Principal Clinical Psychologist - Crisis and Home Treatment

Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust; Chester; Hybrid; GBP 55,000 - 75,000; Full time

Job summary

A healthcare trust in Chester seeks a Principal Clinical Psychologist to lead the Crisis and Home Treatment team. This role involves direct client work and team leadership to enhance psychological care within acute services. Applicants must be HCPC registered psychologists with extensive experience. Opportunities for continuous professional development and flexible work patterns are provided. Salary ranges from £55,690 to £74,896 per year, pro rata. Shortlisting is on February 24th with interviews on March 10th.

Benefits

Flexible working hours

Professional development opportunities

Qualifications

• Post‑graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology, accredited by the BPS.
• HCPC registration and BPS chartered status required.
• Substantial experience as a qualified clinical psychologist.

Responsibilities

• Provide clinical and professional leadership for the psychology service.
• Work with multidisciplinary teams to enhance psychological care.
• Provide training, consultancy, and supervision to staff.

Skills

Highly specialist skills in psychological assessment

Well-developed communication skills

Expert in supervising Trainee Clinical Psychologists

Knowledge of applied psychology theory

Leadership training awareness

Education

Post‑graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology

HCPC registration

BPS chartered status or ACPUK membership

Job description

Go back Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

Principal Clinical Psychologist - Crisis and Home Treatment

The closing date is 23 February 2026

We have an opportunity to be the Principal Clinical Psychologist (Band 8a to Band 8b) within the Chester Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment team. This is an 8a development post into 8b, where progression into 8b is dependent on completing the development portfolio whilst in post. The post incorporates direct client work, team systemic work, and service development.

These posts are part of our initiative to develop Acute Pathway Psychology provision and demonstrate CWP’s commitment to improving psychological and trauma‑informed care for patients, families and staff in the acute services pathway. This post is part of the first phase in creating an established and sustainable Psychology workforce within the acute adult mental health pathway with new Consultant Clinical Psychologist Acute Pathway posts based in Inpatient Services already established.

Shortlisting to take place 24th Feb. Interviews will be on Tue 10th March.

Main duties of the job

As the Principal Clinical Psychologist Locality Lead you will be responsible for providing clinical and professional leadership to develop and maintain a high‑quality, evidence‑based psychology service for patients accessing the Crisis and Home Treatment Team. You will work with the Consultant Clinical Psychologist, locality leadership team(s) and specialty clinical network to enhance and evaluate the psychological care offer within the Acute Pathway (First Response Service) provided by a multi‑professional workforce. You will provide training, consultancy, supervision and support to multi‑professional staff, teams and managers, and take a strategic and pragmatic approach to service evaluation, audit and research as part of ongoing quality improvement. You will also provide highly specialist psychological assessment and intervention, and input to care and treatment planning and discharge planning for individual patients, working as part of the multidisciplinary team and as an autonomous Clinical Psychologist.

About us

CWP is an innovative and transformational all‑ages mental health service provider. There are opportunities to join internal and external professional and clinical networks, undertake research, and provide training and support to the next generation of psychology and mental health practitioners. There are strong connections to the three main DClinPsy regional training programmes (Liverpool, Lancaster and Manchester). You will join the CWP Senior Psychologists Group, a group that supports leadership, clinical and professional development of Psychologists. Clinical and professional supervision will be provided, and ongoing continuing professional development supported.

Flexible, part‑time and job‑sharing requests will be considered favourably. We encourage applications from suitably qualified and experienced people with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.

All applicants must be HCPC registered Clinical Psychologists with significant, relevant experience as per the job description and person specification.

Job responsibilities

See the attached document for the full list of responsibilities for this role.

At CWP, our recruitment selection processes are based on competence and values. CWP recruits people that can demonstrate the Trust’s Values in their everyday life and use a values‑based approach in our interviews, exploring not only what you do but how and why you do it.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• Post‑graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS
• Post‑doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice
• HCPC registration
• BPS chartered status and/or membership of ACPUK.

Knowledge and Expertise

• Highly specialist skills in undertaking complex psychological and cognitive/neuropsychological assessment, intervention and evaluation frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Well‑developed communication skills, orally and in writing, highly technical, and clinically sensitive information to clients, families, carers and other professional colleagues.
• Formally trained and expert in supervising Trainee Clinical Psychologists.
• Well‑developed knowledge of the theory and practice of applied psychology and specialised psychological therapies in working with people with complex difficulties (e.g. severe MH problems; personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc).
• Leadership training and/or awareness of different leadership models and systems thinking.

Experience

• Substantial experience of working as a qualified clinical psychologist
• Experience of providing consultation, training, support and supervision/reflective practice to other professionals and non‑professionals.
• Experience of working in multidisciplinary teams
• Involvement in local and/or national academic and/or professional body and other professional activities.

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.

Address

Chester

Redesmere Building, Countess of Chester site

£55,690 to £74,896 a year (pro rata)

Contract

Permanent

Working pattern

Part‑time, Flexible working, Compressed hours

Reference number

373-SMH2543

Job locations

Chester

Redesmere Building, Countess of Chester site