Job summary
- Main area
- Psychology
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 8a
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Part time - 22.5 hours per week
- Job ref
- 363-TH7511596
- Employer
- East London NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Stepney and Wapping Neighbourhood MH Team
- Town
- London
- Salary
- £64,156 - £71,148 Per annum pro rata inc HCA
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 02/11/2025 23:59
Employer heading

Highly Specialist Clinical or Counselling Psychologist
NHS AfC: Band 8a
ELFT has long been recognised as a centre of excellence for mental and health care, innovation and improvement. So it is a very exciting time for you to come and work for us. Our mission is to make a positive difference to people's lives by improving quality of life for all we serve. Our values are: We Care, We Respect, We are Inclusive – so we are looking for people who live and breathe these qualities when supporting service users and carers, and in their relationships with colleagues in the Trust and our partner organisations.
Job overview
This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced and highly motivated Clinical or Counselling Psychologist to job-share the psychological provision for Stepney & Wapping Community Mental Health Team.
The successful candidate will be one of the two Lead Psychologists for a vibrant multi-disciplinary team working with service users and their families presenting with diverse and complex social and health needs. You will work closely with the Operational and Clinical Leads to ensure the delivery of a high quality, accessible, and inclusive psychological service drawing on a range of psychological approaches. In addition to leading on individual and group psychological interventions with service users, you will support the Neighbourhood Team Psychology service. You will promote psychological and trauma informed practice within the teams and wider service area through consultation (informal and formal), training and reflective practice. You will supervise the B7 psychologist working across the NMHT and locality inpatient wards, as well as other psychological staff. You will collaborate closely with colleagues from psychology, Arts Therapy and Occupational Therapy to jointly develop a borough-wide groups therapies programme. There are significant opportunities for service development, quality improvement, and innovative practice in this post as part of the Trust’s Community Health Transformation Programme.
Main duties of the job
- To provide the systematic provision of a high quality specialist clinical / counselling psychology service to the Stepney and Wapping Neighbourhood Team.
- To act as Lead Psychologist for the Stepney and Wapping Neighbourhood Team.
- The Stepney and Wapping Neighbourhood Team psychologist will be responsible for the day-to-day management of psychological provision to the team. To identify areas for development or challenges and work closely with the clinical leads, operational manager and senior psychologists for community to implement and address these.
- To promote and support psychosocial interventions through assessment, care planning, consultation and supervision in collaboration with each team.
- To assist the Operational Lead and Lead Psychologists with the implementation of the community transformation programme. To develop closer links with community partners and develop innovative ways of delivering trauma-informed psychological interventions in ways that meet the needs of the community in Tower Hamlets.
- To provide specialist advice to the teams and voluntary sector agencies concerning the assessment, treatment and management of the client group accessing team.
- To propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the team in collaboration with Service and Professional management.
Working for our organisation
Our mission is to make a positive difference to people's lives by improving the quality of life for all we serve. Our values are: We Care, We Respect, We are Inclusive – so we are looking for people who live and breathe these qualities when supporting service users and carers, and in their relationships with colleagues in the Trust and our partner organisations.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
- Provide specialist psychological assessments of service users of the locality service, when care is managed under the CPA (community and in patients). This is to be based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex psychological data from a variety of quantitative and qualitative sources including psychological and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and assessments with service users and others involved in their care. This can include the interpretation and explanation of the results of cognitive and neuropsychological tests in the context of the service user’s circumstances and current difficulties and the communication of these findings to those involved in the network of care and in care planning.
- To provide clinical supervision and line management for the band 7 psychologist for both their community and inpatient work. To provide some indirect inpatient work where necessary, including reflective practice, debriefs and consultation.
- Be responsible for the formulation and implementation of a broad range of specialist psychological treatment and/or management of service users’ mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of those problems derived from a broad theoretical knowledge of psychology, and employing methods based upon evidence of proven efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
- Be responsible for implementing a range of specialist psychological interventions for individual service users, carers and groups, employed singly and in combination, adjusting and refining psychological formulations as practice and experience demand, and drawing upon different explanatory models to maintain a number of provisional hypotheses.
- Evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical, development and cultural processes and systems, which have shaped the individual, family or group.
- Be responsible for providing and receiving highly complex, sensitive, distressing and emotional information in relation to mental and physical health issues, where there are often difficulties in terms of acceptance or understanding.
- Communicate across language and cultural barriers, including working for sustained periods of time by communicating with service users, carers or groups through professional interpreters or advocates
- Spend sustained amounts of time with individuals who may be aggressive and hostile to themselves or others, who may have poor communication and/or self-care skills and special physical and/or mental needs.
- Be responsible for recording, monitoring and reporting on clinical work and communicating, in a skilled and sensitive manner, complex clinical information (including assessment, formulation, treatment plans and progress) to a variety of recipients (e.g. service users, carers, other professionals, formal panels, statutory and voluntary organisations) orally, in writing and electronically.
- Undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users as appropriate.
- Act as a primary point of contact for a small number of service users, who do not require specific psychological intervention/therapy, but whose overall care would benefit from psychological perspective.
Person specification
Education & Training
Essential criteria
- Doctorate in Clinical Psychology or equivalence (statement of equivalence (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996)) and able to demonstrate eligibility for BPS CPsychol (Chartered Psychologist) Or Doctorate in Counselling Psychology and able to demonstrate eligibility for BPS CPsychol (Chartered Psychologist)
- HCPC registration
- BPS accredited degree in psychology or equivalent
Desirable criteria
- Clinical supervision training for doctoral psychology trainees
- Further training in a therapeutic modality relevant to severe and enduring mental health
Experience
Essential criteria
- Experience of working as a specialist clinical or counselling psychologist in including relevant experience working in a multi-disciplinary team for adults with severe and enduring mental health problems.
- Experience of working with a wide variety of service user groups across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity. Experience of planning and exercising full clinical responsibility for service users’ psychological care and treatment within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan.
- Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision.
- Experience of work in a multi-cultural setting, including working with interpreters
Desirable criteria
- Experience of developing and delivering specialist training programmes
- Experience of working in an in patient setting with acutely unwell service users
Knowledge
Essential criteria
- Highly-developed skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management, including the use of theoretical models to analyse information and to develop formulations upon which to base choice of treatment.
- Highly-developed skills in the effective communication of highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to a wide variety of recipients in a range of settings within and outside the NHS, including the ability to produce comprehensive and coherent letters, reports and associated documentation
- Highly-developed communication skills at overcoming barriers to understanding and acceptance.
- Skills in working in multidisciplinary settings
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
- Antony Daly
- Job title
- Principal Psychologist
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 07585 124 706
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