Job summary
- Main area
- Psychology
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 4
- Contract
- 12 months (Fixed term)
- Hours
- Part time - 22.5 hours per week
- Job ref
- 380-FR0547
- Employer
- Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Chiron Community
- Town
- Maidstone
- Salary
- £26,530 - £29,114 per annum
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 25/03/2025 23:59
Employer heading
Psychological Assistant
NHS AfC: Band 4
The CQC rates us as an Outstanding organisation for Caring with an overall rating of Good
Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust (KMPT) offer a range of ongoing benefits to our valued workforce across the Trust. From an active health and wellbeing programme to regular recognition events, we work hard to provide varied benefits that make a difference to your work-life balance.
Would you like to work flexibly? In the NHS, we are reminded every day of how important life is. As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us, for our patients and for you.
Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement.
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Job overview
As a Psychological Assistant, you will provide clinical, research and administrative support to the psychological therapies, allied healthcare and probation staff in the OPD Team under their direct guidance and supervision, in order to assist in providing and monitoring the service provision within the Service Line.
Bringing to bear clinical and data analysis skills, you will be developing a role already established within the team to work closely with service users, clinical staff/ probation staff, and the wider team in supporting the delivery of a comprehensive psychology service in the units and evaluation of the services. The post will involve working closely with other agencies, including Community services and the Criminal Justice System.
Main duties of the job
The main responsibility of the post-holder is to participate in the provision of Psychological Services to offenders within the OPD service based within Kent Probation (HMPPS).
Bringing to bear clinical and data analysis skills, you will be developing a role already established within the team to work closely with service users, clinical staff/ probation staff, and the wider team in supporting the delivery of a comprehensive psychology service in the units and evaluation of the services. The post will involve working closely with other agencies, including Community services and the Criminal Justice System.
The hardest part of the job is to co-ordinate a number of inter-related, and often time consuming, tasks within the time and resource demands of the service.
Working for our organisation
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 in Kent and Medway, as well as specialist services for adults in Sussex and Surrey. We are rated Good overall by the CQC.
Each year we care for over 2,000 people in our hospitals and 54,000 people in the community.
We are proud to employ over 3,800 people from 66 nationalities, and to serve an increasingly diverse range of communities across rural and urban areas.
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.
Our strategy
Our mission is what we set out to do every day
We deliver brilliant care through brilliant people
Our vision is where we want to be in the future
To provide outstanding care and to work in partnership to deliver this in the right place, for every service user, every time.
Check out our recruitment videos Recruitment - YouTube
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
- Take an active role in coordinating and conducting initial assessments and formulations under the supervision of a qualified psychologist. Gather and collate information and reports in order to contribute to the development of risk formulations and treatment planning.
- Administer and score appropriate formal psychometric assessment instruments and other forms of assessment and compile reports and behavioural care plans as appropriate.
- Co-facilitate structured groups such as anger management, social skills, problem solving, offence specific risk reduction and other similar groups as relevant to the needs of the client population. In addition to collect and formulate information from the protocols for use in future treatment planning.
- Take part in audit, Qi, and research as well as contribute to data collection in order to improve service delivery.
- Provision of administrative support to the clinical psychologists including literature searches for relevant articles, collation of information for case conferences, new psychometric tools or planning of specific groups.
Please see the attached job description for full details.
Person specification
Training, Qualifications and Registration
Essential criteria
- Good honours degree in Psychology (at least 2:1) recognised by the British Psychological Society.
Desirable criteria
- • A Masters degree in psychology or another mental health / forensic field.
Experience
Essential criteria
- Experience of working with people with mental health problems
- Experience in research methods and collation of data.
- Experience in working with people with offending behaviour histories.
Desirable criteria
- Experience of working within community LD or mental health teams, and / or the Criminal Justice System
- Experience of working with people with learning disability
Knowledge and Skills
Essential criteria
- Ability to receive and communicate verbally and in writing, complex sensitive information in a manner appropriate to a range of emotive situations or audiences with significantly impaired communication abilities.
- Ability to analyse and manage a range of clinical assessment and/or research data in the light of relevant psychological theory.
- Ability to organise own workload effectively, prioritising a complex range of tasks and responsibilities to meet agreed deadlines.
- Standard keyboard skills and a sound understanding of IT packages.
- Ability to administer complex psychometric test materials.
- Graduate level knowledge of research design and methodology including a range of types of data analysis practiced within the field of psychology.
- Capacity to manage exposure to distressing and emotive situations.
- Capability to tolerate occasional exposure to unpredictable working conditions which may include incidents of verbal and/or physical aggression from service users.
Desirable criteria
- Some knowledge of literature relating to learning disability and behavioural or cognitive approaches.
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Applicant requirements
The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Application numbers
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Tania Tancred
- Job title
- Consultant Forensic Psychologist
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 07966 134936
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