Intensive Psychosis Services 8a Clinical/Counselling Psychologist

Transformationunitgm; Greater London; On-site; GBP 58,000 - 66,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a dedicated psychologist to lead psychological services within mental health teams. This role involves providing specialized assessments and therapies for individuals facing complex mental health challenges, including psychosis. You will work collaboratively with multidisciplinary teams to enhance service delivery and promote recovery. Join a forward-thinking organization committed to improving mental health care and making a real difference in the community. This position offers opportunities for professional development, flexible working arrangements, and a supportive environment to thrive in your career.

Benefits

Flexible working

NHS Pension

Generous Annual Leave Allowance

NHS Discounts

Health and wellbeing initiatives

Qualifications

• Doctoral level training in clinical psychology and HCPC registration required.
• Experience in psychological assessment and treatment of complex mental health issues.

Responsibilities

• Lead psychological provision for the Islington Community Rehab and Assertive Outreach Teams.
• Provide assessments, formulations, and therapies for individuals with psychosis.

Skills

Psychological Assessment

Psychological Therapy

Consultation Skills

Supervision

Research Methodology

Communication Skills

Education

Doctoral level training in clinical/counselling psychology

HCPC registration

Job description

Employer: 455 North London NHS Foundation Trust

Employer type: NHS

Site: North London Mental Health NHS Trust (Islington Borough)

Town: Islington

Salary: £58,698 - £65,095 Pro Rata-inclusive of Inner London HCAS

Salary period: Yearly

Closing: 08/05/2025 23:59

NHS AfC: Band 8a

Thank you for your interest in the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT). It is an exciting time to join us and be part of our journey to improve mental health care across North London and deliver excellent services to our local people. We will achieve this through the North London Way, as we:

• Collaborate at every level by living our Values to create the right conditions for us all to work together.
• Develop our new Trust culture, to help make our new Trust a great place to work and to receive great care.
• Empower our teams to lead the planned improvements in our services, by skilling them and giving them the tools to make the changes.
• Focus on delivering excellence at every level to improve our performance and ensure consistently high-quality care across all our services.
• Ensure that research, Quality Improvement, and technology lead the way and are embedded in our services.
• Take a trauma informed approach to everything we do.

We proactively welcome diversity in our workforce and pride ourselves on being an inclusive employer. We aim to recruit from our local communities and provide opportunities to all, including apprenticeships, veterans, care leavers, and more.

The North London Way to deliver: Better Mental Health, Better Lives, Better Communities.

The post-holder will lead on psychological provision within Islington Community Rehab Team and Islington Assertive Outreach Team, providing extended assessments, formulations, and psychological therapies (individual and group) to those presenting with psychosis and other severe mental health, physical health, and social needs. The post-holder will also provide consultation, reflective practice, psychological support, and training to colleagues from the MDTs and partner agencies, and supervision and management as required to other psychological staff in the teams.

Main duties of the job

The post-holder will act as a fully integrated member of the team, leading on highly specialist psychological provision to service users with psychosis and co-occurring complex needs, and their families, with the aims of supporting recovery, promoting mental and physical wellbeing, and optimizing independence and social inclusion.

You would work directly with individuals, groups, and families from a wide range of diverse backgrounds, providing tailored assessment, formulation, consultation, and interventions for psychosis, bipolar, and co-occurring psychological difficulties such as trauma. You would work closely with MDT colleagues and other agencies to provide psychologically informed care through joint working, training, consultation, supervision, and reflective practice. You would also have opportunities to work creatively and innovatively and undertake service development, service evaluation, quality improvement (QI), and research. You would be expected to practice as a senior independent clinician and work autonomously within professional guidelines and the policies and procedures of the service, supervising and managing other psychological staff in the team as required.

Please contact us to discuss any request in variation to the advertised hours, including the potential of additional sessions to create a full-time role. Please also get in touch with any other enquiries about the role: we welcome hearing from you.

Working for our organisation

The partnership between Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust (BEH) and Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust (C&I) is going from strength to strength since it was originally established in 2021, forming the North London Mental Health Partnership.

Why choose to join the Partnership?

• We believe that by working together, our two Trusts can achieve more for the residents of North Central London and our patients than we can by working apart.
• Deliver the best care using the most up-to-date practice in supporting those with mental health illnesses.
• Transforming and creating a positive environment for our service users, staff, and visitors.
• Creating and working together to become a great place to work for all our staff.
• We offer flexible working, a wide range of health and wellbeing initiatives, NHS Pension, and so much more.
• Generous Annual Leave Allowance.
• NHS Discounts in a large variety of retail stores and services.
• We have excellent internal staff network support groups.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

JOB SUMMARY

The Islington Community Rehabilitation Team (ICRT) and Islington Assertive Outreach Team (IAOT) provide a multidisciplinary mental health service for adults with psychosis and co-occurring complex mental health, physical health, and social needs. ICRT works with service users placed in mental health residential services within the borough of Islington, and the service has a strong emphasis on supporting the Rehabilitation Pathway, by facilitating successful discharge of service users to the community, maintaining community placements, and supporting transitions to more independent living. IAOT works with service users who may have had difficulties engaging with services and/or multiple hospital admissions, and the team is committed to working with individual recovery goals, enhancing wellbeing, and providing additional support in crisis.

The post holder will lead on psychological provision within the ICRT and IAOT. They will provide high quality and highly specialist psychological assessment and treatment, working autonomously as the senior team psychologist, within professional guidelines and to the overall framework of the services’ policies and procedures. The post holder will offer staff consultation to aid formulation, diagnosis, and psychological care planning, including the management of challenging and risk behaviours, to ICRT colleagues within the Trust and to other providers elsewhere. They will provide staff team reflective space and staff support.

The post holder will supervise/manage trainee clinical psychologists and offer supervision and line management where appropriate, to practitioner, associate, and assistant psychologists of a lower band. The post holder will utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development/quality improvement.

RELATIONSHIPS/COMMUNICATIONS

The post holder is expected to establish and maintain positive interpersonal relationships with other staff members characterised by the NLFT Trust Values and trust, mutual respect, and open, honest communication.

Internal Relationships

The postholder will work closely with the following:

• Colleagues and co-workers in the ICRT and IAOT
• Colleagues working within mental health services within the Trust and third sector providers
• Colleagues working within the Local Authority
• Community Psychosis Psychology colleagues and other psychology colleagues across the North London NHS Foundation Trust

External Relationships

The post holder will work closely with:

• University DClinPsy training courses
• Other NHS organizations
• Local Authorities

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

The post holder will hold no financial responsibilities.

3.2 Responsibility for Human Resources

To provide professional and clinical supervision to trainee psychologists on placement and jointly line manage with the relevant DClinPsy Universities.

To provide professional and clinical supervision to other psychologists of a lower grade including clinical associates in psychology and assistant psychologists where appropriate.

To provide specialist consultation, training, and supervision, where appropriate, to other health and social care staff working within NLFT Mental Health services.

To provide teaching and training regarding the psychological needs of the target population to other members of the multi-disciplinary team.

To provide informal and appropriate spaces for staff including treatment planning, case formulation, and including management of challenging behaviour and risk behaviour, staff reflective practice, and staff consultation.

3.3 Responsibility for Administration

To screen psychology referrals from colleagues and community units.

To plan and organise their own workload.

To ensure that all clinical and other related records are kept up to date in line with Trust policy.

3.4 Responsibility for IT and Digital Systems/Services

To advise on adaptations needed to support service users making use of remote IT and digital systems used in their care.

CLINICAL RESPONSIBILITIES

To work as a senior clinician within the service, providing an advanced level of psychological expertise in assessment advice and treatment of highly complex service users.

To provide highly specialist psychological assessments using interview, formal psychometric and other assessment methods as appropriate.

To formulate and devise psychological treatment and management plans for referred service users with a range of problems of severity and complexity, including those with challenging behaviours.

To provide specialised psychological treatment to relatives and carers when appropriate.

To provide highly specialist psychological advice, guidance, and consultation to other professionals, to assist in the formulation, diagnosis, and treatment of service users with complex needs.

To carry out direct and indirect risk assessments and management plans in line with MDT care planning.

To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the psychological assessment and treatment in accordance with policies of the service.

To provide reports and communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner concerning the assessment, formulation, and treatment plans of service users, who may have highly complex needs and exhibit challenging behaviours.

To liaise with other health and social care staff, from a range of agencies, in the care provided to service users.

OPERATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES

The postholder will be responsible for the delivery of psychological assessment and treatment, and ensure that safe, evidence-based, effective, culturally competent care is delivered in a timely manner to service users.

POLICY / SERVICE DEVELOPMENT

To contribute to the development of the service.

To lead on the development and provision of psychology services.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

Utilise evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual, family, and group work and work with other team members.

Undertake appropriate research and provide research support to other staff undertaking research.

To lead on, participate in, and contribute to clinical audit, QI, and service evaluation with colleagues within the service, to help evaluate and improve service provision, proposing changes to working practice and procedures for their own work area as required.

GENERAL

All staff are responsible for their continual compliance with CQC standards and outcomes.

The postholder must be aware of, and work in line with, the Trust’s Safeguarding Adults and Children procedures.

Receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical or counselling psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues as indicated and negotiated with line manager.

Participate in an agreed programme of training and continuing professional development and maintain an active engagement with current developments in psychological practice in areas related to the post.

Maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues of relevance to the service and service user group.

To undertake such other duties and responsibilities, appropriate to the grade of the post, as may be agreed with Lead psychologists and other Divisional leads.

Person specification

Qualifications

• Doctoral level training (or equivalent) in clinical/counselling psychology
• HCPC registration
• Completion of further post-qualification specialist training in areas of practice relevant to the post

Skills/Abilities

• Skills in the use of a range of methods of psychological assessment (including psychometric tests), intervention, and management for adults with psychosis and complex mental health problems.
• Ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, with service users, their families, carers, and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Well-developed skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
• Ability to form good working relationships with colleagues in a multidisciplinary and supervisory settings.
• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional, and academic settings.
• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice.
• Interest and ability to contribute to service development.

Experience / Knowledge

• Significant experience of psychological assessment and treatment of adults with psychosis and complex mental health problems in a range of care settings.
• Substantial post-qualification experience working with adults with mental health difficulties and with behaviour that challenges families, carers, and networks.
• Experience of teaching, training, and/or supervision.
• Experience of the application of clinical/counselling psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design, and data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to adults and mental health.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as required by the Health Care Professions Council and British Psychological Society.

Personal Qualities

• Strong interest and commitment to working with people with complex mental health needs and their families.
• Strong interest in promoting the Trust values.
• Commitment to anti-discriminatory practice.

If you believe you meet the criteria of the person specification and job description and would like to join the North London NHS Foundation Trust at this time, we would be interested in receiving your application.

Due to the high number of applications that are received for some posts, we reserve the right to close any vacancies before the stated closing date. Therefore, please ensure you apply without delay if you wish to be considered for this role.

In line with NHS protocols, only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview. We regret that it is not possible to contact all applicants for every vacancy. If you have not been contacted within 4 weeks of the closing date, please assume you have not been shortlisted for the next stage.

Applications from job seekers who require sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. Before submitting your application and to avoid disappointment please check that you are eligible under the UKVI points-based system.

Please note, in order to progress your application your data will be processed by our 3rd party recruitment providers – North London Partners Shared Service, who conduct recruitment activities on behalf of North London NHS Foundation Trust. As part of pre-employment checks your identity and right to work documentation will be verified remotely (in most circumstances), using a certified identity verification service provider TrustID. You will be asked to capture an image of the relevant documents as well as a “selfie” using your smartphone/tablet (if available) for facial matching.

References will be required to cover your last 3 years of employment/training. One has to be from your current or most recent employer and the others from your previous employer. The references should be from persons with management responsibility or HR.

The Trust uses electronic new starter forms on Trac to collect personal details. Information collected is securely stored and used to set up the employee record on the ESR HR system.

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.