Principal Practitioner Psychologist

NHS; Horsham; On-site; GBP 62,000 - 73,000; Part time

Job summary

A leading NHS Trust is seeking a Clinical Psychologist for the Horsham Neighbourhood Mental Health Team. The role involves clinical leadership, complex assessments, and supervision of psychological therapists. Candidates should have postgraduate training and strong experience in psychologists' practice. The position offers training opportunities in specialized pathways and a supportive working environment focused on staff wellbeing.

Benefits

Flexible working hours

Access to training opportunities

Supportive team environment

Qualifications

• Significant assessed experience as a qualified psychologist.
• Experience with a variety of client groups and clinical severities.
• Training in the supervision of other psychologists.

Responsibilities

• Provide clinical leadership and supervision of therapists.
• Conduct complex assessments and implement evidence-based interventions.
• Develop expertise on specific clinical pathways like psychosis and PTSD.

Skills

Clinical skills

Leadership

Multidisciplinary collaboration

Engagement with clients

Education

Post-graduate doctoral level training in applied psychology

Practitioner Psychologist registration with HPC

Job description

If you are keen to grow your leadership skills as well as working with adults with a range of presenting needs, this is an ideal post for you. Located in the Horsham Neighbourhood Mental Health Team (NMHT), this post involves working directly with service users, families, carers and the wider system providing complex assessments, evidence-based interventions and support to MDT colleagues with psychological practice.

The postholder will work closely together with the Consultant Clinical Psychologist as well as the other two 8b Principal Psychologists in North West Sussex. The role involves providing clinical leadership and oversight, including supervision of the psychological therapists in the team and recruitment of psychological therapist staff. It also includes leadership around the local implementation of the referral pathway and evidence-based interventions.

The role requires strong leadership and supervisory skills as the successful applicant will be expected to work closely with a wide range of multi-disciplinary colleagues and service users to develop the work that is currently in progress and to provide leadership and supervision so that evidence-based interventions can be delivered in an effective and safe way.

Main duties of the job

Our service users experience severe and enduring mental health difficulties and often struggle with social problems and/or neurodevelopmental difficulties. We are keen for the post holder to develop expertise on one of our clinical pathways such as psychosis and bipolar, Complex Emotional Needs and complex PTSD, and moderate-severe OCD/anxiety/depression. We have excellent training opportunities and specialist supervision on these pathways which we can support you to access. For example, we have secured places on Daniel Freeman's 'Feeling Safe' training and we are working with Amy Hardy to introduce SlowMo into our local services. On our Complex Emotional Needs Pathway, we have had access to training in Schema informed CBT and Structured Clinical Management, and we recently had specialist training on Compassionate Resilience Groups for PTSD/c-PTSD with Deborah Lee, which we currently receive specialist supervision for.

About us

Staff wellbeing is of central importance in the trust as a whole and in the North West Sussex locality. Our most recent psychological therapies away day focussed on this and included a wellbeing activity of yoga with a sound bath in the West Sussex Countryside. There is an emphasis on encouraging and supporting our staff to develop, whilst working in psychologically safe environments. More locally, in Horsham NMHT, staff wellbeing is supported by staff wellbeing champions, and we are lucky enough to be situated next to Horsham Park. Horsham Neighbourhood Mental Health Team is also commutable from Brighton and London.

Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust promotes high quality clinical research, and our links with the research and development department are valued and strong here in North West Sussex. We work with nationally recognised R&D colleagues such as Dr Nick Grey, Prof Mark Hayward and Prof Kathy Greenwood in bringing research clinics (including Sussex Voices Clinic, Compassionate Resilience for PTSD clinic, SuPER and SlowMo clinics for paranoia) into the real world of our NMHT teams. We also have strong links with the University of Surrey Family Interventions in psychosis training and regular access to funded places.

Job responsibilities

We are looking for someone with excellent clinical skills, and with an aptitude for engaging with colleagues and service users in an innovative and positive way, and experience of working with people with complex emotional difficulties. We are looking for someone who can think creatively with our partners about developing alliances in our treatment pathways, and we would value a strong commitment to recovery, multi-disciplinary working, service user involvement, and equality.

We are a supportive group of psychological professionals (CBT therapists and Practitioner Psychologists) at Horsham NMHT, bringing diverse skills and experience and prioritising compassionate leadership both amongst us and in the wider service. We are keen to recruit and retain the right staff, supporting them to grow and develop within our services. You will receive clinical and professional supervision from supportive and experienced supervisors with expertise in the interventions you are delivering and a commitment to your wellbeing and continuing professional development, including leadership opportunities. We also have access to a range of additional supervision groups depending on your interests and needs. A recent service-related research project highlighted that clinical supervision is a strength across North West Sussex for psychologists and psychological therapists.

Please see the Job Description and Person Specification for full details of the duties and responsibilities for this post

Person Specification

Qualifications

• Post-graduate doctoral level training in applied psychology [or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996 or outside the UK] as approved by the HPC, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology
• Professionally registered as a Practitioner Psychologist with the Health Professions Council (HPC)

Knowledge/Experience

• Significant assessed experience of working as a qualified psychologist.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care, in-patient and residential care settings severity including 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 exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care coordinator and also within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology.
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group.
• Well-developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups.
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of highly specialised psychological therapies and assessment methodologies.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as required by the HPC.
• Formal training in supervision of other psychologists.

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.

£62,215 to £72,293 a yearpro rata for part time

Contract

Permanent

Working pattern

Part-time,Flexible working,Compressed hours,Term time hours