Principal Practitioner Psychologist

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

Job summary

Join a leading healthcare organization as a Principal Practitioner Psychologist in Horsham. This permanent, part-time role requires a qualified practitioner to provide clinical leadership and work directly with service users facing severe mental health difficulties. You’ll lead evidence-based interventions while supporting staff development in a collaborative, innovative team environment committed to high-quality care and staff wellbeing.

Benefits

Flexible working

Compressed hours

Term time hours

Fully funded lifelong learning opportunities

Qualifications

• Providing clinical leadership and oversight, including supervision of therapists.
• Developing expertise in clinical pathways like psychosis and PTSD.
• Experience working with complex emotional difficulties and clinical settings.

Responsibilities

• Provide psychological assessments and evidence-based interventions.
• Supervise the psychological therapists and support MDT colleagues.
• Work with service users and families for assessments and interventions.

Skills

Clinical leadership

Psychological assessments

Evidence-based interventions

Multi-disciplinary team collaboration

Engaging with service users

Education

Post-graduate doctoral level training in applied psychology

Professionally registered as a Practitioner Psychologist

Job description

Main area Principal Practitioner Psychologist Grade NHS AfC: Band 8b Contract Permanent Hours

• Part time
• Flexible working
• Compressed hours
• Term time hours

30 hours per week (minimum 3 days per week) Job ref 354-AN-20806

Employer Sussex Partnership NHS FoundationTrust Employer type NHS Site Horsham Neighbourhood MH Team Town Horsham Salary £62,215 - £72,293 pro rata for part time Salary period Yearly Closing 29/06/2025 23:59

NHS AfC: Band 8b

Come and join us

We're looking for people who share our values (compassion, accountability and optimism) to help us provide high quality care to the patients, carers, families and local communities we serve. We specialise in providing NHS mental health and learning disability services.

So what can we offer you in return?

We're an organisation which puts people first. We'll do everything possible to help you feel respected, valued and included. We'll help you learn, acquire new skills and gain further experience to support your career development. And we'll provide the opportunity for you to bring your fresh ideas to work about how we can do things differently and continue improving.

You will also be joining a health and care system committed to working together to do the best we can for the communities we serve. Above all, at Sussex Partnership you'll have the chance to make a difference to the lives of the patients, carers and families across our communities.

As a Trust we are committed in making a difference. Your development is important to us, so don't forget to ask us during interview what opportunities we can offer. We can offer fully funded lifelong learning opportunities such as an apprenticeship from GCSE to Masters level.

If you like the sound of that, then come and join our team.

Job overview

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.

Working for our organisation

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.

Detailed job description and main 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.

Sussex Partnership NHS FT is committed to supporting a diverse workforce that reflects our communities. Our workforce is currently under-represented from Black and Minority, Ethnic and disabled communities and we would welcome applications from these communities.

We regret that we are unable to advise candidates if they have not been shortlisted. If you have not heard from us within three weeks of the closing date please assume that you have been unsuccessful on this occasion.

In the event of an excessive number of applicants the Trust reserves the right to close this vacancy earlier than indicated.

Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust takes its responsibilities for the safeguarding and protection of children and young people and vulnerable adults very seriously and expects this of all its employees and bank workers. The Trust works with adult and children’s social care to ensure that the integrated service has systems in place to equip staff and bank workers with the knowledge and skills to recognize abuse, and take action to safeguard and protect vulnerable adults and children and young people. It is expected that all staff and bank workers familiarise themselves with the appropriate structures and policies and with the Sussex child protection and safeguarding procedures and the Sussex multi-agency policy and procedures for safeguarding vulnerable adults and undertake the relevant essential training and further training appropriate to their role.

Successful candidates are normally offered salaries at the bottom of the relevant salary range. However, where previous or equivalent NHS experience in a similar role can be demonstrated and evidenced, this may be taken into consideration when setting the starting salary.

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.