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The Enhanced Support Service (ESS) at HMP Pentonville is an Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway service. ESS aims to support HMP Pentonville by working with men who are displaying personality difficulties and supporting staff in their understanding and management of challenging behaviour.
The ESS psychologist works as the team lead, alongside a senior mental health nurse and prison officer at HMP Pentonville. They liaise with multiple disciplines and forums (e.g. wing staff, CSU, safer custody, senior managers, MHIRT, CSIP/SIM, GOAD, ACCT) to identify, assess and work with men exhibiting patterns of concerning behaviours such as violence/aggression, self-harm, disruptive/destructive, and sexually inappropriate behaviours.
The psychologist’s role includes:
- Taking charge of the day to day management of the service. This responsibility will include the co-ordination of daily activities and chairing of meetings (e.g. weekly team, monthly business and quarterly commissioner meetings). It may involve delegation of both administrative and service-user contact work. It will not involve line management decisions such as leave which will be addressed by senior managers as part the business meeting.
- Assessment of prisoners accepted by the team as required (those with personality difficulties).
- Delivering psychologically informed interventions to service-users, guided by formulations and management plans. These may include psychoeducation, basic emotional management skills, and distress tolerance.
- Taking a lead in the development of management plans which will be based on case formulations of the individuals concerned.
- Keeping up-to-date on research and development on the management of challenging behaviour and the OPD pathway.
- Developing and co-ordinating or delivering training relating to management of challenging behaviour to other team members and to other prison staff (including civilian and healthcare staff) e.g. resilience training, motivational interviewing, reflective practice.
Overview of the job
This is non-operational prisoner facing job
Summary
The job holders covered by this job description are usually categorised as specialists in their field or those whose role requires significant additional experience, training and personal development.
The job holder will largely excel in the area of individual prisoner risk assessment or be a specialist in a specific area such as working with sex offenders. At this level the jobholder may have responsibility for the key specialist tasks involved in the delivery of a programme or related individual case management which would also entail overseeing the quality of delivery and supervision. They will also provide direction and support for other supervisors. This is a non-operational and non-rotational job.
The job holder will be working with complex prisoners and prison staff and applying their experience and competence in the area of psychology to reduce the risk of harm and re-offending by undertaking complex risk assessment of prisoners, conducting research, providing consultancy and delivering training for staff and interventions (individual and group) for prisoners.
Responsibilities, Activities and Duties
The job holder will be required to carry out the following responsibilities, activities and duties:
- Reviews cases and reconsiders the professional advice given by other psychologists on the potential release of serious prisoners
- Conducts full case reviews on difficult cases and offers authoritative advice on next steps relating to sentence plan
- Specialises in delivery of psychology services in settings such as therapeutic community wings
- Lead and supervise and facilitate group sessions
- Offers professional opinion to multi functional teams conducting offender reports e.g. risk reports, parole reports on high risk or vulnerable prisoners
- Develops and/or strategies such as sex offender or indeterminate sentence prisoner assessment and intervention strategy
- Delivers and supervises (treatment management) the delivery of more complex programmes e.g. healthy sexual functioning
- Provides consultancy support to colleagues such as an establishment Senior Management Team (SMT) in relation to psychology services and outcomes
- Conducts relevant research including data gathering and analysis
- Act as a "professional witness" in parole board hearings, multi-agency meetings, and other formal settings where psychology input is required. May also act as expert witness in respect of court proceedings for Ministry of Justice
- Responsible for managing and providing professional supervision to trainee forensic psychology staff
- Provides supervision, training, mentoring and support to trainee psychologists and where relevant other staff such as interventions staff
- Assist in national specialist tasks such as training on courses related to their specialist discipline
- Provides professional supervision to support a trainee in developing through the key steps towards chartered and registered status. This may be as a coordinating or designated supervisor
- Ensures staff are developed in accordance with key competencies and gateways and ensuring consistency across the team in the application of policies and procedures affecting staff and offenders
- Leads on risk assessment and resulting risk management of complex, vulnerable or high risk prisoners. Will be competent to undertake the full range of risk assessments including the more complex risk assessments. Gives feedback of the assessment to the prisoner and other stakeholders
- Contributes to other offender management processes (usually with more complex cases in work such as Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) assessments and self harm or personality disorder assessments)
- Provides consultancy role to wider team on their specialist activity. Visit a range of sites to advise on complex cases
- Act as a negotiation adviser where suitable and competence has been demonstrated
- Manage own Continued Professional Development (CPD) requirements and maintains professional standards
- Ensure they maintain their professional Health Professions Council (HPC) registration
- Provide a psychological contribution to the work of areas of the regime such as a therapeutic community
- Provide psychological reports when requested for life sentence prisoners and to submit within the appropriate time framework
- Responsible for relevant accreditation audit baselines as detailed in the audit document
- Line management of trainee psychologists
The duties/responsibilities listed above describe the post as it is at present and is not intended to be exhaustive. The job holder is expected to accept reasonable alterations and additional tasks of a similar level that may be necessary. Significant adjustments may require re-examination under the Job Evaluation Scheme and shall be discussed in the first instance with the job holder.
An ability to fulfil all spoken aspects of the role with confidence through the medium of English.
Behaviours
- Making Effective Decisions
- Leadership
- Communicating and Influencing
- Working Together
- Developing Self and Others
- Managing a Quality Service
- Delivering at Pace
Essential Experience
Possess a professional background in one of the following disciplines: Psychotherapy, Psychology, Psychiatry, Nursing
Experience in providing clinical supervision
Completed relevant training in effective models of treatment and best practise
They are likely to also be a Chartered Psychologist and Full member of the appropriate division of the BPS if the post requires it.
Technical Requirements
The job holder will be a Registered Practitioner Psychologist with the Health Professions Council and eligible to use a protected title.
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