Principal Clinical Psychologist

Principal Clinical Psychologist

The closing date is 17 December 2025

We are looking for a principal clinical psychologist to join their acute mental health service. The role is an interesting and exciting opportunity to develop clinical skills, leadership and service development.

The post will provide you with the opportunity to support service users with intensive psychiatric care needs within an established psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) through direct work, consultation, formulation, supervision and care planning. You will support other staff on the ward including CAPs to deliver patient care within the MDT.

We are dedicated to providing compassionate care and is part of NHS England's Culture of Care developments aimed at assuring safe, effective, compassionate care. The has a strong focus on human rights and restriction reduction and you will be supported to leader in these areas.

The post will provide opportunities to take a lead in developing safe, effective and evidence based psychological service across the acute psychology team which includes acute wards, liaison and home treatment teams. The psychology team is research active and has close links with Sheffield University. The successful candidate will support the consultant psychologist in providing supervision and support to the team. Secondment for internal candidates would be supported.

Main duties of the job

• To provide a qualified highly specialist clinical psychology service to service users of the psychiatric intensive care unit, Endcliffe ward. To provide highly specialist psychological assessment and therapy at the same time as offering highly specialised advice and consultation on service users' psychological care to psychologist colleagues, non psychologist colleagues and to other, non professional carers. In common with all Clinical Psychologists, to receive regular clinical supervision in accordance with good practice.
• To provide clinical supervision to less experienced practitioner psychologists, therapists, assistant(s), trainee(s) or other professionals. The postholder is responsible for the co ordination and organisation of the work of other psychologists and other clinical members of the team who provide psychologically based care and treatment.
• To take sole professional responsibility and exercise autonomous professional and clinical judgement within the overall framework of Trust, HCPC and BPS professional policies/guidelines/standards. To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the area served by the team and service.

About us

We prioritise the well being and safety of both our service users and employees. It is our policy and a condition of employment that all employees must join the DBS Update Service. This service carries an annual fee, which employees are responsible for paying up front. However, employees may claim this cost back through the Trust's Employee Expenses Reimbursement Policy. For those requiring a Basic DBS check, it is necessary to register for a DBS Online Account.

Job responsibilities

Please take time to review the job description and person specification attached to find out more about the role and contact Jo Varela with any questions.

Person Specification Qualifications

• Doctorate in Clinical Psychology
• HCPC registered practitioner psychologist
• Formal training in supervision of other psychologists
• Additional further training and qualification in area of relevant clinical experience
• Formal training in leadership or management relevant to healthcare
• Training in an area relevant to acute mental health presentations

Experience

• Significant experience in working with acute mental health, risk or behavioural distress
• Experience in leading in multidisciplinary teams
• Significant experience in psychological assessment, formulation and intervention of complexity
• Experience of reducing restrictive practice
• Significant experience of team formulation and care planning of complex presentations
• Experience of adapting psychological work and including patients from diverse backgrounds

Theory

• Experience of leadership and service development
• Well developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychotherapeutic/psychological therapies for people with SMI
• Experience of working within MHA/MCA safeguarding legislation
• Evidence of delivering formal CPD to others
• Highly specialist knowledge in 2 or more modalities of assessment or intervention

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Address

Endcliffe Ward, Northern General Hospital