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Detailed job description and main responsibilities

1. To provide highly developed 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 tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with patients, members of the multi-disciplinary paediatric team, family members and others involved in the client’s care
2. To formulate plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a patient’s psychological needs as they relate to a medical diagnosis, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings
3. To be responsible for implementing a range of highly specialized psychological interventions for patients, carers, families and groups, employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses
4. To make highly skilled evaluations and decisions about treatment options 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 exercise full responsibility and autonomy for the treatment of and discharge from the psychological service, ensuring appropriate assessment, formulation and interventions, communicating with the referral agent and all other professional groups in the paediatric
6. medial team as appropriate and others outside the team involved with the care as appropriate
7.  To provide expertise and highly specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan
8. To ensure that all members of the clinical team have access to a psychologically based framework for the understanding and care of paediatric patients, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological knowledge, research and theory
9. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for relevant individual patients and to provide both general and specialist advice for other professionals on psychological and neuropsychological aspects of risk assessment and management.
10. To act as care co-ordinator, where appropriate, ensuring the provision of a care package appropriate for the patient’s needs, co-ordinating the work of others involved with care, arranging patient’s care reviews as required and communicating effectively with the patient, his/her family and all others involved in care; and to monitor progress during the course of multi-disciplinary interventions.