Clinical Practitioner - #188540

We are seeking an enthusiastic and compassionate clinician who has expertise in formulation-based interventions and a passion for supporting those with personality disorder difficulties.

The delivery of the NW ICPS is a partnership between North London and Central and North-West London NHS Foundation Trusts. This post is hosted by North London and forms part of the wider London Pathways Partnership (LPP). LPP is a consortium of five London NHS Trusts co-delivering services under the national Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway programme in partnership with colleagues in the National Probation Service (NPS) and HM Prison Service. LPP provides community OPD Pathway services across London, as well as in prisons within and outside London. The LPP staff group, mainly comprising psychological therapists and clinical practitioners, is among the most experienced teams nationally working with men and women who have serious offence histories that are linked to their personality difficulties.

The role is varied and includes the delivery of psycho-social and psychologically-informed interventions and the provision of consultation and training to probation colleagues and the community systems aiming to support our client group. Experience of the criminal justice system (prisons, probation, MAPPA, forensic mental health) is desirable. Continuing professional development is an integral part of the Offender Personality Pathway and access to further training will be supported.

The postholder will provide a specialist service to the North West London Integrated Community Pathways Service (NW ICPS), working together with colleagues from Probation Service London (PSL) and people on probation to deliver the desistance and stabilisation phase of the ICPS. The postholder will focus on supporting the effective management and engagement of people on probation with personality disorder/difficulties who are residing in the community.

The postholder will contribute to workforce development by providing supervision to ICPS clinical practitioners as well as appropriate psychologically informed psychosocial and risk management advice to involved staff across agencies. The postholder will liaise with probation, third sector and other agencies to address the support and wellbeing needs of involved service users and workers, working within a framework informed by best practice and the literature on working with personality disorder in a forensic population and effective risk management, with an emphasis on desistance.

The postholder will contribute to the development and implementation of effective governance frameworks, and to the audit and evaluation of developing services. They will work autonomously within professional guidelines, policies and procedures of London Pathways Partnership (LPP)’s services, and overarching objectives of LPP and the Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway.

North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT) is committed to improving mental health care across North London to deliver excellent services to our local people.

Our Five-Year Strategy:
We will provide consistently high-quality care closer to home.

With our partners in North London and each borough we will ensure equity of outcome for all

We will offer great places to work, providing staff with supportive environment to deliver outstanding care.

We will be more effective as an organisation by pioneering research, quality improvement and technology.

Why NLFT?

We develop and retain our staff through leadership behaviours and managers programme and many more opportunities.

We promote flexible working and support staff with a range of health and wellbeing initiatives.

NHS Discounts, generous annual leave and NHS pension scheme

Excellent internal staff network

The post holder will be aligned with our values:
We Are Kind

We Are Respectful

We Work Together

We Keep Things Simple

We Empower

We Are Proudly Diverse

In order to meet the needs of the Trust 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, Camden, Enfield, Haringey or Islington. 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.

Clinical:

• To contribute to the provision of expert advice, consultation, formulation, assessment and treatment for individuals with personality difficulties and for staff working with these individuals.
• To provide specialist psychosocial interventions, risk management and advice for highly complex service users with significant psychological difficulties following their release from prison; integrating highly complex information from a variety of sources addressing both risk and personality difficulties, and requiring analysis, interpretation and comparison of a range of options.
• To formulate and implement plans for service users’ effective support and management, based upon an appropriate theoretical and evidence-based framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence and practice and professional guidelines.
• To provide specialist advice and consultation on resettlement to probation and prison staff, mental health services, and other relevant criminal justice, health and third sector agencies.
• To plan, organize and implement a range of specialist psychosocial interventions and activities requiring formulation and adjustment in response to service users, and where appropriate carers and involved professionals; co-working with clinical and non-clinical colleagues as appropriate.
• To evaluate and make decisions about interventions and support, 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 communicate highly sensitive information and decisions in situations where there may be barriers to acceptance and a hostile, antagonistic or highly emotive atmosphere.
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for assessment and interventions with service users whose problems are managed by psychosocially informed care/pathway plans within the OPD Pathway.
• To develop specialist desistance and stabilisation programmes for individual service users with highly complex presentations, and highly specialized advice for multi-agency professionals within the OPD Pathway
• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users in community settings, and to provide advice to other professions on psychosocial aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
• To take responsibility for initiating planning and review of psychosocial interventions and care/pathway plans including service users, their carers, referring agents and others involved the network of care.
• To provide specialist psychosocial advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to service users’ formulations and pathway plans.
• To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychosocially-based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all users of the service, across all settings and agencies.
• To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner information concerning the assessment, formulation, intervention and support plans of service users within the OPD Pathway and to monitor progress during the course of multi-agency pathway delivery.

Teaching, training and supervision:

• To receive regular supervision from a psychologist.
• To continue to gain post-qualification experience in psychosocial interventions and management, within and beyond the principal service area where the post-holder is employed.
• To develop skills in teaching, training and supervision and to provide supervision to other multi-agency staff and relevant professional practice as appropriate.
• To provide supervision and line management to clinical practitioners within the team.
• To provide supervision to students on placement from the relevant professional practice area.
• To co-produce and co-deliver workforce development interventions with service users within and beyond the postholder’s principal service area.
• To contribute to external and internal training programmes.

Management, recruitment and service development:

• To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the team’s operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.
• To contribute to the development of the service’s governance and strategy, and to implement and monitor policy and practice initiatives as required.
• To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychosocial and/or organisational matters need addressing.
• To implement policy and propose changes to practices and procedures within the service area and the OPD Pathway.
• To help manage the workloads of Band 6 and 5 clinical practitioners and support workers, within the framework of the team/service’s policies and procedures.
• To be involved, as appropriate, in the shortlisting and interviewing of multidisciplinary staff.
• To be involved in service development projects as agreed by the professional lead.

IT responsibilities

• To be proficient in the use of IT for email, intranet and clinical record purposes. To be familiar with word processing and database packages; to use appropriate computer software to develop and create clinical or other service-related reports or documents.

Research and service evaluation

• To use theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
• To initiate, implement and contribute to the evaluation, monitoring and development of the service, including audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within and across the service, to help develop and improve services to all service users.
• To contribute to the evaluation, monitoring and development of the multi-disciplinary team.
• To contribute to the development, implementation, evaluation and monitoring of the Directorate’s and Trust’s operational policies and services.

General

• To contribute to the development and maintenance of the highest professional standards of practice, through active participation in internal and external CPD training and development programmes, in consultation with the post holder’s professional and service manager(s).
• To contribute to the development and articulation of best practice across the service, by continuing to develop relevant professional skills taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the relevant disciplines.
• To maintain 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 and Trust policies and procedures.
• 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.