Job Description
Would you like to join a friendly, supportive and innovative psychology team who are celebrating 11 years of providing an excellent service for older teenagers and young adults with cancer? Are you keen to work at 8a level and develop your strategic and leadership skills alongside your clinical work?
This is a fixed-term maternity cover role working alongside the lead psychologist and another 8a psychologist within the award-winning Teenage and Young Adult Cancer (TYA) Service. This is a really exciting time to join the team as our new Young Adult Unit (YAU) is due to open this summer, so there is great scope to develop what the psychology service offers, in conjunction with patients, families and the wider team, and to broaden your skills in teaching, staff support, supervision, research and service development.
You will contribute to our busy multidisciplinary clinic for patients aged 18-25 with cancer or a brain tumour, work on our YAU, and offer one-to-one and group interventions to patients and their loved ones using a range of approaches and both virtual and face-to-face appointments.
A key aim of which is to lead on the development of therapeutic groups for both patients and families - work which the current psychologist in post has already started and will hand over to you to continue during this year of cover.
We are also expanding the TYA psychology service to offer individual psychological support to families and loved ones. With these large service developments, and the opening of the new YAU, there is a lot of opportunity to teach and support staff across the unit, to use audit and research skills to assess the impact of the expanded services, and to make the case for further development. The service is also a popular placement destination for Doctoral Clinical Psychology trainees and MSc psychology students.
We are looking for someone with:
- Good clinical skills in more than one therapeutic approach
- A passion for working with young people and their families
- Enthusiasm for developing groups
- Keen audit and research skills
- A wish to build on their supervisory abilities
- An interest in working within a broad systemic approach
The Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Service is a close and supportive multidisciplinary team caring for people with a diagnosis of cancer or a brain tumour aged 16-24 years at the time of diagnosis. The team consists of our consultant haematologist service lead, lead nurse, specialist dietitian, fertility consultant, social workers and administrator as well as the lead psychologist and another practitioner psychologist. We have a systemic, holistic focus and all contribute to the weekly MDT at which patients spend some time with each professional, before we formulate their needs together. This is a very exciting time to join the TYA team as our brand new YAU is about to open, creating a special environment for young people and staff, and the TYA psychology team will be integral in developing the unit, including training and supporting staff.
We have very close links with and benefit from the expertise and support of both the Dimbleby Cancer Care Service at Guy’s and the Haematology Health Psychology Service. We play an active role in the UK TYA Psycho-oncology network and the International Network of Psychologists in AYA Cancer (INPAYAC) so there are many opportunities to collaborate with colleagues from other centres across the world. The wider Trust has a large and well-connected psychology workforce so you will also be able to enhance your own practice via professional development and contact with other psychologists across the Trust.
As one of three psychologists in the TYA team the post holder will work closely with the other two psychologists, as well as with the other professionals who make up the wider MDT.
This post will support the development of a group therapy programme. This will involve prioritising the therapy groups in line with service leadership, direction and patient need. It will require assessment for suitability for groups, the designing, setting up, delivery, evaluation and write-up and presentation of therapeutic groups. There will be overlap within the psychology team which works closely together, and most groups will require more than one practitioner psychologist for delivery, but experience in delivering a group therapy programme would be very helpful.
The post holder will ensure the systematic provision of a high-quality and highly-specialist psychology service for young people in haemato-oncology, cancer and brain tumour services within GSTT and Kings College Hospital. The post holder will deliver therapeutic and systemic interventions and resilience-enhancing practices at multiple time points for families from diagnosis, during and after treatment, into survivorship, death and bereavement.
Alongside the above clinical work, the post holder will provide clinical supervision and consultation as appropriate to other members of the service and work effectively within the multi-disciplinary TYA team. The post holder will support the development of psychologically-informed working practice within the service and work effectively as a senior member of the multidisciplinary team and a senior member of the wider haematology directorate. With the opening of the new unit in particular there is scope to deliver training to other staff, and facilitate reflective practice groups and other initiatives to promote staff competencies and wellbeing.
The post holder will be expected to support the implementation of policy and contribute to service development for the provision of clinical health psychology in TYA. They will be required to carry out service evaluation, audit, research and service development within the Teenage and Young Adult Cancer service, and to apply and implement national TYA psycho-oncology strategy and create effective partnerships with other agencies relevant to our patient population, e.g. charities and TYA schemes.
The post holder will be expected to work autonomously within professional practice and Trust guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the designated area of responsibility.
The essential days for this post are Mondays and Wednesdays.
For further details please refer to the attached documents.
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