Principal Applied Psychologist

Go back South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Trust

Principal Applied Psychologist The closing date is 16 December 2025

Looking for a new challenge? We are looking for a compassionate and motivated Principal Psychologist to join the Secure Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (Secure CAMHS) at Adel Beck Secure Children's Home to deliver outstanding trauma informed care. The post holder will be an integral member of the team and have the necessary skills and experience to provide collective leadership, clinically lead and consult on highly complex forensic cases, offer supervision, lead and supervise audit, service evaluation and research, as well as manage the demands of service development and change.

We provide an MDT approach to the assessment, formulation and intervention planning for children, tailoring individuals care pathway to best meet their identified need and achieve the best possible outcome for them. We work to ensure that the team around the child is working together, with the child at the centre. As a service we are involved in all transition and discharge planning, promoting continuity of care and sharing of information.

The service will meet your development needs through a comprehensive induction, bespoke training development package and quality supervision plan. The post will be based at Adel Beck Secure Children's Home.

At the time of advertising, this role does meet the minimum requirements set by UK Visas and Immigration to sponsor candidates to work in the UK. We look forward to receiving your application.

Main duties of the job A typical day for you could involve: working 1:1 with children; formulation; supporting colleagues from a variety of different disciplines and services within and external to the secure estate; the opportunity to share skills and learn from others both formally and informally; most importantly to develop positive relationships and skills and join a valued and passionate workforce.

The service is embedding a psychologically-informed, multi-disciplinary approach to care which is formulation driven and underpinned by an understanding of developmental trauma. We aim to embed supervision and reflective practice at the centre of everything we do. In addition to the clinical responsibilities your role will include compassionate and collective leadership, project development and change management.

Experience of working within a CAMHS, Forensic or LAC service would be advantageous. The role will involve working closely the custodial staff within the Secure Children's Home (SCH) and other agencies.

We are open to all applications including Applied Psychologist, we understand the Job Description and Person Specification is for a Clinical Psychologist, as this is the Trusts Standardised documents. However, please be assured any professional with the relevant Applied Psychology qualifications will be considered.

All employees of the Trust are strongly encouraged to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to protect patients.

About us We are a specialist NHS Foundation Trust that provides community, mental health and learning disability services for the people of Barnsley, Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield. We also provide low and medium secure services and are the lead for the west Yorkshire secure provider collaborative.

Our mission is to help people reach their potential and live well in their communities, we do this by providing high quality care in the right place at the right time. We employ staff in both clinical and non clinical services who work hard to make a difference to the lives of service users, families and carers.

We encourage and welcome applications from all protected characteristic groups, we valuediversity and want our workforce to be reflective of our communities.

Being a foundation Trust means were accountable to our members, who can have a say in how were run. Around 14,300 local people (including staff) are members of our Trust.

Join us and you will be one of over 4,500 staff committed to supporting and improving the mental, physical and social needs of the thousands of people we meet and help each year.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expects all colleagues and volunteers to share this commitment.

We do reserve to right to close vacancy before the advertised closing date if necessary, so please apply as soon as possible.

Job responsibilities JOB SUMMARY

The post holder will provide a high quality specialist clinical psychology service to clients as part of the multidisciplinary team within the service.

The post holder will provide psychological assessments and interventions to clients within the service.

The post holder will provide psychological assessment and interventions in keeping with evidence based practice working autonomously within the professional guidelines and within the overall framework of the Trust's policies and procedures.

The post holder will be involved with service development, research and audit inline with the service priorities.

The post holder will be expected to supervise and support the psychological assessment and therapy provided by other psychologists and other clinical members of the team who provide psychologically based care and treatment.

The post holder will work in collaboration with professionals, carers and service users offering advice, consultation and supervision as appropriate.

KEY RESULT AREAS:

Clinical 1 The post holder will develop and maintain therapeutic relationships with clients, including in group settings. This will include joint working with complex cases which require more specialised levels of assessment and therapeutic skills.

2 The post holder is expected to provide autonomous, highly specialist assessments of clients referred to the service based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of psychological of psychological 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, and, where appropriate, family members and others involved in the clients care.

3 The post holder will be expected to communicate with clients with a wide range of difficulties and other presentations, including clients with complex mental health difficulties and plan and organise broad range of complex activities.

4 The post holder will be expected to formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a clients mental health problems including associated challenging behaviours, based on appropriate conceptual framework of the clients problem and employing methods of proven efficiency across the full range of care settings.

5 The post holder will be expected to make decisions and clinical judgements involving a range of highly complex factors in the context of inadequate or unavailable information, equivocal research/ evidence or where expert opinion differs.

6 The post holder will be expected to exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based care plans.

7 The post holder is expected to act as care co ordinator where appropriate, ensuring the provision of a care package for the clients needs, co coordinating the work of others involved with care, arranging the clients reviews as required and communicating effectively with the client, the family and all others involved in the care and to monitor progress during the course of multidisciplinary interventions.

8 The post holder will have skills to communicate sensitive and complex information regarding personal psycho social problems in an empathic and supportive way using the highest levels of interpersonal skills in situations which can be highly emotional and sometimes antagonistic.

9 The post holder will be expected to have responsibility and autonomy for the treatment and discharge of clients, whose problems are managed as a psychologically based care plan, ensuring appropriate assessment, formulation and interventions, communicating with the referral agent and others involved with the care on a regular basis.

10 The post holder will undertake risk assessments that will be used to inform/advise other professionals and carers where there are concerns in relation to mental health or risk taking behaviour.

11 The post holder will work with colleagues from other professional backgrounds and agencies to enable them to incorporate specialist psychological knowledge into their work.

12 The post holder will be expected to provide a flexible approach to engaging service users who may have difficulties engaging with the service by offering appointment in other, health centres, and home where appropriate.

Teaching, Training, Consultation and Supervision 13 The post holder will provide timely, appropriate and concise information (written and verbal) including the compilation of assessment and risk reports and summaries of therapeutic interventions including psychological reports in line with the Trust's Information Governance protocols.

14 The post holder will be expected to plan and manage their own time to meet expected workload across a number of complex activities and within specified time limits.

15 The post holder may be required to engage in physical activity involving role play with clients in a therapeutic setting.
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