Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologist | South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust

South West London & St George's Mental Health NHS Trust; Teddington; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 50,000; Full time

Job summary

A mental health service provider in Teddington seeks an HCPC registered Clinical/Counselling Psychologist to join their Recovery & Support Team. This fixed-term role offers an opportunity to provide neuropsychological assessments and therapeutic interventions for older adults, emphasizing teamwork and professional development. The ideal candidate will have strong psychological assessment skills and a collaborative approach to mental health care.

Benefits

Flexible working

Career development opportunities

Inclusive work environment

Qualifications

• Registered with the Health and Care Professions Council.
• Experience in psychological assessments and interventions for mental health.
• Ability to work effectively in a multidisciplinary team.

Responsibilities

• Conduct specialist psychological assessments of clients.
• Formulate and implement treatment plans for mental health issues.
• Provide psychological advice and consultation to other professionals.
• Manage risks and coordinate care plans as needed.

Skills

Psychological assessment

Therapeutic intervention

Multidisciplinary teamwork

Neuropsychological assessment

Education

HCPC registration as a Clinical Psychologist

Job description

We are seeking an HCPC registered Band 7/8a Clinical/Counselling Psychologist to join our well established multidisciplinary Recovery & Support Team and Memory Assessment Service within Richmond Older People’s Service. The post is fixed term, three sessions per week for twelve months (2026), to provide cover for staff movement due to maternity leave elsewhere in the service. You will be joining two other experienced Psychologists within Richmond Older People’s Service, providing neuropsychological assessments for dementia and psychological therapies for older people.

Psychology is highly valued within our Older People’s Services and you will be well supported within the Trust Older People’s Psychology team, where CPD, career development and staff support are encouraged. We have specialist pathway psychologist leads in Neuropsychological Assessment, Therapies, and Distressed Behaviour in Dementia, and you will receive regular individual supervision and support from senior psychologists in the service as well as opportunities to attend regular peer supervision and CPD.

Within the Memory Assessment Service, you will work directly with service users of any age with suspected dementia providing neuropsychological assessments of dementia and therapeutic work. Within the Recovery & Support Team you will provide direct therapeutic work for service users age 75+ with severe and enduring mental health problems and their families. Both roles involve MDT working including providing consultation and complex case discussions. You will be encouraged to contribute towards service improvement, either by supporting local Quality Improvement Initiatives or larger Trust wide projects.

As Clinical Psychologist you will conduct psychological assessments, formulation, therapeutic intervention, neuropsychological assessment and consultation, for clients with mental health problems and/or dementia including distressed behaviour in dementia. You will work as part of an MDT including providing consultation, complex case discussions, and supporting with staff training. You will also supervise and support the psychological assessment and therapy provided by trainee clinical psychologists and other clinical members of the team who provide psychologically based care and treatment.

Responsibilities

• To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the team 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 structured observations and semi-structured interviews with clients, family members, and others involved in the client’s care.
• To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
• To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
• 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, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
• To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
• To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.
• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
• To act as care coordinator, where appropriate, taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans under enhanced CPA including clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved the network of care.
• To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.
• To work with older people in community care homes and day centres who are displaying behavioural and psychological symptoms as a result of their mental health.
• To undertake specific assessment of individual service users with challenging behaviour and to contribute to the formulation and implementation of a multi-disciplinary care plan.

We are Proud to Belong at South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust.

We have expert services, a rich history and a clear commitment to providing the best quality care for those with mental ill-health. The Care Quality Commission already rates our services as 'good' - we aspire to be 'outstanding'.

This is a great time to join us. We are transforming the way we care for our communities to support our mission of Making Life Better Together. We have built two brand new mental health facilities at Springfield University Hospital, which are amongst the best in the world. More developments are planned across our sites and services as we invest a further £120m to upgrade and modernise our estate by 2027.

We are inclusive and diverse and strive to be actively anti racist. We want to attract people from all backgrounds and experiences to enrich the work we do together. We are proud to co-produce and involve our local communities in all that we do.

We offer flexible working, career development and a variety of benefits to enable a positive, welcoming environment in which our people and their careers can thrive.

Come and join our inclusive teams and help our patients on their recovery journey.