Senior DBT Practitioner

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Thank you for your interest for the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT), it is an exciting time to join us and being part of our journey to improve mental health care across North London and deliver excellent services to our local people. We will achieve this through the North London Way, as we:

• Collaborate at every level by living our Values to create the right conditions for us all to work together.
• Develop our new Trust culture, to help make our new Trust a great place to work and to receive great care.
• Empower our teams to lead the planned improvements in our services, by skilling them and giving them the tools to make the changes.
• Focus on delivering excellence at every level to improve our performance and ensure consistently high-quality care across all our services.
• Ensure that research, Quality Improvement, and technology lead the way and are embedded in our services.
• Take a trauma informed approach to everything we do

We proactively welcome diversity in our workforce and pride ourselves on being an inclusive employer. We aim to recruit from our local communities and provide opportunities to all including apprenticeships, veterans, care leavers and more.

The North London Way to deliver, Better Mental Health, Better Lives, Better Communities.

Our trust website is: https://www.northlondonmentalhealth.nhs.uk/

Job overview

This role is part of an exciting expansion of the Barnet CEN Pathway. The remit of the new DBT Service is to offer Barnet residents referred into the service a consistent evidence-based therapeutic approach, to reduce inpatient admissions and to support the quick transitions of those in an inpatient service back into the community.

The post holder will be supporting the DBT Lead in setting up this new pathway and you will be working closely with the Barnet Younger Adult Psychological Service and Complex Emotional Needs pathway team.

The role will include supporting the service development, reporting on implementation and agreed outcomes, as well as to supervise and support the screening, referrals, assessments and group or individual therapy provided by other clinical members of the DBT team.

Main duties of the job
• To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological 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.
• To formulate and implement DBT focused treatment plans, in particular identifying repeating patterns of crisis and advise ways of altering these, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client's problems
• To be responsible for implementing a range of DBT psychological interventions (group and individual)
• To work closely with referrers, services and colleagues to collaborate around the delivery of DBT interventions.
• 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.
• To provide DBT supervision and line management for staff within the DBT pathway.

Working for our organisation

The partnership between Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust (BEH) and Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust (C&I) is going from strength to strength since it was originally established in 2021 forming the North London Mental Health Partnership.

In order to meet the needs of the new Partnership services you may be required from time to time to work at different locations to your normal place of work. This may mean that you are required to work at any location that fall under Barnet, Enfield and Harringay Trust and Camden and Islington Trust. The Trust reserves the right to require staff to work at such other places or locations as it considers reasonable and necessary on a temporary or permanent basis.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities
• The provide a high-quality DBT treatment to clients with complex mental health problems, in particular people with complex emotional needs (CEN) associated with the diagnosis of Personality Disorder, such as attachment, interpersonal difficulties and emotional intensity. This will include specialist assessment to determine the most appropriate treatment.

To formulate plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of client's mental health problems based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the patient's problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings, in particular DBT and SCM models developed within the service for the treatment of personality disorder.

To act as Key worker, where appropriate, taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans under Dialog+ including patients, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care in consultation with the MDT.

To utilise clinical and team supervision, to demonstrate autonomy for treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed with a psychologically-based standard care plan, ensuring appropriate assessment, formulation and interventions, communicating with the referral agent and others involved with the care on a regular basis.

To provide guidance and consultation to MDT teams and other professionals contributing directly to patients' formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.

To provide formal and informal DBT supervision to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the team within a high-risk therapeutic setting.

To work safely and under guidance in relation to aggression and violence. To maintain breakaway skills for the prevention and management of aggression, as taught by the Trust. To ensure that risks of physical violence are minimised using appropriate planning and taking precautionary measures.

To undertake frequent risk assessment and risk management for individual patients and to provide both general and specialist advice for professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management pertaining to patients with personality disorders.

Person specification

Qualifications/ Registrations

Essential criteria

• Core health professional qualification (Psychology, Nursing, Social work, Occupational Therapy Psychotherapist) • Registration with the appropriate professional body (HCPC, NMC, Social Work England, UKCP, BACP)
• Working towards Accredited Practitioner Status in MBT or DBT

Desirable criteria

• Basic Training Certificate in Mentalisation-Based Therapy (MBT) or in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)

Skills and Abilities

Essential criteria

• Strong interest and desire to work with clients with complex emotional needs and personality disorder in trauma informed way
• Experience of running and delivering DBT groups in a clinical setting
• Minimum of two years' experience of working directly with patients with Personality Disorder
• Experience of facilitating psychoeducational and groups for service users.
• Experience of working with carers and family members
• Experience of working in a multidisciplinary team and working within a multicultural framework
• Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for patients' psychological care and treatment, both as a named/key worker
• Experience in developing risk management plans and psychological treatment pathways

Desirable criteria

• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision
• Experience of service development or of a leadership role.

Experience and Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Experience of service development or of a leadership role.
• Skills in the use psychological assessments, intervention and management
• Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to patients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups
• Ability to contain, explore and formulate an understanding of high levels of distress both directly with patients and indirectly via supervision of other staff, both individually and in an organisational context.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the post-holder's professional body
• Knowledge of legislation and its implications for both clinical practice and professional management in relation to the patient group and mental health

Desirable criteria

• A commitment to the evaluation of services, enthusiasm for both multi-professional and uni-professional audit
• Desire to take up leadership in service development of psychological treatment services

Personal Qualities

Essential criteria

• An enthusiasm and commitment to the psychological treatment in the field of Personality Disorder
• Ability to work independently, reliably, and consistently with work agreed and managed at regular intervals
• Ability to maintain professional boundaries and form positive therapeutic relationship with service users and carers
• Ability to contain and work with organisational stress and ability to "hold" the stress of others
• Ability to demonstrate BEH Trust Values

Desirable criteria

• A commitment to the evaluation of services, enthusiasm for both multi-professional and uni-professional audit
• Desire to take up leadership in service development of psychological treatment services

Other

Essential criteria

• Ability to identify, provide and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situation and severely challenging behaviours
• 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
• Ability to develop and use complex multi-media materials for presentations in public, professional and academic settings

References will be required to cover your last 3 years of employment/training. One has to be from your current or most recent employer and the others from your previous employer. The references should be from persons with management responsibility or HR.

If you have been unemployed for a period of four years or more, please give the details of your last employer and one character referee of your choice (not members of your family). If more applicable, references will be requested from your teacher or head of faculty. Please ensure you provide full contact details.

Vacancies that are advertised as Fixed Term Contracts will also be available as secondment opportunities for substantive internal staff.

Please be aware that your documents eg. Passport/NI Card, will be electronically scanned using Home Office accredited Verification System.

Due to the high number of applications that are received for some posts, we will close vacancies before the stated closing date once the first 50 applications are received. Therefore, please apply as soon as possible.

All non-medical posts with the Trust are subject to a probationary period of six months, during which time you will be required to demonstrate to the Trust's satisfaction, your suitability for the position in which you will be employed.

Should you not hear from us within three working weeks of the closing date for this post, then regretfully in this instance, you have not been shortlisted.

By applying for this role, you accept in the event you are successful that your personal data may be transferred from the Trust to another NHS organisation where your employment transfers within the NHS. This is in accordance with the streamlining programme which is aimed at improving efficiencies within the NHS both to make costs savings for NHS organisations but also to save you time when your employment transfers.

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

• JD and Person Specification DBT Senior Practitioner (PDF, 392.4KB)
• Functional Requirements PDF (PDF, 261.8KB)