Senior Applied Psychologist/ CBT Therapist

Our Home treatment teams have been awarded significant new funds to expand their service provision. This includes a number of new psychological professions posts for the five HTTs in Kent and Medway. The teams are based in Canterbury, Gillingham, Dartford and Maidstone. All posts are for a minimum of 3 days per week (0.6wte), we welcome applications for full time work.

This is an exciting time of change within the Trust as existing teams move into place-based care model of service delivery and focus on two key functions of home treatment and a rapid response assessment service.

To participate in the provision of Psychological Practice to adults with severe and enduring mental health difficulties, aged 18 and upwards, within the localities served by Kent & Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust.

In particular:

• To be responsible for the systematic provision of a range of evidence-based psychological interventions to working age adults with severe and enduring mental health difficulties.
• To undertake high quality direct (assessment and therapeutic) and indirect (consultative, advisory and evaluative) specialist psychology interventions within the service and taking substantial professional responsibility and exercising autonomous judgement in their professional practice.
• To ensure the clinical effectiveness of own practice and of service functioning by undertaking research and development relevant to the service area.
• To be regularly responsible for providing and contributing to training placements for trainee applied psychologists and for providing professional support and guidance to basic/senior psychologists in this specialism.

Come and work with us in the Garden of England where we combine exceptional professional development opportunities with a tremendous quality of life.

We are Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust (KMPT), providing mental health, learning disability and specialist services, serving 1.8 million people across the county.

The Trust (rated Good overall by the CQC and Outstanding for care) has 3,283 staff working in 66 buildings across 33 locations, covering an area of 1,450 square miles.

You will be joining friendly, passionate colleagues, rich in their diversity, who are committed to providing excellent care to our service users and their loved ones.

The nature of our work attracts kindness and compassion as standard and everyone from our cleaners and porters to the chief executive and chairman are recognised as playing a vital role in providing an exemplary service.

1. To provide specialist psychological assessment of adults with severe and enduring mental health difficulties, utilising information from a broad range of structured psychometric and semi-structured clinical methodologies and integrating it into a psychological formulation of the client and the psychosocial environment, drawing on a range of psychological theoretical perspectives.

2. To formulate and implement plans of specialist psychological treatment or management of client’s mental health problems based on a multi-factorial psychological understanding and current evidence-based best practice.
1. To undertake a range of psychological therapeutic interventions, drawing on a range of psychological models and employing a range of modalities (individual, family and group) adapted and tailored to the needs of the individual and the context and the ongoing evaluation of the outcomes of the intervention.
2. To be responsible for providing a specialist psychological perspective in the assessment of service users and their families and contribute specialist psychological advice and support regarding referral decisions for mental health intervention.
3. To contribute highly specialist psychological advice to the multi-disciplinary formulation of appropriate therapeutic approaches or intervention plans, and to be involved in, or oversee specialist psychological aspects of their implementation in collaboration with other staff.
4. To undertake psychologically based risk assessment and risk management for relevant clients and provide advice on the psychological aspects of risk.
5. To consult with and provide specialist psychological guidance to carers and families of service users.
6. To take substantial professional responsibility and exercise autonomous professional judgement with regard to their professional practice.