Higher Assistant Clinical Psychologist - in Long Covid

This is an exciting opportunity for a Higher Assistant Psychologist to join the Bradford, District and Craven Health and Care Partnership (BDC) Long COVID Pathway working into a split role between the BDC Long COVID pathway and Bradford District Care’s COVID Rehabilitation course. There is opportunity for full-time working as a 12-month secondment or fixed-term contract until the end of March 2023. The BDC Long COVID pathway is a collaborative venture between three Trusts in Bradford, Craven and Airedale including Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, Bradford District Care Foundation Trust, and Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (Act as One).

The BDC Long COVID and COVID Course pathways are still relatively new pathways to support people with Long COVID. This is an exciting opportunity to be part of a fast-evolving team. The two pathways work closely together to develop and share resources for people locally and nationally.

Over 850 people with Long COVID have so far registered for the course which has now been rolled out to all residents in Bradford, Craven and Airedale.

Closing date - 18th June 2023
Shortlisting date - 20th June 2023
Interview date - 4 July (PM only) and 6th July (AM only) 2023

Both programmes take a largely virtual group based approach with many exciting courses that you have the opportunity to be involved with, such as stress/anxiety management, brain fog, sleep, mindfulness for health, PTSD psychoeducational group, and for the Course pathway applicant our published intervention ‘7 week Recovering from COVID’ virtual course which was published in December 2021 (Post-Covid-19 Syndrome: Improvements in Health-Related Quality of Life Following Psychology-Led Interdisciplinary Virtual Rehabilitation - PubMed (nih.gov)) There will also be opportunities for one-to-one manualised approaches, drawing on predominantly Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

The Long COVID Pathways have five key aims:
1. To deliver early assessment, triage, and intervention to people in Bradford, Airedale and Craven with Long COVID.
2. To develop and deliver effective rehab courses to staff with Long COVID.
3. To deliver individualised treatment and support for people who experience long COVID.
4. To promote the COVID Rehab model locally, regionally, and nationally through research/evaluation, teaching, and networking to increase accessibility for people with Long COVID/Post-COVID19 Syndrome.
5. To expand the pathway to include other long-term health conditions and prevent ill health.

Everything we do is underpinned by our core values: -

We Care- We act with respect and empathy, and always value difference

We Listen- We understand people’s views and respond to their individual needs

We Deliver- We develop and provide excellent services and support our partners

We will consider a variety of flexible working arrangements to enable staff to balance their work and home lives and support staff by offering a fantastic range of benefits including :

Increase mileage rates for > 3500

A wide range of health and wellbeing support packages

A range of internal and external development and learning opportunities

Plus many more.

We are also proud to pledge our support to the Armed Forces and hold a Bronze Award in the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme.

BDCFT is dedicated to environmental and social sustainability by delivering on the commitments within our Green Plan. All staff are actively encouraged and supported to participate in training and to identify and implement sustainable quality improvement across all service areas and activities.

The team aims to develop and deliver a community based integrated model of healthcare for people with Long COVID/Post-COVID19 Syndrome. The post-holder will support and enhance the professional psychological care within the COVID Rehab pathway, providing psychological assessment and psychological interventions under the supervision of a qualified professional psychologist and psychological therapist, working independently and as part of a team according to a plan agreed with the qualified psychologist and psychological therapist and within the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures. You will be working within a multidisciplinary team consisting of Clinical Pathway Rehabilitation Coordinator, Clinical Psychology, Psychological Therapy, Occupational Therapist, Physiotherapist, Nutritionist, Speech and Language Therapist, Mental Health Nurse, Specialist Medical Consultants (via fortnightly Respiratory and Cardiology multidisciplinary team meetings), Assistant Psychologist, Rehabilitation Assistants and Admin (with slight variations in the two pathways). You will be expected to work with the team to deliver groups and courses, deliver one-to-one standardised psychological interventions, collect, and monitor outcome data for audit and research, manage the patient data base, and any other reasonable requests to support the team.

As part of the role on the BDC Long COVID Pathway you will support with the Therapy Led Objective Clinics (TLOC) and innovative virtual patient-initiated group follow ups. A small number of patients will book into the virtual group session to review their progress and share experiences and advice. Whilst being supported by a facilitator from the team you will support the participants in identifying their chosen area of improvement and link this to one of the suite of therapeutic interventions that we have to offer within the pathway. You will be provided with support and training to lead on these sessions.

This is a hybrid role with many duties being carried out from home including virtual groups. You will be provided with a smart phone and laptop to support you in your duties.

As part of the employee benefit you will have access to wellbeing @ work which includes but is not limited to: Dedicated support groups for diverse populations, in-house staff support and therapy service, COVID Rehab pathway, free confidential financial support, and many others.

You will also be invited to join the large BDCFT Assistant Psychologist peer support group.

For full details please read the job description.