Senior Psychologist Islington Core Team-Maternity leave cover

Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust; Greater London; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 65,000; Full time

Job summary

A public health organization in Greater London seeks a Senior Psychologist to cover maternity leave. The role involves providing psychological assessments and interventions for individuals with severe mental health issues. Candidates should have a doctoral-level qualification in psychology and experience in psychological assessment and treatment. The position offers an opportunity to work collaboratively within a multidisciplinary team to support mental health initiatives within the community. Competitive benefits are included.

Benefits

NHS Discounts

Generous annual leave and pension scheme

Health and wellbeing initiatives

Qualifications

• Experience of psychological assessment and treatment across mental health settings.
• Able to offer supervision to junior staff.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology.

Responsibilities

• Provide assessments and interventions to clients with complex needs.
• Work as part of a multidisciplinary team.
• Deliver evidence-based treatments appropriate for client needs.

Skills

Psychological assessment

Consultation skills

Ability to communicate effectively

Experience with complex needs

Education

Doctoral level training in clinical or counselling psychology

Post-graduate qualification accredited by the British Psychological Society

Job description

This job is brought to you by Jobs/Redefined, the UK's leading over‑50s age inclusive jobs board.

Thank you for your interest in the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT). This is an exciting time to join us and be 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.

Our trust website is: https://www.northlondonmentalhealth.nhs.uk/

Job overview

Islington core team‑senior psychologist band 8A maternity leave cover, fixed term until January 31st 2027

The North London NHS Foundation Trust is transforming its services to meet the Community Transformation Agenda. The transformation of community mental health services aims to break down the barriers to care, by integrating primary and secondary care services and delivering a model that improves access to holistic approaches, for our service users.

The poster holder will be part of the North Islington Core team providing assessments, formulations, and interventions (individual and group) to those presenting with severe mental health problems in the London borough of Islington. The role has been combined to cover two postholders on maternity leave, to provide interventions within the newly formed Service Teams within Islington. The aim of the service is to increase the number of people whose mental health support is appropriately managed in line with the Community Framework for Mental Health using a population health approach.

Main duties of the job

The successful post holder will be adept at offering assessment and interventions to clients with complex and multi‑faceted needs, as well as have experience of offering liaison, consultation and advice to staff in the MDT. Experience of providing supervision to junior members will also be essential. The post holder will be joining an MDT and will also be part of a cross‑borough psychology system made up of 20 psychologists. The person in post will be supported by senior psychologists to deliver their role.

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 a supportive environment to deliver outstanding care.
4. We will be more effective as an organisation by pioneering research, quality improvement and technology.

Why NLFT?

• We develop and retain our staff through leadership behaviours and managers programme and many more opportunities.
• We promote flexible working and support staff with a range of health and wellbeing initiatives.
• NHS Discounts, generous annual leave and NHS pension scheme.
• Excellent internal staff network.

The post holder will be aligned with our values:

• We Are Kind
• We Are Respectful
• We Work Together
• We Keep Things Simple
• We Empower
• We Are Proudly Diverse

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

Community Mental Health Services are undergoing widespread, innovative transformation. North London Foundation Trust are at the forefront of this transformation, developing a more holistic, recovery oriented, biopsychosocial approach to supporting people with mental illnesses, in partnership with primary care, other community NHS providers and the voluntary sector. The aim is to build support systems that reach the whole mental health population with a focus on prevention and sustained recovery delivered by multi‑agency collaboration. Each population unit is based on the footprint of Primary Care Networks, bringing together NHS, voluntary sector, peer support and community organisations. These relationships will be central to the new community mental health model.

The poster holder will act as a fully integrated member of the team providing a specialist psychological perspective to support the transformation and development of the service.

The post holder will work with multidisciplinary colleagues to increase psychological and trauma informed practice as well as offer evidence‑based interventions. The post holder will provide highly specialist psychological assessment and treatment using evidence‑based, NICE‑recommended interventions and will work autonomously within professional guidelines and within the overall framework of the service's policies and procedures. The postholder will be expected to oversee and offer supervision to staff working on the complex emotional needs' pathway. This part of the post will have a cross‑borough reach to support the roll out of a Structured Clinical Management (SCM) pilot.

Postholders will be part of newly developed psychology hubs within each borough as well as being integrated within Service Teams. This will support more effective co‑ordination and delivery of psychological interventions within the borough.

Person specification

Qualifications/ Registrations

Essential criteria

• Doctoral level training in clinical or counselling psychology.
• Post‑graduate doctoral level qualification in clinical or counselling psychology as accredited by the British Psychological Society, or British Psychological Society Statement of Equivalence.
• Current registration with the Health and Care Professions Council as a clinical psychologist or a counselling psychologist.

Skills and Abilities

Essential criteria

• Skills in the use of a range of methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management for the full range of problems.
• Ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, with service users, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non‑professional groups.
• Skills in delivering evidence‑based treatments appropriate for the client group seen in the Service teams or within the specific clinical area where the post has special responsibilities.
• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice.

Experience and Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Experience of psychological assessment and treatment of service users with a wide range of disorders and their comorbidities across a range of mental health settings.
• Experience of offering assessment and intervention to people with complex emotional needs, including personality disorders.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of service users, across the whole life course and presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity.
• Experience of teaching, training consultation and supervision.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.

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 cost 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.

The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Documents to download

• Job description & Person Specification (PDF, 640.3KB)
• Functional Requirements (PDF, 143.8KB)
• A comprehensive guide for candidates (PDF, 875.7KB)