Highly Specialist Applied Psychologist - Development post

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust; March; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 55,000; Full time

Job summary

A healthcare organization in the UK is seeking a professional for an 8a role within the Fens service. This permanent, full-time position involves managing a team in a challenging environment, delivering high-quality mental health intervention, and advancing therapeutic practices. Candidates need strong experience in mental health and a commitment to service improvement.

Qualifications

• Experience working in challenging environments with risk management to reduce personal distress and improve wellbeing.
• Ability to formulate, develop and implement plans across cognitive-interpersonal frameworks.
• Capacity to develop psychological formulations and integrate information from assessments into treatment plans.

Responsibilities

• Manage the Fens Services, ensuring high-quality mental health interventions.
• Provide clinical leadership and work autonomously within guidelines.
• Contribute to organisational change and broaden therapeutic skills.

Skills

Experience in challenging environments

Ability to develop treatment plans

Strong interpersonal and communication skills

Education

Relevant mental health qualifications

Job description

Overview

A Vacancy at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. The Fen’s service is advertising an 8a position, with the opportunity for people at band 7 to apply and develop up to 8a, and for those already at 8a to apply. The Fen’s is an innovative and challenging service for individuals with chronic histories of trauma, located in a male high-risk prison. Our treatment draws on attachment theory and incorporates schema-focused therapy, together with short-term interventions such as EMDR, CBT, CAT, etc. Through a combination of individual and group therapies, patients are given opportunities to heal from trauma and neglect, improve wellbeing and reduce risk. We will support you in broadening your therapeutic skills, management, and working to achieve organisational change in a complex system. There are opportunities to further your research interests through our links with Universities. The role is permanent, full-time with scope to complete some work from home.

“I wanted to change, I was crying out to change. You know, it was a trust element… letting them see me warts and all… and that was the hard thing. Breaking down crying… getting the stuff out I needed to. I grew from that… if I don’t like myself, how can anyone else like myself? How can I move on if I don’t forgive myself… I’ve got to give myself a chance.” Current service user

Responsibilities

• You will have a managerial role within the Fens Services. This requires solid working knowledge of personality disorders, challenging behaviour and trauma, recognising implications and consequences for those who struggle to live with personality difficulties arising from adverse childhood trauma.
• Demonstrate good leadership skills and a desire to work collaboratively with HMPPS and other NHS staff who provide core services within the main prison. Provide a clinical leadership role to ensure the systematic provision of high-quality Mental Health intervention accessible across both Fens and the Outreach Services.
• Work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the Trust’s and The Fens Service’s policies and procedures, ensuring policies and protocols are followed with a consistent approach.
• Contribute to organisational change and influence through management and service development in a complex environment.
• Support opportunities to broaden therapeutic skills, management capabilities and research links with Universities.
• Engage in the application of virtual reality methods within assessment and treatment provisions, developing evaluation methodologies and research protocols.
• Provide neurofeedback services to patients within an approved research protocol and support assessments to evaluate wellbeing interventions for high-risk patients with a history of acute developmental trauma.
• Ensure all clinical team members have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care, through advice, consultation and dissemination of psychological research and theory.

Qualifications and Requirements

• Experience working in challenging environments with risk management to reduce personal distress and improve wellbeing.
• Ability to formulate, develop and implement plans across cognitive-interpersonal frameworks to treat mental health and behavioural problems, using evidence-based approaches across care settings.
• Capacity to develop psychological formulations of presenting problems, particularly relating to offending behaviour, and to integrate information from assessments into coherent treatment plans.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills to articulate formulations to multi-disciplinary teams including non-clinical staff.
• Autonomy to work within professional guidelines, under the Trust and The Fens Service policies and procedures.

Additional Information

• Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust is a health and social care organisation committed to high-quality care with compassion to improve health and wellbeing. Our clinical teams deliver services across inpatient, primary care and community settings, including 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.
• We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all sectors of the community, particularly from under-represented groups including people with long-term conditions and members of ethnic minority and LGBTQ+ communities.
• Please note we reserve the right to close adverts earlier than the closing date if we receive sufficient applications. We cannot offer sponsorship for all roles; if sponsorship is not possible, applications will be rejected.
• For further information on CPFT, please visit www.cpft.nhs.uk. Refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details of responsibilities.

To develop psychological formulations of presenting problems; emotional, cognitive and behavioural. In particular to use specialist knowledge in relation to offending behaviour, to develop psychological formulations of the connection between a person’s personality psychopathology and the dangerous offences they have committed. This will require the integration of information from assessments within a coherent framework that draws upon psychological theory and evidence and which incorporates interpersonal, societal, cultural and biological factors.

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, carers or group.

To incorporate the results of individual assessments into the formulations and treatment and care plans for the patient(s). To be able to articulate these formulations to other members of the multidisciplinary team including non-clinical staff using the highest level of interpersonal and communication skills at a level which is accessible to all.

Within a cognitive-interpersonal framework to develop plans for the formal psychological individual treatment and/or management of a patient’s mental health and behavioural problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of these problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.

To formulate, develop and implement plans for neuropsychological assessment informing the psychological treatment and/or management of a patient’s neurocognitive deficits within an appropriate conceptual framework of the patient’s problems. Ensuring methods are efficacious meeting the patient’s needs within the Fens service or in support of appropriate referral to another specialist service.

To provide management, coordination and delivery in conjunction with the clinical director, on the application of virtual reality methods both within assessment and treatment provisions within the Fens service, developing appropriate evaluation methodologies and research protocols for this provision.

To provide neurofeedback services to individual patients working within an approved research protocol and delivering key assessments as designated to support the evaluation of this wellbeing intervention with high risk patients who have a history of acute developmental trauma. Training will be provided if needed.

This advert closes on Monday 22 Sep 2025