CAMHS Senior Clinical Psychologist

South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Trust; Wakefield; On-site; GBP 45,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading NHS Foundation Trust is seeking a Senior Clinical Psychologist to deliver high-quality psychological services to children and young people with complex needs. The role emphasizes clinical leadership, supervision, and training within a multidisciplinary team while managing a varied caseload. Applicants should possess a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology and be HCPC registered. The position is based in Wakefield, offering a dynamic opportunity to contribute significantly to mental health services.

Benefits

Training and development opportunities

Supportive work environment

Qualifications

• Significant post-qualification experience in relevant settings.
• Experience of working with diverse client groups including complex cases.
• Ability to supervise Psychology Assistants and Trainees.

Responsibilities

• Provide direct clinical work with children, young people and families.
• Offer clinical supervision within the team.
• Contribute to service development and quality improvement.

Skills

Psychometric Assessment

Communication Skills

Clinical Supervision

Emotional Support

Group Work

Education

Doctorate in Clinical Psychology

HCPC Registration as a Clinical Psychologist

Job description

CAMHS Senior Clinical Psychologist

The closing date is 11 February 2026

This is an opportunity to join a well-established and evolving CAMHS Team in a Senior Clinical Psychologist role that combines high-quality clinical work and leadership.

As a Band 8A Clinical Psychologist, you will be a key part of shaping how care is delivered to children, young people and families with complex mental health needs. The role offers scope to maintain strong clinical identity, whilst also contributing to service development, team leadership, and the wider strategic direction of the service.

You will work with a varied and complex caseload, offering evidence-based psychological assessment and intervention within a multi-disciplinary team. Alongside the direct clinical work, you will provide supervision to staff, consultation for appropriateness of psychology for a child or young person and help to embed trauma-informed practice across the team and service.

You will manage your own caseload, providing a range of high-quality care appropriate to the young persons needs which will include risk assessment and management, consultation and evidence based interventions.

You must have a comprehensive range of skills and knowledge to deliver clinical aspects of the role in order to provide a range of appropriate clinical interventions and specialist assessment and be competent to do this work as an autonomous practitioner within professional practice guidelines and a structured supervision framework.

Main duties of the job

• Direct clinical work with children, young people and families
• Offer clinical supervision within the team/service
• Contribute to the multi-disciplinary team
• Work with complex presentations across CAMHS including risk, trauma and neurodevelopmental needs
• Lead and support with reflective practice and formulation
• Provide clinical supervision and leadership to psychology colleagues and the wider MDT
• Contribute to service development, quality improvement and pathways
• Opportunities to be involved in training, auditing and research
• Promote a culture of good clinical record keeping and clinical governance

This role covers the Wakefield District and clinic appointments are expected at Drury Lane Health and Well-Being Centre (Wakefield) and Airedale Health Centre (Castleford). We also have clinic space on 2 days of the week at Pontefract Health Centre.

We recommend that you get in touch to discuss the role

Please contact:

At the time of advertising, this role does meet the minimum requirements set by UK Visas and Immigration to sponsor candidates to work in the UK. We look forward to receiving your application.

All employees of the Trust are strongly encouraged to have their up-to-date flu vaccination to protect staff and patients.

About us

We are a specialist NHS Foundation Trust that provides community, mental health and learning disability services for the people of Barnsley, Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield. We also provide low and medium secure services and are the lead for the west Yorkshire secure provider collaborative.

Our mission is to help people reach their potential and live well in their communities, we do this by providing high-quality care in the right place at the right time. We employ staff in both clinical and non-clinical services who work hard to make a difference to the lives of service users, families and carers.

We encourage and welcome applications from all protected characteristic groups, we value diversity and want our workforce to be reflective of our communities.

Beinga foundation Trust means we’re accountable to our members, who can have a say in how we’re run. Around 14,300 local people (including staff) are members of our Trust.

Join us and you will be one of over 4,500 staff committed to supporting and improving the mental, physical and social needs of the thousands of people we meet and help each year.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expect all colleagues and volunteers to share this commitment.

We do reserve the right to close vacancy before the advertised closing date if necessary, so please apply as soon as possible.

Job responsibilities

JOB SUMMARY

This job description is an outline of the main duties of the post. The postholder will be required to undertake other duties commensurate with the grade as directed. The content of this post will be reviewed in consultation with the postholder when necessary and in line with the service developments.

JOB PURPOSE:

The post holder will provide a high quality specialist clinical psychology service to clients as part of the multidisciplinary team within the service.

Provide highly specialist psychological assessment and intervention.

Provide advice and consultation on psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues, and other non-professional carers, working autonomously within professional guidelines, and the overall framework of the team and trusts policies and procedures.

Supervise and support Psychology Assistants, Trainees and Band 7 HCPC Registered Clinical Psychologists.

To utilise research skills for audit, policy, service development and research within the areas served by the team/service.

JOB DIMENSIONS:

To offer consultation and supervision when required by other agencies involved in the psychological, emotional and behavioural well-being of service users.

To provide supervision of Band 7 Clinical Psychologists, doctoral level clinical psychology trainees, assistant psychologists and trainees from other disciplines as appropriate.

KEY RESULT AREAS:

Clinical

• To provide highly specialist psychological assessment and treatment for service users experiencing moderate, severe and complex mental health/psychological problems based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect observation and semi-structured interviews with service users, their family and/or carers.
• To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological intervention and/or management of mental health/psychological and/or behavioural difficulties based upon an appropriate conceptual framework and exercising expert clinical judgement based on the highest standards of evidence based practice across a full range of care settings.
• To establish rapport and build effective working relationships with service users and all those involved in their psychological, emotional and behavioural well-being.
• To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes.
• To work jointly with other team members and professionals in delivering the most appropriate clinical service to service users and, where appropriate, their families/carers.
• To follow appropriate local Safeguarding Adults and Children policies in all clinical work, including close liaison with all relevant agencies.
• To provide specialist risk assessment of, and intervention to, service users who may present in local acute settings in line with agreed procedures
• To liaise and consult with the wider professional network in the care of service users, offering consultation and supervision where necessary.
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychological interventions and to autonomously manage a caseload of clients.
• To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all service users, the settings in which they present, and agencies involved in the psychological, emotional and behavioural well-being.
• To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to effectively evaluate progress.
• To participate in the multi-disciplinary assessment and treatment of service users.
• For full job description, please see attached supporting documents.

We are aware that an increasing number of applicants are using AI technology to generate responses on NHS Job application forms. Over reliance on AI-generated content in application forms is strongly discouraged and we will conduct a thorough screening process before selecting candidates to progress to the next stage. If you are using AI to enhance your application, please disclose this in your NHS Jobs application form.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• Doctorate in Clinical Psychology.
• Significant Post qualification experience in a Setting relevant to the post.
• HCPC Registration as a Clinical Psychologist.

Physical Attributes

• Ability to undertake the duties and demands of the post. A satisfactory sickness record over the previous 2 years (subject to the need to act with fairness and equality of opportunity, particularly where the sickness is related to a disability and/or pregnancy).

Experience

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care and inpatient settings.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.
• Frequent, protracted sustained and intense concentration.
• Show respect and treat people with dignity.
• Be able to give bad news sensitively.
• Be able to sustain empathy in difficult situations.
• Be aware of all interviewees in any situation.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
• Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Experience of groupwork.

Personal Attributes

• A Current driving licence and access to a car during the working day is essential (reasonable adjustments will be considered for any applicants who are unable to drive due to a disability).
• To transport Psychometric testing equipment.

Training

• Completion of formal training to meet eligibility as clinical supervisor of Doctoral Trainee Clinical Psychologists.

Special Knowledge & Skills

• Good Psychometric Assessment skills.
• Experience of assisting in training of Post Graduate Clinical Psychology Trainees.
• Exceptional communication skills in verbal, non verbal and written modes.
• Ability to empathise and develop good therapeutic alliance.
• Ability to Formulate Complex processes.
• Capacity to conduct Psychometric Assessment.
• Ability to travel around the Trust as appropriate to the role.
• Manual Dexterity for conducting tests.
• Working with people in Crisis.
• Working on an in-patient Psychiatric ward.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Trust