Job summary
- Main area
- Principal Psychologist
- Grade
- Band 8b
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time - 37.5 hours per week
- Job ref
- 310-MASMH-7074035
- Employer
- Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Chesterton Medical Centre
- Town
- Cambridge
- Salary
- £62,215 - £72,293 per annum, pro rata
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 21/04/2025 23:59
Employer heading
Principal Psychologist
Band 8b
Job overview
This is a leadership role where you will work in collaboration with the Lead Consultant Psychologist to ensure that the psychological skills service continues to be trauma informed in it’s approach and communication and provides effective and high quality interventions. You will also provide clinical leadership, supervision, advice, guidance and support across the psychological skills service (PSS) (though you will be based in the Cambridge team).
You will have a small clinical caseload of services users who meet criteria for complex PTSD. You will be providing individual therapy that focuses on processing traumatic memories and re-scripting events. Our main therapies for this pathway include Trauma focused CBT (TF-CBT), Compassion focussed therapy and/ or Eye movement and desensitisation reprocessing therapy (EMDR).
Main duties of the job
You will be leading on the strategy and providing advice and guidance on the following areas (these each have their own leads that you will supervise)
Supervision
Training and development
Reflective practice
Trauma informed communication and practice
Service improvement and evaluation
Inclusion (adapting interventions to meet the needs of all service users
You will lead a regular quality meeting involving other members of the team and provide advice supervision and guidance to the wider team to ensure the quality of psychological therapy provided.
You will contribute to the initial expert assessment of clients newly referred to the team and work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures. You will provide one to one therapy for people with complex PTSD.
Working Environment
You will mostly be based in the Cambridge office but at time we would ask you to go to one of our other bases if other senior clinicians are not available or when there is a whole team meeting You will work with clients at the team base or virtually. At times there will be lone working in these environments, where there is an expectation to follow the relevant safety protocols. We are keen to support working from home and flexible working.
Working for our organisation
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust is a health and social care organisation dedicated to providing high-quality care with compassion to improve the health and wellbeing of the people we care for, as well as supporting and empowering them to lead a fulfilling life.
Our clinical teams deliver many NHS services, not only via inpatient and primary care settings, but also within the community. These services include children's, adult and older people's mental health, forensic and specialist mental health, learning disabilities, primary care and liaison psychiatry, substance misuse, social care, research and development.
To achieve our goal, we look to recruit high-calibre candidates who share our vision and values. As an equal opportunities employer, we encourage applications from all sectors of the community, particularly from under-represented groups including people with long term conditions and members of our ethnic minority and LGBTQ+ communities.
Please be advised we reserve the right to close adverts earlier than the closing date should we receive sufficient applications.
Regrettably, we cannot offer sponsorship for all our job roles. If you apply for a role that we cannot offer sponsorship for, unfortunately, your application form will be rejected from the process.
For further information on CPFT, please visit our website at www.cpft.nhs.uk
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details of responsibilities.
To provide clinical leadership and line management related responsibilities, including strategic thinking and monitoring of service delivery, to the psychology staff in the Psychological skills service (in collaboration with the consultant clinical psychologist).
To provide psychological assessments of clients referred to PSS 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 develop psychological formulations of presenting problems or situations that integrate information from assessments within a coherent framework that draws upon psychological theory and evidence, and which incorporates interpersonal, societal, cultural and biological factors.
To use psychological formulations to develop and implement 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, and to use these plans to inform and lead the work of non-psychology members of the team.
To be responsible for implementing delivering psychological interventions for individuals, for service users with complex PTSD or other manifestations of complex trauma adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses. This includes responsibility
for the delivery of psychological interventions by all team members.
To evaluate and make 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, carers or group.
Person specification
Education / Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Doctoral level training in clinical/ counselling or forensic psychology, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology
- Registered as Practitioner Psychologist with HCPC.
- Further training in supervision of clinical psychologists
- Additional training in a trauma processing therapy recommended by NICE for CPTSD
Desirable criteria
- Qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/ or other fields of applied psychology.
- Undertaken post-qualification further training in : -CBT -Acceptance and Commitment therapy or -Compassion focused therapy, or -Working with Asperger's/ Autistic spectrum disorder -Schema therapy -EMDR
- Undertaken training in the supervision of trainee clinical psychologists.
Experience
Essential criteria
- Substantial experience of specialist psychological assessment, formulation and treatment of service users across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care and inpatient settings.
- Experience of developing and implementing psychological interventions to groups of patients
- Experience of working with service users with complex needs
- Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision
Desirable criteria
- Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
- Experience of delivering group programmes based on: -Acceptance and commitment therapy -Compassion focused therapy -Complex trauma -Skills relating to ASD
- Experience of supervising assistant psychologists
Skills & Abilities
Essential criteria
- Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
- Demonstrates an understanding for the need to use evidence based psychological therapies and how it relates to this post
- Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
- Skills in individual and group work and in programme planning
Desirable criteria
- Experience of leading and carrying out research projects and interpreting data using statistical analyses.
- Proven ability in carrying out clinical audits.
Knowledge & Understanding
Essential criteria
- Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex multivariate data analysis as practiced within the field of clinical psychology
- Knowledge of legislation in relation to the service user group and the setting, and its implications for both clinical practice and professional management in relation to the client group.
- Knowledge of current policies relating to bridging the gap between primary and secondary care.
Desirable criteria
- Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies to patients specifically ACT, compassion focused therapies, CBT, EMDR and schema therapy
- High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies
- High level knowledge of the theory and practice of a psychologically based group intervention.
Other
Essential criteria
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, enabling formation of networks with professionals within the Trust and from other agencies to promote effective team working with clients.
- Able to contain and work with high levels of distress from clients.
- Able to contain and work with organisational stress.
- The ability and skills to act as an advocate for a new service, to engage and foster good professional relationships with all health professionals in promoting the good integration of this service with the wider health care system
Desirable criteria
- Ability to promote psychological models with clients, carers and staff in an understandable and person centred way, clearly outlining goals and potential outcomes.
Employer certification / accreditation badges
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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
- Michaela Miller
- Job title
- Team Manager
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Additional information
Melanie Staley
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