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Job summary

Main area
Adult Learning Disabilities
Grade
Band 8c
Contract
Permanent
Hours
Full time - 37.5 hours per week
Job ref
277-7853105-ALD
Employer
Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust
Employer type
NHS
Site
Queen Mary's Hospital
Town
Sidcup
Salary
£82,906 - £94,632 pa inc
Salary period
Yearly
Closing
29/03/2026 23:59

Employer heading

Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust logo

Consultant Specialist Clinical Psychologist

Band 8c

Job overview

We have a permanent post at Band 8c full-time for a dynamic and creative clinical psychologist working in an innovative community learning disabilities team (CLDT) in Bexley. You would be working with other clinical psychologists and psychological therapists, alongside other colleagues in the multi-disciplinary teams. You will have a key leadership and consultation role as a senior psychologist in the team.

Based at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup in Bexley for your clinical caseload but also working across the boroughs of Bromley and Greenwich, you will provide professional and clinical leadership for the psychologists working in the Bexley CLDT. You will ideally have a car available, but it is essential that you can travel throughout the Oxleas area, using public transport where necessary.

We have a thriving learning disability psychology speciality with 27 wte clinical staff working in three community learning disability teams across three boroughs. Group systemic supervision is provided to all psychologists in the service and individual supervision by experienced colleagues. The psychology speciality is a creative and innovative one, encouraging research and service evaluation, with a strong focus on measuring outcomes.

You will be a valued member of the leadership team in helping to shape the vision for the service, meeting service user needs as well as promoting the service outside of Oxleas NHS Trust.

Main duties of the job

To work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within Bexley ALD service and to ensure that systems are in place and working effectively for the clinical and professional supervision and support of all other psychological therapies staff within these services, including the community intensive service team (ICST) lead psychologist, for which the post holder has designated professional responsibility, including clear systems for effective recruitment, professional appraisal, and the identification of Continual Professional Development (CPD) needs. To ensure the systematic provision of a high-quality specialist clinical psychology service within Bexley ALD service, across all sectors of care. As a major requirement of the job, to carry out audit, policy and service development and research activities and/or programmes. To propose and implement policy and service development changes within Bexley ALD service. The person may be designated as overall clinical lead for ALD in an area of clinical expertise.

Working for our organisation

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children’s centres, schools and people’s homes.

We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.

Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families.  This is strengthened by our new values:

  • We’re Kind
  • We’re Fair
  • We Listen
  • We Care

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

  • To provide highly developed specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the service, based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological (and neuropsychological) tests, self-report measures, rating scales direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with clients, family members and others involved in the client’s care. The use of neuropsychological tests involves the use of specific highly developed skill requirements for accuracy.
  • To formulate plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.
  • To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
  • To make highly skilled evaluations and decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.
  • To exercise full responsibility and autonomy for the treatment of and discharge of clients whose problems are managed as a psychologically based standard care plan, ensuring appropriate assessment, formulation and interventions, communicating with the referral agent and others involved with the care on a regular basis.
  • To provide expertise and specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.

Person specification

Education/Qualifications

Essential criteria
  • Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology.
  • Registered with HPC as a clinical psychologist
Desirable criteria
  • Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice.

Experience

Essential criteria
  • Assessed experience of working as a qualified clinical psychologist for a minimum of six years, including at least 3 years post qualification experience within the designated specialty where the post is located.
  • 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 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 co-ordinator and also within the context of a multi-disciplinary care plan.
Desirable criteria
  • Experience of professional management of qualified and pre-qualified clinical psychologists.
  • Experience of multi-professional management of teams or services within the designated specialty.

Skills/Abilities/Knowledge

Essential criteria
  • Doctoral level knowledge of clinical psychology including highly developed knowledge of lifespan developmental psychology, models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, and two or more distinct psychological therapies.
  • Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
Desirable criteria
  • Highly developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities and severely challenging behaviours etc.)

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Veteran AwareNo smoking policyAge positiveInvestors in People: GoldImproving working livesArmed Forces Covenant Gold AwardMindful employer.  Being positive about mental health.Disability confident employerStonewall equality policy. Equality and justice for lesbians, gay men, bisexual and trans people.Step into healthPride In Veterans

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

Apply online now

Further details / informal visits contact

Name
Sandra Baum
Job title
Consultant Clinical Psychologist
Email address
[email protected]
Telephone number
020 3871 5680
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