Deputy Director of Psychological Professions for ARD

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Joining #TeamNELFT means you'll become part of a welcoming and supportive working environment. We're CQC rated Good, and we want you to join us on the journey towards an Outstanding rating. NELFT has sites across North East London, Essex, Kent and Medway. We provide community and mental healthcare services to adults and children within these areas.

The Trust has award winning equality and diversity initiatives and staff health and wellbeing activities. We invest heavily in your development, because when you are valued and supported, we provide the best care to our patients. We are a Level 3 Disability Confident Leader, have been featured in the Working Families Top 10 Employers benchmark for three consecutive years, and we have achieved a Carers UK Level 1 Accreditation. Along with our staff networks and training opportunities, we work hard to embed a just and compassionate culture here at NELFT.

Find out more about NELFT careers and what makes our Trust a great place to work, in this video

Job overview

NELFT's senior Psychological Professionals' leadership team is excited to advertise a Deputy Director role within our Acute Rehabilitation Directorate (ARD). This role has been vacated due to relocation. The successful candidate will provide psychological and clinical leadership into the ARD Directorate which holds crisis, acute and diversion services. These include psychiatric inpatient wards, home treatment crisis teams, psychiatric liaison, forensic psychology, crisis houses, crisis hubs and learning disability, autism crisis services, forensic and neuropsychology. The successful candidate will be part of the most senior team of Psychological Professionals within NELFT led by the Director of Psychological Professions and will have peers covering Redbridge, Havering, Waltham Forest, Barking and Dagenham and Essex, Kent, Talking Therapies. The role will include oversight of all psychological provision for all ages within ARD. The post holder will become a core member of the directorate's multidisciplinary senior leadership team and will lead a group of senior psychological professionals within the Directorate.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will hold Trust-wide strategic, clinical focus on psychological delivery in the following speciality areas:
• Patient safety forums
• Relational Security
• Core member of the Relational Security Facility and taking a lead role in cultural change in line with the faculty aims

In recent years, there has been major investment into Psychological Professions and clinical leadership within NELFT. This has resulted in a vastly expanded senior Psychological Professional leadership team and a major transformation. This work is within the implementation phase and looks at several areas, including the creation of parity between bandings of Psychological Professionals in different areas of NELFT; ensuring that the care delivery is trauma informed for both people who use services and staff; and the integration of siloed psychological offers of care into multidisciplinary secondary care adult mental health provision. The transformation also included the coproduction of an accountability framework in which clinical and operational colleagues work collaboratively and in partnership to deliver the best care for people who use services, their carers, family members and supporters. This offer is in line with NELFT's commitment to being patient and clinically led, and operationally enabled.

Working for our organisation

Now is an important time to be joining NELFT. We are a patient and clinically led organisation which is operationally enabled. NELFT's cohort of Psychological Professions hold a vision which centres on coproduction, trauma informed care, building a community of psychological professionals and delivery of inclusion and parity of access to all residents in the areas we serve. We strive to provide inclusive, accessible and individualised offers of care in a timely manner; to reduce health inequalities; and to recognise the harm caused by social injustice in the communities we serve. We are committed to working with integrity, authenticity and courage to deliver the best possible psychological care to those using our services.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see attached job description

Probationary Period

This post will be subject to a probationary period. Internal applicants are exempt from the probationary period (unless you are an internal applicant currently part way through a probationary period or currently a bank member of staff).

Starting with NELFT

NELFT place a great deal of importance on new starters being properly welcomed and inducted into the Trust. All new starters will join the Trust on the first Monday of each month and will undertake a comprehensive induction of up to two weeks which will include mandatory training, systems training and the allocation of equipment. As part of the process new starters will have the opportunity to also meet the executive team, senior managers and attend a number of drop in sessions focussing in engagement, health and wellbeing and key processes. The induction will be held at our head office in Rainham, Essex.

High Cost Area Supplement - Outer London

This post also attracts payment for High Cost Area Supplement of 15% of the basic salary (with a minimum of £4,313 to a maximum of £5,436 p.a. pro rata for part time).

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Doctorate in Clinical or Counselling Psychology
• Post-graduate qualification in psychology or a psychological therapy (e.g. clinical or counselling psychology, psychotherapy)
• BABCP accredited or meeting eligibility criteria for BABCP accreditation
• Post Graduate training in psychodynamic psychotherapy as accredited by UKPC or BPC.

Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Detailed and advanced knowledge of a range of evidence based therapeutic interventions and their practical application in a range of mental health therapeutic settings
• A robust and broad understanding of national health and social care strategy and policy, in relation to developing services for secondary care

Desirable criteria

• Knowledge of strategic planning process
• Comprehensive knowledge of mental health policy

Skills

Essential criteria

• Evidence of leading groups of psychological professionals working in NHS services
• Open, participative, dynamic and supportive leadership and management style
• Ability to build alliances and secure ownership of proposals across organisational boundaries
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, featuring: breadth of outlook and political skill necessary to establish effective working relationships with staff at all levels within and outside the organisation
• Ability to identify, define, promote, communicate and achieve clear organisational values and goals, effective management processes and rational and timely decision making
• Ability to work in partnership with other key professionals within and outside the organisation and a partnership approach to work across agencies
• Ability to analyse complex issues, to think and plan to achieve both tactical and strategic objectives and to exercise sound judgement in the face of conflicting pressures
• Effective in conflict resolution and management
• Ability to present complex information to a diverse audience

Desirable criteria

• positive outcomes of service

Benefits

We believe in bringing your authentic and best self to work, in order to deliver the best care to our patients. We are committed to supporting our employees holistically. Here is a snapshot of what is on offer at NELFT:

• A long-standing and award-winning approach to equality and diversity with supportive networks for ethnic minority staff, staff with disabilities or long term/chronic conditions and LGBT staff.
• A commitment to supporting colleagues to achieve a work life balance, through flexible working opportunities and our effortsto support our working parents and carers. This has resulted in us being recognised as a 'Top 10 Family Friendly Employer' from the Working Families Charity.
• Proactive health and wellbeing support, including access to our employee assistance programme, staff psychological support, individual wellbeing conversations and a network of health and wellbeing ambassadors.
• Detailed information about our wellbeing and benefits offer can be found in this link.

As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that's a job share, part time hours or another flexible pattern.

Supporting our Armed Forces

We recognise the valuable contribution that the Armed Forces community make to our organisation. We have signed the Armed Forces Covenant and achieved Gold Award under the Armed Forces Employer Recognition Scheme. We have supportive policies, guaranteed interview schemes for veterans. reservists and military spouses and give additional leave to our Reservists so that they can attend their annual camp.

Equal opportunities employer

We are committed to equal opportunities and diversity and positively encourage applications from all sections of the community regardless of any protected characteristic.

We are a Disability Confident employer and have made the pledge to commit to employing more people with disabilities. If you require this application in another format i.e. Braille or audio tape please contact the recruitment team on 0300 300 1530 or email recruitment@nelft.nhs.uk.

Correspondence with us

You are advised to regularly check your emails (including any junk mail/spam folders) for correspondence related to this post.

In the event of a high number of responses to any advert, NELFT reserves the right to close the vacancy early. If you do not hear from us within three weeks of the closing date then please assume you have not been successful on this occasion.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Documents to download

• DDoPP JD & PS (PDF, 575.6KB)
• NELFT Application - Hints and Tips (PDF, 38.4KB)