Principal Clinical/Counselling Psychologist (CHSS)

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust; Oxford; On-site; GBP 62,000 - 73,000; Part time

Job summary

A leading healthcare trust is seeking a Principal Clinical/Counselling Psychologist to support its Care Home Support Team across Oxfordshire. This position offers the opportunity to utilize your expertise in clinical supervision and psychological assessment, helping to enhance care for older adults with mental health challenges. The ideal candidate will exhibit leadership and a collaborative spirit, as well as a commitment to continuous professional development and flexible working arrangements.

Benefits

27 days annual leave, plus bank holidays

Competitive pension scheme

Lease car scheme

Employee Assistance Programme

Tailored learning and development opportunities

Qualifications

• Extensive experience with older patients across various settings.
• Experience in providing Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to older people.
• Skills in using complex psychological assessment methods.

Responsibilities

• Provide clinical supervision to multi-disciplinary staff.
• Conduct highly specialist psychological assessments in care homes.
• Develop and implement psychologically informed models.

Skills

Clinical assessment

Leadership

Therapeutic group work

Education

Doctoral level training in Clinical or Counselling psychology

HCPC Registration

Qualification relating to Supervision

Job description

Principal Clinical/Counselling Psychologist (CHSS)

NHS AfC: Band 8b

Main area Psychology Grade NHS AfC: Band 8b Contract Permanent Hours Part time - 18.75 hours per week Job ref 267-OA7266518

Site TBC Oxfordshire County Wide Service Town Oxford Salary £62,215 - £72,293 per annum Salary period Yearly Closing 03/07/2025 23:59

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust has been rated as Good by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

We are a responsive and innovative Foundation Trust that places our values of Caring, Safe and Excellent at the heart of everything we do. We take great pride in our staff and believe that investing in you is key to us achieving our vision of outstanding care delivered by outstanding people.

We work with a wide range of partner organisations to deliver care and support to people in their own homes and from a number of hospitals and community bases. We focus on delivering care as close to home as possible for people of all ages across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Swindon, Wiltshire, Bath and North East Somerset.

We actively support anti-racism, equality, diversity, and inclusion so, if you’re excited about this job opportunity and you meet our Trust values, but feel unsure about applying, then please get in touch and we will be happy to have a conversation with you.

We are also committed to increasing diversity in the workforce, that is why we actively encourage applications from those groups of people who are currently under-represented, which include amongst others: people with disabilities; men from all socio-economic backgrounds; people from diverse ethnic backgrounds; and people from the LGBTQIA+ community.

Good luck and we hope to hear from you.

Job overview

Are you passionate about working with older people and working in an established care home support service?

We have a new opportunity to recruit a Principal Practitioner Psychologist to work directly with our Care Home Support Team across Oxfordshire. The service was developed ten years ago from a research study evidencing the formulation based, psychosocial approach implemented.

The role would involve providing clinical supervision to multi-disciplinary mental health and physical health staff and developing the psychology role with the care home teams.

This role would suit someone with established leadership skills, or someone looking to progress their career by developing their leadership skills in a supportive team.

We offer excellent CPD and training opportunities to support career progression.

We support flexible working, recognising the importance of a good work life balance and the need for your work to fit with external commitments.

Main duties of the job

The responsibilities of the role include, but are not limited to:

• To work as part of the care home support team to carry out highly specialist psychological assessments of people in care homes referred to the team.
• Use highly specialist psychological and neuropsychological approaches to work with clients in care with cognitive difficulties (dementia) and their carers.
• Supervise and support the psychological assessment, formulation skills and therapy provided by mental health CHSS workers through training and supervision and participate in disseminating skills to the wider service.
• Lead on evaluation of the psychologically informed model and report to senior team and older people mental health leads where appropriate on the efficacy of the approach.
• Develop the psychologically informed model to meet the needs of the service

Working for our organisation

Oxford Health is a great place to work and to be able to showcase the best of yourself when making an application please read the “candidate guide to making an application” and ensure your supporting statement is tailored to the role you are applying for and addresses any essential criteria.

As a Trust we provide physical, mental health and social care for people of all ages across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Swindon, Wiltshire, Bath and Northeast Somerset. Our services are delivered at community bases, hospitals, clinics and people’s homes, delivering care as close to home as possible. Our vision is that no matter who you are or where you are, you will tell us that you receive: “Outstanding care delivered by an outstanding team”

Our values are: “Caring, safe and excellent”

We offer a wide range of benefits designed to support your career and wellbeing. These include:

• Excellent opportunities for career progression
• Access to tailored individual and Trust wide learning and development
• 27 days annual leave, plus bank holidays, rising to 33 days with continuous service
• NHS Discount across a wide range of shops, restaurants and retailers
• Competitive pension scheme
• Lease car scheme
• Cycle to work scheme
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Mental Health First Aiders
• Staff accommodation (please note waiting lists apply)
• Staff networking and support groups hosted by our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion team

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

We hope that the advert has given you a clear understanding of the skills we are seeking and the opportunity at hand. You will need to use the “supporting statement” element of your application form to demonstrate your suitability for this role and you should refer to the job description, person specification and the guidance notes attached to this role to help you tailor your application.

The essential and desirable criteria will be used to shortlist for interview, and you should ensure that you refer to these within your application to increase your chances of being selected for interview.

Person specification

Qualifications -Academic and Professional Skills

• Doctoral level training in Clinical or Counselling psychology, or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996, as accredited by the British Psychological Society, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology.
• Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice
• HCPC Registration
• Qualification relating to Supervision
• Training or qualification in Leadership skills

Experience

• Extensive experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of older patients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary or secondary care and in patient settings
• Experience of working within the NHS
• Experience of providing Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, systemic therapy and / or IPT to older people
• Experience of working in care homes with older people with mental health problems and/ or dementia, their family/ carers and paid care staff. This includes 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 working with people with dementia at different stages of the illness and implementing models of dementia in clinical practice
• Extensive experience of neuropsychological assessment of dementia and behaviours that challenge Experience of providing clinical supervision
• Experience of working within a multi-disciplinary team
• Experience of supervising staff in groups
• Experience of the application of psychological therapies in different cultural contexts
• Experience of working within a multicultural framework
• Experience of therapeutic group work

Knowledge & Skills

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration
• Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS
• Well-developed skills and understanding in group dynamics and therapeutic groupwork
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the relevant professional body and / or BABCP
• High level of knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology and psychotherapy
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups
• Ability to develop and use complex and multimedia materials for presentation and public, professional and academic settings
• Ability to identify provide and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and severely challenging behaviours
• Ability to collect routine data and use electronic audit and case management tools in an accurate and timely fashion
• High-level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies

Personal Qualities

• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour
• Good organisational and time management skills, ability to plan and prioritise own workload
• Ability to work as part of a team and independently
• Ability to travel between care homes and NHS bases as required
• All new starters have a thorough induction process, both local and Trust wide, which aims to create a positive supportive working environment allowing new employees to learn key elements of their role over a reasonable timescale.
• Appointment to this post is subject to the trust receiving satisfactory references covering 3 years of employment or study. Please ask your referees to respond promptly to reference requests.
• We’re advocates of flexible working and many of our roles offer a range of employment options to help you balance your work and personal life.
• Employees are expected to undertake mandatory and statutory training related to their role.
• We are ambitious in our pursuit of excellence, driven by the belief that a fair, just and fully inclusive organisational culture enables our teams to deliver the best quality of care and services possible and we work hard to ensure that our diverse workforce reflects the communities that we serve.
• We welcome applications from all sections of the community, are an Equal Opportunities employer with a number of internal networking groups to support our employees and where possible will always look to make reasonable adjustments in order that you can fulfil the role to recognise your full potential. All our employees are committed to demonstrating through their behaviour our core values – safe, caring and excellent.
• We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults, we expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
• Oxford is a world-renowned centre of excellence for research. Oxford Health works closely with the University of Oxford department of Psychiatry and the Department of Primary care, has a Biomedical Research Centre dedicated to improving mental health and the NIHR Clinical Research Facility at the Warneford site. The Trust also hosts the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) which carries out applied research that directly impacts patient health and wellbeing

Employer certification / accreditation badges

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

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.

Name Candy Stone Job title Consultant Psychologist and OA City locality Lead Email address [e-mail] Telephone number 01865 902005

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