We are looking for Assistant Psychologists to work as an integral part of the inpatient psychology team on male and female inpatient units, older adult mental health units, and dementia assessment units. All roles will contribute to therapeutic activities and psychological interventions. There will be vacancies based in both Warrington (Hollins Park Hospital) and Prescot (Knowsley Resource and Recovery Centre).
You will support and enhance the professional psychological care of service users working as part of a multi-disciplinary team including psychology, psychiatry, nursing staff and occupational therapy. The team regularly work with other services including social care, community mental health teams, based on individual need. You will receive regular supervision as well as informal support from a qualified psychologist.
You will have excellent communication and interpersonal skills and will have demonstrated ability to work effectively as part of a team. Above all you must be passionate about working with adults with acute mental health difficulties.
Due to the complex and demanding nature of the role, you will ideally have previous experience in either a similar role and/or with a similar patient group.
The role will involve supporting psychological assessments and evidence based interventions under the supervision of a qualified Psychologist. Assistant Psychologists will work with the Psychologist in promoting psychological support on inpatient wards.
The Assistant Psychologist will deliver group and individual psychological interventions for service users on the ward. You will be expected to attend and contribute towards daily ward meetings and you will work hard to improve inpatient care focusing on enhancing the therapeutic environment.
There will be opportunities to support inpatient services in audit and research, in order to inform service development and support best practice. We have good links with the universities and MCFT research department and we will do our best to support this if this is your area of interest.
We have successful and established models of care on our inpatient wards. We have the Self Harm Pathway and Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) and you will be expected to support these pathways on the wards.
The successful applicants must have a degree in psychology, which confers Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership with the British Psychological Society (BPS).
Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.
We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.
At the heart of all we do is our commitment to ‘perfect care’ – care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We’re currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.
Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.
Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details and requirements of the role.
