Clinical Psychologist

Main area Warrington Recovery - Mental Health Services Grade Band 7 - 8a Contract Permanent Hours Full time - 37.5 hours per week Job ref 350-MHC

Site Wakefield House Town Warrington Salary £46,148 - £60,504 per annum Salary period Yearly Closing 08/05/:59 Interview date 21/05/2025



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 ethnic minorities, 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.



Job overview An exciting opportunity has arisen for a practitioner Psychologist to work within Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust in the Warrington Recovery Team. The post is suitable for both newly qualified psychologists and current band 8a's.The service will offer relevant training and support to ensure newly qualified applicants are eligible forpreceptorship to an 8a clinical/counselling psychology post.

Warrington Recovery Team are a large specialist secondary care community mental health Team. The successful applicant would be part of a large team of psychologists, CBT/EMDR therapists, assistant psychologists, occupational therapists, mental health nurses, support workers, psychiatry and soon to be peer workers. You will be joining a hard working and busy team providing holistic care/therapies with people who experience complex mental health difficulties.

Inline with Mersey Care's community transformation program we are working in partnership with our primary care colleagues and strive to provide a seamless mental health offer. Our Recovery Teams provide high quality intervention-based care in both high and low intensity formats. Training opportunities will be available and you will be supported to follow CPD opportunities to further develop your career.

Main duties of the job To work as part of the multi-disciplinary team at the Warrington Recovery Team, providing a qualified specialist psychological service to clients with severe and enduring mental health difficulties.

To provide specialist psychological assessment and therapy, offering advice and consultation on clients' psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues and to other, non-professional carers.

To work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the divisions and team's policies and procedures.

To provide clinical supervision to assistant and trainee psychologists.

To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the area served by the team/service.

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 provide 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.

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 where appropriate.

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 who are open to the Recovery Psychology Service

To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients' formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan. Recovery Team.

To ensure that all members of the clinical team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of service users, 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 to provide 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 service users 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 multidisciplinary care.

To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.

Teaching, training, and supervision:

To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.

To continue to gain wider post-qualification experience of clinical psychology over and above that provided within the principal service area where the post holder is employed.

To develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training and supervision and to provide supervision to other MDT staff's psychological work, as appropriate.

To provide professional and clinical supervision to assistant psychologists and, as appropriate, to contribute to the supervision of individual cases for trainee clinical psychologists.

To contribute to the pre- and post-qualification teaching of all relevant staff, as appropriate.

To provide advice, consultation, supervision and training to staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.

Management, recruitment, policy and service development:

To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the team's operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit, including managing the pathway to clinical psychology within the team.

To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.

To be involved in the shortlisting and interviewing of assistant psychologists and other member of staff as appropriate.

The post holder will be expected to make full use of IT packages available within the work area, for example, Microsoft office, email, RIO, internet and statistical packages.

Service Governance:

To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.

To undertake research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research as appropriate.

To undertake project management, including complex audit and service evaluation . click apply for full job details