Job Description

Are you a qualified or soon-to-be qualified psychologist that is passionate about social justice? Are you interested providing evidence based psychological therapy to people who use alcohol and other drugs and supporting teams to work in psychologically informed ways?



We are looking for a Band 8a qualified clinical or counselling psychologist to join our new partnership service.



AWP are excited to be part of the multi agency partnership led by Turning Point delivering community drug and alcohol treatment in Banes. This innovative remodelling of the drug and alcohol service draws on the unique and specific expertise of four providers (Turning Point, Bristol Drugs Project, Nelson Trust and AWP).



AWP's role within the partnership to deliver the psychology aspects of the treatment system, working clinically with patients, to embed psychological informed ways of working into the wider workforce and to connect the drug treatment service with colleagues in community mental to improve quality of care for people with co-occurring mental health and substance use problems.



We are looking for an enthusiastic qualified Practitioner Psychologist to join the BaNES Psychological Therapies Service (PTS), which is part of a developing integrated drug and alcohol treatment system. BaNES PTS is a friendly team of Psychologists and Therapists, who offer NICE recommended therapies to people across the locality services. In addition to our therapy offer, we work into all teams to enhance psychological and trauma informed thinking about distress (formulation, consultation, joint work etc). One of the senior Clinical Psychologists from PTS will offer Clinical Supervision to the post holder.



We are AWP (Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust) a diverse organisation with over 5,000 dedicated staff providing inpatient and community-based mental health care.



We provide services from a range of locations to approximately 1.8 million people living in Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES), Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, across the county of Wiltshire and in parts of Dorset.



Our outstanding people promote mental health and wellbeing. The expertise and resources within AWP are dedicated to a person-centred approach for those who use our services and for all employees. We recognise that happy and fulfilled employees give better care.



At AWP we actively encourage applicants from all backgrounds; we are particularly keen to encourage applications from people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, those with disabilities and from the LGBTQ+ community. We want people to bring their unique blend of experiences, backgrounds, perspectives and knowledge to AWP, as diversity makes us stronger.



The post-holder will be in leading and supporting the psychological vision for the service become a reality, working in collaboration with the wider team and local mental health services. The post involves the provision of time-limited psychological interventions within the stepped-care model. The main emphasis for the role will be developing a range of intensities of psychological therapy, psychosocial and psychologically informed intervention to enable service users to progress in their recovery. The interventions that are core to the role and development are CBT and DBT skills, as well as familiarity with motivational interviewing. Training and supervision to underpin the provision of psychologically informed interventions will also key to the work of the team. The service is developing its adversity and trauma informed practice and, as such, experience and/or interest in delivering trauma focused psychological therapies would be advantageous. It is not expected that the post-holder will have all of these skills. The role will also provide clinical supervision, training, CPD, reflective practice and team formulation.