health.
5. To perform other duties of a similar kind appropriate to the grade, which may be required by their operational manager after consultation, if necessary with professional manager.
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We celebrate diversity and promote equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.
We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from BAME, disabled and LGBT people that are under-represented in our workforce. Furthermore we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.
As a Disability Confident Employer, we offer a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants who consider themselves to be disabled who meet the minimum (essential) criteria for the role in the person specification. If you would like your application to be considered under the Trust's guaranteed interview scheme you can indicate this in the personal information section of your online application form.
Please ensure you check the email account from which you apply for all correspondence. All information regarding your application will come from apps.trac.jobs not NHS Jobs. Only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview.
Should you require a reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process please contact the recruitment team to ensure that measures can be put in place to support you.
We reserve the right to close any vacancy earlier than advertised in exceptional circumstances once we have received a high volume of applications.
The Trust expects all post holders who require an enhanced DBS for their role subscribe to the DBS Update Service. You will be required to enrol for this service for a fee of £13 per year and maintain registration. Trans applicants who require a DBS check and do not want to reveal details of their previous identity can contact the DBS Sensitive Applications Team or email [email protected]) with their application number once they have completed their DBS application form. The team is able to prevent any previous identity showing on the DBS Certificate, unless the applicant has a conviction under their previous details in which case this will need to be disclosed.
Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

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.