Consultant Psychologist for Forensics and Criminal Justice

Transformationunitgm; Cambridge; On-site; GBP 74,000 - 86,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading health and social care organization in Cambridge seeks a Consultant Psychologist to lead forensic and criminal justice psychology services. The role involves overseeing psychological services, providing clinical leadership, and ensuring high standards of care. Ideal candidates will have experience in forensic settings and a commitment to trauma-informed care, making a positive impact on individuals' lives.

Qualifications

• Experience in forensic or secure mental health settings.
• Advanced skills in risk assessment and neuropsychological assessment.

Responsibilities

• Provide clinical leadership to the psychology team.
• Deliver specialist psychological assessments and interventions.
• Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams for joined-up care.

Skills

Leadership

Risk Assessment

Neuropsychological Assessment

Multi-agency Working

Trauma-informed Care

Education

Doctoral level training in clinical psychology

HCPC registration as a Practitioner Psychologist

Post-doctoral training in forensic setting

Job description

Main area Consultant Clinical or Forensic Psychologist Grade Band 8c Contract Permanent: Regional Secure Unit Allowance of £1,293pa Hours

• Full time
• Job share
• Compressed hours

37.5 hours per week Job ref 310-MASMH-7085353

Employer Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust Employer type NHS Site George Mackenzie House Town Cambridge Salary £74,290 - £85,601 per annum, pro rata Salary period Yearly Closing 28/05/2025 23:59

Consultant Psychologist for Forensics and Criminal Justice

Band 8c

Job overview

Are you a compassionate and experienced Clinical, forensic or Counselling Psychologist looking for a leadership role? Do you believe in the power of trauma-informed care and the difference it can make in the lives of individuals? We are looking for aConsultant Psychologist to help shape and lead our Forensic and Criminal Justice Psychology Services.

As a Consultant Psychologist, you will play a key role in supporting teams and individuals with complex mental health needs, ensuring that our services are grounded in compassion, understanding, and evidence-based care. You will oversee psychological services across our Forensic and Criminal Justice Pathway, including a low secure inpatient unit, the Community Forensic Team, Mental Health Treatment Requirements within Liaison & Diversion Services, and the Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway. Your leadership will create a safe and supportive environment.

We would love to hear from HCPC-registered Clinical or Counselling Psychologists who have experience working in forensic or secure mental health settings. If you have advanced skills in risk assessment, neuropsychological assessment, and managing complex cases, along with a passion for service development and leadership, we encourage you to apply. Experience in multi-agency working, supervision, and research would be an advantage, but most importantly, we are looking for someone who is committed to making a positive impact in people’s lives.

Main duties of the job

You will provide clinical leadership to our dedicated psychology team, ensuring high standards of care and professional development. Your work will involve offering specialist psychological assessments, including neuropsychological and structured risk assessments, as well as delivering interventions that align with NICE guidelines. A key aspect of this role is helping to develop services that are person-centred and responsive to the needs of those we support.

Collaboration will be central to your work. You will engage closely with service users, multidisciplinary teams, and external agencies, ensuring joined-up care that truly meets the needs of individuals. By supporting supervision, training, and consultation across our teams, you will help to foster a culture of learning, reflection, and continuous improvement.

The post-holder will work with clients in a range of settings, including team bases, a secure unit, community environments, and within clients' homes. At times, there will be a requirement for lone working. The role involves engaging with clients and carers who may be experiencing high levels of distress, some of whom may present challenging behaviour. The position requires sustained periods of concentration, as well as the ability to manage detailed clinical report writing, service-related documentation, and the use of relevant IT systems to support practice.

Working for our organisation

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust is a health and social care organisation dedicated to providing high-quality care with compassion to improve the health and wellbeing of the people we care for, as well as supporting andempowering them to lead a fulfilling life.

Our clinical teams deliver many NHS services, not only via inpatient and primary care settings, but also within the community. These services include children's, adult and older people's mental health, forensic and specialist mental health, learning disabilities, primary care and liaison psychiatry, substance misuse, social care, research and development.

To achieve our goal, we look to recruit high-calibre candidates who share our vision and values. As an equal opportunities employer, we encourage applications from all sectors of the community, particularly from under-represented groups including people with long term conditions and members of our ethnic minority and LGBTQ+ communities.

Please be advised we reserve the right to close adverts earlier than the closing date should we receive sufficient applications.

Regrettably, we cannot offer sponsorship for all our job roles. If you apply for a role that we cannot offer sponsorship for, unfortunately, your application form will be rejected from the process.

For further information on CPFT, please visit our website at www.cpft.nhs.uk

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details of responsibilities

• Work with senior operational managers & Lead Psychologists to ensure the operational delivery and strategic development of the psychology service across the Forensic and Criminal Justice Pathway.
• Exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice, ensuring high standards across inpatient, outpatient, and community services.
• Ensure systems are in place and effectively implemented for the clinical and professional supervision of psychological staff within the service.
• Lead on developing and embedding risk assessment practices within the service, ensuring alignment with best practices and NICE guidelines.
• Support a trauma-informed approach to working with this client group.

Service Delivery & Development

• Ensure the provision of a high-quality psychology service to clients across the Forensic and Criminal Justice Pathway.
• Lead on service development initiatives in collaboration with senior management and aligning services with current needs.
• Provide expertise in managing complex cases, with a focus on risk management, offending-based therapies and psychological therapies.
• Contribute to the development of business cases for new services and support funding allocation discussions to ensure sustainable service provision.
• Collaborate with partner agencies to enhance multi-agency working and ensure continuity of care.

Specialist Clinical Duties

• Provide highly specialist psychological assessments, including neuropsychology and structured risk assessments.
• Deliver NICE-compliant specialist psychological therapy to adults referred to the service and be an expert in psychological interventions targeted towards mentally disordered offenders.
• Ensure continuity between inpatient and outpatient psychological services to provide seamless patient transitions from Low Secure to Community Forensic Teams.
• Provide consultation and support to other clinicians and teams within the service, ensuring a psychologically informed approach to care.
• Liaise with external units, to enable the accelerated transition to LSU or Community Forensic team.

Supervision & Training

• Provide clinical supervision and leadership to other psychologists delivering specialist interventions; to include Senior Psychologists (Band 8 and above).
• Offer training, consultation, and supervision to multidisciplinary staff regarding psychological aspects of care.
• Support the doctoral programme of local universities by supervising trainees on placement, contributing to workforce development.
• Develop and maintain a supervision structure that ensures professional psychological management across multiple teams.

Person specification

Education/Qualifications

• • Either doctoral level training in clinical psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS,
• • Undertaken training in the supervision of Trainee Clinical/ Forensic/Counselling Psychologists
• • HCPC registration as a Practitioner Psychologist
• Undertaken relevant post-doctoral training in working with clients with offending and complex psychological needs.
• Undertaken post-doctoral training in a forensic setting

Experience

• • Substantial assessed experience of working as a qualified clinical/counselling/forensic psychologist at post-qualification and specialist level with adults experiencing significant mental health difficulties.
• • Experience of specialist psychological assessment, formulation and treatment of clients across the forensic and criminal justice pathway
• • Experience in the appropriate use of standard risk assessment instruments such as HCR20, SAPROF, RSVP & ability to involve non-psychologists in initial and ongoing risk assessments.
• • 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.
• • Experience of working with a multi-disciplinary team in an NHS context, or equivalent
• • Experience of managing qualified and unqualified psychologists/other professional therapists including recruitment and retention, professional management procedures, appraisals, sickness absence, maternity leave/paternity leave, annual leave.
• • Experience in neuropsychological assessment and complex case management
• • Experience of teaching and delivering complex risk assessments and formulation.
• • Experience of delivering supervision to non-psychology MDT staff.
• • Experience of representing psychology within the context of multi-disciplinary care.
• • Experience of developing and implementing new services including business case development.
• • Experience of working with external agencies such as HMPPS, social care and commissioners.

Skills and Abilities

• • Ability to demonstrate leadership skills in a psychology role
• • Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, psychological formulation, intervention and management requiring sustained and intense concentration. This requires the use of highly developed analytical and judgement skills.
• • Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance, including regular supervision, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
• • High standard of report writing for communication with professionals from NHS, HMPPS, Local Authority and other agencies, parents/ carers and clients.
• • Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
• • High-level knowledge and skills in specialist neuropsychological assessment of adults.

Knowledge and Understanding

• • Doctoral level knowledge of clinical psychology including highly developed knowledge of lifespan developmental psychology, models of psychopathology, psychological aspects of physical health difficulties, and two or more distinct psychological therapies such as CBT, CFT, ACT, EMDR.
• • Knowledge & experience in working with offenders with mental health problems, including offending-behaviour programmes (e.g., Life Minus Violence, FIP-MO).
• • Knowledge concerning the management of qualified psychologists, including recruitment and retention, appraisals, and other HR policies and processes.
• • Knowledge of legislation and its implications for both clinical practice and professional management in relation to the patient group and mental health.
• • Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by BPS.
• • Highly developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups
• • High-level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.
• • An interest in models of service delivery, and an ability to articulate the value added by psychology services within the context of multi-disciplinary services

Other

• • Ability to identify, provide and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and severely challenging behaviours
• • Demonstrates enthusiasm for service initiatives. Has a commitment to the evaluation of services, enthusiasm for both multi-professional and uni-professional audit, and a wish to continue to develop expertise in the service area
• • Ability to exercise appropriate levels of self care and monitor own state, recognising when it is necessary to take active steps to maintain fitness to practice.
• • Record of having published in either peer reviewed or academic or professional journals and/or books

Here at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT) we are dedicated to providing high quality care with compassion. We deliver many of the NHS services that are provided outside of hospital and in the community such as physical, mental health and specialist services.

We are a health and social care organisation, offering a wide range of services, including:

• Integrated physical and mental health services for adults and older people;
• Specialist mental health and learning disability services;
• Children’s community services in Peterborough;
• Ground-breaking research

We strongly encourage applications from all sections of the community, particularly from under-represented groups including disabled people and members of our ethnic minorities and LGBTQ+ communities. For further information about our positive equality, diversity and Inclusion work, please visit https://www.cpft.nhs.uk/equalityanddiversity .

CPFT is looking to build upon its pool of temporary workers with Temporary Staffing Services (TSS). You will be asked at interview if you would be willing to register with TSS. This is an excellent opportunity for those looking to take on additional hours that are flexible around your personal circumstances.

Please be advised that in line with the WHO Health Workforce Support and Safeguards List, 2020 Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust currently are unable to accept applications from overseas candidates whose country of residence is classed as a ‘Red List’ country.

Applicants who require entry into the UK will be required to provide a valid police certificate from the relevant authority from each country (except the UK) where the applicant has been present for 12 months or more, 10 years before the date of visa application, while aged 18 or over.

If you are successful at interview you will be subject to pre-employment checks, including a DBS (if appropriate), references and Occupational Health. To ensure a smooth process please bring all identity documents to your interview. A list of required identity documents will be attached to your interview invitation.

All communications will be sent to you via TRAC Systems. By applying for this post you are agreeing to CPFT transferring the information contained in this application to TRAC. If you are made an offer, information will also be transferred into the national NHS Electronic Staff Records system.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Name Nick Warren Job title General Manager Email address [e-mail] Additional information

To book an informal chat please call Jos Costello on 07934 203785 or email [e-mail]