Principal Forensic/Clinical Psychologist

Thank you for your interest for the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT), it is an exciting time to join us and being 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.

Job overview

The post holder will oversee the prison's well-resourced therapies team (part of the Mental Health Hub) to ensure they work to an agreed operational policy, offering a high standard of trauma-informed care to those with mental health needs and neurodivergence. The role involves both clinical and management responsibilities and will offer the post holder an opportunity to lead a diverse team in a prison setting, where continued professional development is highly valued.

NLFS benefits from a large psychology team with a wealth of experience and expertise to absorb. A range of training and CPD opportunities are available, as well as the possibility of contributing within active Research and Quality Improvement Forums. This role would suit someone with an established career within forensic mental health, looking to develop their leadership skills further.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will oversee the prison's Therapies Team (part of the Mental Health Hub) to ensure they work to an agreed operational policy, offering a high standard of trauma-informed care. The role involves both clinical and management duties; the line management and supervision of a range of therapists, including colleagues from psychology, SLT, OT and Nursing; service development and research; assessment and interventions to residents with mental health difficulties and neurodivergence and consultation to non-therapy colleagues.

The post holder will work with the Therapy Lead for Prisons to deliver leadership within the team. They will utilise research skills for data gathering and outcomes, audit, policy, service development and research within the area served by the team/service in order to evaluate the service and provide evidence for further service development.

Working for our organisation

North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT) is committed to improving mental health care across North London to deliver excellent services to our local people.

Our Five-Year Strategy:

1. We will provide consistently high-quality care closer to home.
2. With our partners in North London and each borough we will ensure equity of outcome for all.
3. We will offer great places to work, providing staff with supportive environment to deliver outstanding care.
4. We will be more effective as an organisation by pioneering research, quality improvement and technology.

In order to meet the needs of the Trust you may be required from time to time to work at different locations to your normal place of work. This may mean that you are required to work at any location that fall under Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey or Islington. The Trust reserves the right to require staff to work at such other places or locations as it considers reasonable and necessary on a temporary or permanent basis.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Kindly see the Job Description and Person specification for further details regarding the main clinical, managerial, HR and administrative duties.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Doctoral level training in clinical psychology. OR Doctoral or Masters level training in forensic psychology with full competencies completed.
• Registration with HCPC.

Desirable criteria

• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.

Experience and Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across a range of care settings, which can include outpatient, community, primary care and inpatient settings.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of emotive and distressing problems and where there is a history of violence.
• Experience of working within a forensic setting/service.
• Experience of teaching and training. Experience of the supervision of qualified psychology staff.
• Experience of service development.

Desirable criteria

• Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Experience of working in a prison.
• Experience of supervising/line managing AHPs.

Skills and Abilities

Essential criteria

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Skill in the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in working with mentally disordered offenders.
• 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.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
• Able to contain explore and formulate an understanding of high levels of distress both directly with patients and indirectly via supervision or case reviews with other staff.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS.
• Trained in cognitive assessment and Autism Assessment (ADOS etc).

Personal Qualities

Essential criteria

• Flexible, creative and approachable who can work quickly and responsively with both clients and the multidisciplinary team.
• Able to work autonomously as well as under supervision and with colleagues.
• Demonstrable leadership and management qualities.

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.

If you have been unemployed for a period of four years or more, please give the details of your last employer and one character referee of your choice (not members of your family). If more applicable, references will be requested from your teacher or head of faculty. Please ensure you provide full contact details.

Vacancies that are advertised as Fixed Term Contracts will also be available as secondment opportunities for substantive internal staff.

Please be aware that your documents eg. Passport/NI Card, will be electronically scanned using Home Office accredited Verification System.

Due to the high number of applications that are received for some posts, we will close vacancies before the stated closing date once the first 50 applications are received. Therefore, please apply as soon as possible.

All non-medical posts with the Trust are subject to a probationary period of six months, during which time you will be required to demonstrate to the Trust's satisfaction, your suitability for the position in which you will be employed.

Should you not hear from us within three working weeks of the closing date for this post, then regretfully in this instance, you have not been shortlisted.

By applying for this role, you accept in the event you are successful that your personal data may be transferred from the Trust to another NHS organisation where your employment transfers within the NHS. This is in accordance with the streamlining programme which is aimed at improving efficiencies within the NHS both to make costs savings for NHS organisations but also to save you time when your employment transfers.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

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.

Documents to download

• HMP Pentonville 8b Principal Psychologist JD (PDF, 432.4KB)
• Functional Requirement Form (PDF, 525.8KB)