Senior Neonatal Psychologist

This job is brought to you by Jobs/Redefined, the UK's leading over-50s age inclusive jobs board.

Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust, (LGT), is a community-focused provider of local and acute care, delivering high-quality services to over one million people living across the London boroughs of Lewisham, Greenwich, and Bexley. We provide whole-life care and are here to support our communities to live healthier lives as well as taking care of them when they need us the most.

Employing almost 7,500 colleagues, affectionately known as Team LGT, we provide services at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, University Hospital Lewisham, and at over a dozen community settings in Lewisham. We also provide some services at Queen Mary's Hospital in Sidcup.

We have recently launched our new vision and values to mark the LGT10 - the tenth anniversary of our Trust forming in 2013. Our trust vision is to be exceptional. In the quality of our patient care; our support for colleagues; and in the difference we make through our partnerships and in our communities.

To achieve this we value Respect, Compassion, and Inclusion; Being accountable over staying comfortable; Listening over always knowing best; and Succeeding together over achieving alone. You can read more about our visions and values here

Our hospitals and community sites provide a wide range of inpatient and outpatient services, as well as emergency and planned care. The Trust is rated as "good" or "outstanding" in over three-quarters of the services inspected by the Care Quality Commission.

Every year our work includes performing 10,000 procedures in our theatres; bringing seven and a half thousand new lives into the world; carrying out 570,000 visits to patients in their homes or communities and providing emergency care for more than 300,000 patients arriving in our busy Urgent and Emergency Departments.

LGT is a centre for the education and training of medical students enrolled with King's College London's GKT School of Medical Education. We are a training centre for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals. We are pioneering new roles that will support the changing needs of our patients and are one of the largest employers of physician associates in the country.

We are committed to working with our partners to deliver the best outcomes for our local communities. This means playing an active role in the South East London Integrated Care System (ICS), and in formal partnerships including the South East London Acute Provider Collaborative, provider partnerships with our local mental health trusts and borough-based boards of the ICS in Bexley, Greenwich and Lewisham.

Job overview

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Band 8b Senior Neonatal psychologist to join our cross site team at Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust.

The role is part time and with flexible hours to support our teams and families being cared for within the Neonatal setting.

You will ensure the systematic provision of a high quality specialist clinical psychology service to clients of the service team, across all sectors of care.

We have a Band 7 psychologist within the team that you will be supervising in order to develop a safe environment where families can thrive and be empowered to actively participate in the care of their baby.

We have close links with the London ODN and their lead Psychologists, enabling the post holder to work within the growing team of neonatal psychologists around London.

Main duties of the job
• To ensure the systematic provision of a high quality specialist clinical psychology service to clients of the service team, across all sectors of care.
• To supervise* and support the psychological assessment and therapy provided by other psychologists and other clinical members of the team who provide psychologically based care and treatment.
• To work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service/team.
• To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research.
• To propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the team/service.

Working for our organisation

Our people are our greatest asset. When we feel supported and happy at work, this positivity reaches those very people we are here for, the patients. Engaged employees perform at their best and our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) initiatives contribute to cultivate a culture of engagement. We have four staff networks, a corporate EDI Team and a suite of programmes and events which aim to insert the 5 aspirations:

1. Improving representation at senior levels of staff with disabilities, from black, Asian, and ethnic minorities background, identify as LGBTQ+ and women, through improved recruitment and leadership development
2. Widening access (anchor institution) and employability
3. Improving the experience of staff with disability
4. Improving the EDI literacy and confidence of trust staff through training and development
5. Making equalities mainstream

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

1. To provide specialist psychological assessments of patients referred to the service 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 clients, family members and others involved in the client's care

2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a patient's psychological difficulties, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework 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 exercise autonomous professional responsibility for assessment, treatment options and discharge planning, 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 provide specialist psychological advice guidance and consultation to other professionals involved in the patient's care, ensuring that all members of the treating team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of clients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.

6. To undertake risk assessment and risk management as appropriate for individual patients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.

7. To act as care coordinator, where appropriate, taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans including patients, their families, referring agents and others involved the network of care.

8. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of patients under their care and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.

9. To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Doctoral level training in clinical psychology, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology, as accredited by the BPS.

Desirable criteria

• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.

Experience

Essential criteria

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and in patient settings.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems.
• Assessed experience of working as a qualified clinical psychologist for a minimum of four years with 4 years at a highly specialist level.
• Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for patients' psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care coordinator (or equivalent in physical health care settings) and also within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan.

Desirable criteria

• Experience of representing psychology within the context of multi-disciplinary care.

SKILLS

Essential criteria

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Well developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or 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 non-professional groups.

Desirable criteria

• Well-developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological approaches for specific problems (e.g. traumatic reactions, bereavement, adherence difficulties, preparation for medical treatment).
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group (eg with regard to child protection and consent to treatment)

Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS.
• Formal training in supervision of other psychologists.

Desirable criteria

• Knowledge of a number of medical conditions and the impact of their treatment on quality of life

We reserve the right to close the post before the stated closing date, please apply early. We do not contact applicants with the outcome of the shortlisting. If you have been shortlisted, you will receive an invite to an assessment day or interview.

As a local employer and anchor institution we work closely with our community to recruit locally and we welcome applications from the widest variety of people to ensure our workforce are reflective of the local communities which we serve. We encourage all suitable candidates to apply including if you are Black, Asian or other ethnic minorities, live with a disability (visible or not) or are LGBT+. We have a number of active staff networks including Disability, LGBT+, Multicultural Inclusion and Women's staff networks to bring staff together and celebrate diversity across our whole workforce.

Please note, not all roles will meet the criteria for a skilled worker visa.

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 (PDF, 329.1KB)
• Working at LGT (PDF, 4.2MB)