Job summary
- Main area
- Mental Health
- Grade
- Band 8b
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Part time
- Flexible working
- Job ref
- 246-CEN8111636
- Employer
- Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- South Community Mental Health Team, Gateway House
- Town
- Wymondham
- Salary
- £66,582 - £77,368 gross per annum pro rata
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 17/08/2026 23:59
Employer heading
Principal Clinical Psychologist
Band 8b
Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust provides child and adult mental health services, learning disability, wellbeing, older people's and eating disorder services across Norfolk and Suffolk.
We are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion and want to reflect the diversity of our local communities within our teams. We welcome applications from all talented individuals with the relevant qualifications, skills, knowledge and experience.
Please note due to the nature of our roles and patient demographic, you will be required to remain trained in physical intervention training, as required by your role.
Job overview
We are delighted to advertise a Principal Clinical Psychologist post for the South Norfolk Community Mental Health Team in the Central Norfolk Locality. The role will help improve pathways and evidence-based therapies for personality disorder and complex emotional needs. This role is designed to work with adults over the age of 25 and will link with other adult and personality disorder services across the locality and Trust. The post holder will work alongside a dedicated multi-disciplinary team and a well-established psychology team including other Principal Clinical Psychologists. The post will directly oversee the personality disorder pathway roles and provide leadership to the wider team.
In addition to providing and overseeing highly specialist therapies within the community team, the role will involve providing consultation, training and supervision to the team and wider system. The aim will be to deliver training and support that will improve system knowledge, skills and intervention capacity.
We are seeking to recruit a practitioner psychologist with training in at least one therapeutic model appropriate for complex presentations. This could be Dialectical Behavioural Therapy, Mentalisation Based Therapy or a more relational therapy such as CAT or Schema-Focussed Therapy. We would like successful candidates to undertake further training to improve flexibility and patient choice.
Interested parties are invited to call for an informal discussion or visit.
Main duties of the job
The role of the Principal Clinical Psychologist within our South adult Community Mental Health Team and personality disorder pathway is to provide senior clinical leadership with some time dedicated to direct clinical work, alongside a significant focus on leadership activities. This includes:
· Oversee the personality disorder pathway in South CMHT and build relationships with the wider PD pathway across Central Norfolk and NSFT. To promote consistency and quality in the provision, and address issues in equity.
· Collaborative and shared leadership with other Principle Clinical Psychologists and MDT clinical and operational leads.
· To maintain and develop the DBT provision in the South CMHT.
· Deliver consultation, training, supervision and support across CMHT clinicians to help build confidence in using skills learnt to treat service users with complex presentations.
· Providing a key role in team containment, working with professional systems, having difficult conversations, managing team emotions, and thinking systemically.
· Build relationships within the CMHT and across the system to encourage evidence-based treatment and best practice for working with complex presentations which will encourage a seamless service user journey.
· To ensure the quality and effectiveness of the pathway including access data, clinical outcome data and service user feedback.
Working for our organisation
As an employer, I and Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust are particularly committed to enabling our staff to do the very best they can through support and training, as well as opportunities for progression. We are confident, therefore, that the right candidate will have a real chance to make a positive impact to the lives of young people in Norfolk.
Here at NSFT we pride ourselves on being a welcoming, talented, friendly and supportive team who like nothing better than sharing experiences and learning from each other. In addition to ongoing training and development opportunities, we are committed to providing an environment in which you can thrive.
Why work for us? We have challenges as a Trust, but we have ambitious aspirations, are pushing ahead with exciting transformation work and we need dedicated individuals to support us on our journey. We have strong, established professional networks coupled with an exceptional leadership team who will ensure you are truly cared for and cared about.
Why Norfolk and Suffolk? The people here are warm and welcoming, you’ll never be far from the beautiful coastline or Broads National Park. We’re an hour and a half away from London and have an international airport in Norwich too. Our villages, towns and cities are packed full of history, independent cafes, shops and theatres. We have excellent shopping, eating out, top ranking schooling and affordable house prices too.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
We are looking to recruit an inspired and confident Practitioner Psychologist to provide quality containment, supervision and leadership to our clinical staff, and to contribute to the direction of the service. You will be supervised by the Associate Director of Psychology. You will have the opportunity to hold a small caseload; delivering skilled interventions, and demonstrating leadership across the service. If you are interested and passionate about working with personality disorder and complex emotional and relational needs in a community setting, then please get in contact.
Please find attached our Job Description and Person Specification for more detail on your Key Accountabilities, then if you feel you have what it takes to make a difference in your local communities, click APPLY!
Some of the benefits you can expect:
- NHS pension
- a comprehensive in house & external training programmes
- career progression
- starting annual leave of 27 days per annum increasing to 33 days pa based on length of service (plus paid bank holidays)
- staff physio service
- NHS discounts and many more.
Interview dates are yet to be set; you will be contacted via email and invited to book a time. These emails may go to your SPAM, so please keep checking all your emails if applying.
Please visit our Facebook and Twitter page @NSFTjobs
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology, or its equivalent, including eligibility for chartered status with the BPS
- Further post-qualification, post-graduate training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice
- Registered as a practitioner psychologist with the Health Care Professions Council (HCPC)
Desirable criteria
- Evidence of CPD in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice
Experience
Essential criteria
- Specialist complex psychological assessment and treatment of people with a wide range of mental health problems, of varying severity and complexity.
- Extensive experience of working as a qualified clinical psychologist and evidence of specialist knowledge gained through practice and ongoing training.
- Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups and presenting problems including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems.
Desirable criteria
- Representing psychology within MDT setting (clinical and organisational contexts).
- Experience of clinical work in a setting relevant to the post
Skills
Essential criteria
- Use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management.
- Assessment, evaluation and management of risk associated with mental ill health and related psychopathology.
- Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively complex, highly technical and clinically highly sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS
Desirable criteria
- Production of reports suitable for public presentations and presentation in medico-legal setting.
- High level knowledge in the assessment and evaluation of psychological therapies.
Knowledge
Essential criteria
- Well-developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, dual diagnosis, people with additional disabilities etc.)
- Practitioner level knowledge of at least two models of psychological therapy.
- Legislation and its implication for clinical practice and the appropriate management of people presenting with mental health problems
Other
Essential criteria
- Commitment to continuing professional development, to partnership working and to reflective clinical practice.
- Able to identify, and employ appropriate clinical governance mechanisms for the support and maintenance of clinical practice.
- Ability to travel Independently
Desirable criteria
- Experience of working within a multicultural framework.
- Experience of providing specific support intervention and strategy for staff.
Employer certification / accreditation badges
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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
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Dr Roger Kingerlee
- Job title
- Clinical Psychologist
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 01953 611000
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