Lead Principal Practioner Psychologist AOT/GRIP

Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust; Gloucester; On-site; GBP 65,000 - 75,000; Full time

Job summary

Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust is seeking a Lead Principal Practitioner Psychologist AOT/GRIP to lead psychological services for adults with psychosis, across Gloucester and surrounding counties. You will provide highly specialist assessment, formulation, and clinical leadership within MDTs.

The post involves supervising junior psychologists and assistants, driving service development and quality improvement, and ensuring evidence-based care such as CBT-P and

Qualifications

• HCPC registration (or equivalent) is required.
• CBT-Psychosis and Family Therapy qualifications are required.

Skills

HCPC registration

CBT-Psychosis

Family Therapy

Driving licence

Job description

Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust

Lead Principal Practioner Psychologist AOT/GRIP

The closing date is 07 December 2026

We are looking for a dynamic skilled and experienced practitioner psychologist to join our mental health service working with adults with psychosis. This is an exciting time to be joining the Trust as we are looking at improving our services for people experiencing psychosis and bipolar disorder and expanding the psychological provision in our teams.

Working across a number of community teams you will provide expertise in both direct clinical work and leadership/supervision of teams in psychological approaches to care.

This is a key clinical leadership role, working within teams and responsible for continuing to drive and embed the significant work already undertaken to develop services for people with psychosis across Gloucestershire.

The post holder will be responsible for providing highly-specialist advice and consultancy to staff, teams, and patients with direct responsibility for the provision of psychological services within the teams, including supervision of other psychological professionals including assistants and trainees. They will also have a key role to play in service development and quality improvement across care pathways.

This role covers teams based in Gloucester, Cheltenham and across the county. All reasonable flexible working requests will be considered, but the post holder will be expected to work across sites in line with service need.

Our specialist mental health services work with adults with severe mental health problems. About 60% of the people we work with have experienced psychosis, and we aim to provide psychologically and trauma informed care and evidence based interventions including CBT-P and Family Therapy.

In this role you will:

Work as part of MDT's providing specialist psychological formulation, assessment and direct care.

Provide supervision, reflective practice and consultation/advice to colleagues and teams,

Contribute to quality improvement and service development, including research and development activities such as teaching.

Leading workstreams on psychological approaches to care, and specifically working as a part of our developing psychosis pathways

Line manage, supervise and support other psychological professionals, assistants and trainees.

The qualification, training & experience requirements for the role are underlined in the Job Description/Person Specification.

About us

We have a skilled and dedicated workforce of over 5000 colleagues working in a diverse range of services over 55 sites and within people's homes. We strive to enable a welcoming workplace culture that builds and celebrates civility, inclusivity and diversity, while providing a sense of belonging and trust.

Annual staff surveys, regular Pulse surveys and other engagement opportunities provide our people with lots of opportunity to tell us about their experiences of working with us. In the latest staff survey, 61% of colleagues gave us their views. It was great to hear that:

• 72% of colleagues would recommend the Trust as a place to work, ranking us 1st for Provider Trusts in the South West region on this question.
• 76% would recommend the standard of care provided in our services if a friend or relative needed treatment, also ranking us 1st in the South West region.
• 81% said that care of patients and service users is the Trust's priority, compared with an average in comparable NHS Trusts in England of 64%.

This high-level overview shows we are in a healthy position, with higher scores than average for comparable organisations, alongside a great response rate, indicating good staff engagement. However, we also know we have plenty of room for improvement in many areas. To that end, we continue to prioritise and invest in our commitment to genuinely becoming a Great Place to Work with consistent top-quartile performance in the annual staff survey and Pulse surveys.

Job responsibilities

For the main duties and responsibilities for this role please read the attached job description and person specification. When completing your application please ensure your supporting statement reflects the criteria set out in these documents by showing how your experience and skills apply to this post.

Please read the job description and person specification carefully before making your application, in particular the requirements about professional registration, experience and qualifications in therapy modes.

The Trust is required to work in line with the Governments UK Visa and Immigration Rules and Regulations. For more information about sponsorship for certain roles, please visit https://www.gov.uk/browse/visas-immigration/work-visas

To support compliance with UK immigration requirements, all applicants who require a visa to work in the UK must disclose their visa history in full. This includes current and previous sponsors, dates of sponsorship, visa category, and any changes of employment. If you are on a Graduate or Dependant Visa, please disclose the expiry date on your application. Incomplete information may mean we are unable to consider your application.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• HCPC or other appropriate professional registration
• CBT-Psychosis / Family Therapy Qualifications (0-1-2)

Experience

• Working with client group adults smhp psychosis
• experience of working in AMH MDT
• Experience of being care coordinator
• Experience of working at highly specialist level

Skills

• Hold driving license
• Ability to participate in all mandatory and statutory training

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.

Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust