Job summary
- Main area
- clinical psychologist/psychotherapist
- Grade
- Band 8a
- Contract
- 12 months (Fixed Term)
- Hours
- 18.75 hours per week (Part time)
- Job ref
- 350-CC7345284-A
- Employer
- Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Manor Farm Primary Resource Centre
- Town
- Huyton
- Salary
- £55,690 - £62,682 pro rata - if offered Preceptorship this will be Band 7
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 25/08/2025 23:59
Employer heading
Clinical Psychologist
Band 8a
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Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust celebrates diversity and promotes equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.
We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from ethnically diverse, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people that are under-represented in our workforce. Furthermore we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces personnel as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.
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Job overview
Building Attachment & Bonds Service (BABS) are looking to recruit an experienced Specialist Clinical Psychologists/ Child Psychotherapists.
The service sits within the Mersey Care Community Care Division but is hosted in the community in Family Hubs and Children Centres.
The post will involve providing specialist therapeutic parent-infant mental health support to vulnerable families in the antenatal/postnatal period. The main focus of the BABS work is supporting parents and infants to build secure bonds and attachment relationships, and good parent infant mental health. It would be an advantage if the post holder has previous experience and/or an interest and passion for working in the specialist field of parent infant mental health; in particular, experience of working on an outreach, community-basis supporting vulnerable families in the community.
The successful applicant must be confident and skilled to work independently, and in collaboration/partnership with other professionals. The successful applicant must be confident and comfortable working with safeguarding issues/concerns and the multitude of risks presented in the parent infant relationship. Most importantly, the successful applicant must have good interpersonal skills and qualities to build a good relationship and engage families with complex lives.
Band 7s & Secondments will also be considered for this post.
Main duties of the job
The post will involve providing specialist therapeutic parent-infant mental health support to families in the antenatal/postnatal period via Parent Infant Mental Health Assessments, psychological formulation and various parent-infant interventions.
Provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the team 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.
Main duties of the job
The successful applicant will work collaboratively with the following professionals and teams to support vulnerable parents and infants:
Community and Specialist/Public Health Midwives
Mersey Care teams within the Child Health Directorate (Health Visitors, Family Nurses, Breastfeeding Team)
Children Centre and Early Years Staff
Perinatal Mental Health Teams
Children’s Social Care staff (Social Workers, Early Help and Family Support Workers Staff)
Working for our organisation
Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.
We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.
At the heart of all we do is our commitment to ‘perfect care’ – care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We’re currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.
Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.
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 evaluate, monitor progress and 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 autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment and treatment of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based enhanced care plans.
To provide specialist psychological advice guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plans.
To ensure that all members of the clinical team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of clients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.
To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide both general and specialist advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, highly complex information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care where there may be conflicting views, high emotion and significant barriers to understanding and change, and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.
To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.
The candidate would be expected to provide staff support in the form of 1:1 supervision, peer support and reflective practice group on a regular basis
Person specification
Knowledge/ Experience
Essential criteria
- Assessed experience of working as a HCPC registered practitioner psychologist at a specialist level for a significant period
- Significant experience of representing psychology within the context of multidisciplinary care
- Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for individuals psychological care and treatment
- Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision
- Expertise in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, formulation, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration
- Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within psychology
- Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health
Desirable criteria
- Knowledge/Experience of working within Occupational Health & Wellbeing setting
- Experience of assessing and treating individuals across the full range of care settings
- Experience with supporting individuals to return to work
- Knowledge of the role of work and the impact on mental health and vice versa
- Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts
- Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc)
- High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Doctoral level training in relevant area of psychological practice accredited by the BPS or its approved equivalent
- Registration with Health and Care Professions Council as a Practitioner Psychologist
Desirable criteria
- Post-graduate training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice
Values
Essential criteria
- Continuous Improvement
- Accountability
- Respectfulness
- Enthusiasm
- Support
- High professional standards
- Responsive to service users
- Engaging leadership style
- Strong customer service belief
- Transparency and honesty
- Discreet
- Change oriented
Skills
Essential criteria
- Well developed and effective communication skills, oral and written, to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to individuals, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS
- Skills in providing consultation, reflective practice and clinical supervision to other professional and nonprofessional groups
- Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS
- Formal training in supervision of other psychologists
- Excellent knowledge of IT systems including word processing, email and local electronic patient information systems
Desirable criteria
- Demonstrable evidence of working within an electronic software system to perform role/activitie
Employer certification / accreditation badges
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 Lisa Marsland
- Job title
- Consultant Clinical Psychologist
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 07810204104
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