Deputy Clinical Lead (Clinical/Counselling psychologist)

North Thames Genomics Laboratory Hub; Milton Keynes; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading healthcare provider in Milton Keynes is seeking a Deputy Clinical Lead (Clinical/Counselling Psychologist) to enhance mental health service provisions. The successful candidate will lead assessments, deliver training, and ensure high-quality psychological therapy services. This leadership role focuses on collaboration and supervision within a diverse team to support client care effectively.

Benefits

Career development opportunities

Leadership training programs

Qualifications

• Experience working as a qualified clinical/counselling psychologist, ideally at Band 8a.
• Registration with the UK HCPC or BABCP accredited.
• Post-doctoral training in specialized areas of psychological practice.

Responsibilities

• Provide specialist assessments and treatment options for service users.
• Supervise clinical placements for trainees in psychology.
• Manage referrals and allocate treatment pathways.

Skills

Leadership

Clinical expertise

Psychological assessment

Supervision

Education

Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology

Advanced supervision training in CBT or other relevant modality

Job description

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust

Deputy Clinical Lead (Clinical/Counselling psychologist)

The closing date is 10 July 2025

As part of the national programme of mental health service transformation, Milton Keynes mental health services have created a Mental Health Hub, bringing together a number of teams to deliver care to clients in a more timely and accessible way. The service is needs-led, offering medical, social and psychological interventions within a stepped care model. The therapies pathway offers evidence-based interventions for complex trauma and mood presentations including Personality Disorder and Psychosis. The post holder will have strong leadership skills and clinical expertise in complex mental health difficulties. The post holder will have a key role in ensuring the development and systematic provision of high-quality specialist psychological therapies. The post holder will take a lead role in ensuring adherence to a good quality service model that supports more people access psychological therapies. They will lead on management of referrals and allocation to treatment pathways. They will also deliver and provide supervision for psychological interventions in their key areas of skill.

The post holder will work collaboratively with and as a deputy to the clinical lead psychologist and the therapies manager in the continued development of the psychological therapies provision within the mental health service.

Main duties of the job

• To provide specialist assessments of referred service users based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex psychological data from a variety of sources including psychological and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with service users, family members and others involved in the service user's care. This will include providing working formulations with recommendations where appropriate and relevant.
• To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, brief treatment and discharge of service users whose problems and/or concerns are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
• To provide clinical placements for Doctoral Trainee Clinical/Counselling Psychologists, ensuring those trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good mental health care and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.

About us

We're passionate about delivering first-class patient-centred, safe and effective care, whether it is in a hospital setting, in a community clinic or in the patients own home. Patients are at the heart of everything we do. Providing top quality care depends on our ability to employ the best people. Were always looking to recruit outstanding people who will go the extra mile to support our patients, colleagues, teams and the Trust. With every new employee were hoping to find our future leaders and well support our staff by providing opportunities to develop your career.With a diverse culture and equally diverse range of opportunities across mental health, community services, addictions, eating disorders, learning disabilities and more whatever stage of your career you're at, there's always a place for you at CNWL.

Job responsibilities

1. To provide clinical placements for Doctoral Trainee Clinical/Counselling Psychologists, ensuring those trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good mental health care and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.

2. To provide training (CPD) to other mental health staff.

3. To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with mental health across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.

4. To provide pre- and post-qualification teaching of clinical psychology as appropriate

5. To provide CPD and clinical supervision to other qualified psychologists and therapists for their provision of psychologically based interventions to help improve service users functioning. To contribute to personal development / performance reviews / appraisals for qualified psychologists and therapists

6. To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional pre- and post-graduate training and clinical supervision.

7.To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to service users formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan

8. To ensure that all members of the treating team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of services users, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.

9. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users and to provide general advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology
• Advanced supervision training in CBT or other relevant modality
• Registration with the UK HCPC or BABCP accredited
• Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice
• Leadership and professional management training

Experience

• Significant and assessed experience of working as a qualified clinical/counselling psychologist and including at Band 8a
• Experience of leadership and management within a mental health therapies service.
• Experience of representing Therapies within the context of multi-disciplinary care.
• Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Experience of assessing and treating clients across the full range of care settings.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care, in-patient and residential care settings 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 exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care coordinator and also within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision.

Knowledge & Skills

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and nonprofessional groups
• Formal training in supervision of other psychologists and CBT therapists.
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of highly specialised psychological therapies and assessment methodologies.

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.

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust