Job summary
- Main area
- Secure Care and Offender Health
- Grade
- Band 7/8a
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Part time - 22.5 hours per week
- Job ref
- 436-7196654
- Employer
- Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Ardenleigh
- Town
- Birmingham
- Salary
- £46,148 - £60,504 per annum, pro rata
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 04/06/2025 23:59
- Interview date
- 19/06/2025
Employer heading
Band 7/8A Practitioner Psychologist Preceptorship - Womens Service
Band 7/8a
Please note that this post may close earlier than the indicated closing date if a sufficient number of applications are received.
Job overview
The Women’s Secure Blended Service (WSBS) at Ardenleigh has an incredible national reputation, having been a successful pilot site for the blended security model and a key influence in the National Women’s Secure Pathway Transformation (WSPT) programme. The service is particularly proud of its gender sensitive, trauma informed model of care and commitment to co-production and improvement.
The WSBS has a strong multidisciplinary team ethos, in which the psychology team is well established and respected. We work alongside a number of professionals, providing safe, containing environments and interventions to help people understand themselves, their mental health and offending behaviour. The team has been at the forefront of service developments, such as establishing the Outreach Service to prevent avoidable admissions, developing partnership working across the pathway to improve quality of care, diversifying psychological therapies to meet the needs of the client group, and leading on the planning and delivery of a national conference in 2023. Innovation is strongly encouraged.
This exciting role offers the suitable candidate opportunities for leadership, service development and complex clinical work, with a rewarding client group. You will be joining a large and diverse psychological therapies team, consisting of clinical and forensic psychologists, arts therapists, specialist psychological practitioners and assistant psychologists.
Main duties of the job
The directorate is committed to investing in staff and you will have opportunities for training, supervision and career development.
The Practitioner Psychologist role is broad, it will involve working alongside staff to ensure that service users have the most effective, efficient and relationally connected and contained experience. Within Ardenleigh we also have a strong service user involvement and co-production ethos, having developed group pathways and interventions, training and much more. We will advocate for you to maintain all aspects of your professional role, including service development, research, therapeutic excellence, and leadership as appropriate. You will be encouraged to find your ‘shiny thing’ to help you feel value, and to promote the creativity and development of the department whilst contributing to the evidence base. We are looking for registered Practitioner Psychologists who are interested in working in secure environments with highly sensitive content. Whilst secure experience will be highly desirable, we encourage a breadth of experience to help bring new thinking to our services as the culture evolves.
If you are ready for the next stage of your career progression, and able to compassionately challenge systems and staff to be better, hold integrity and also connect with the people around you, we hope you apply.
Working for our organisation
Welcome to Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust. Our 4000 clinical and support staff help us to improve mental health wellbeing and meet the needs of the 70,000 people we serve each year. We provide a range of mental healthcare services across Birmingham and Solihull, as well as specialised services nationally. We also offer medical, nursing and psychology training and are proud of our international reputation for both research and innovation. Our population is culturally diverse, characterised in places by high levels of deprivation which create an increasing demand for our services and a necessity for us to make sure everyone can access the help they need. We are a team of compassionate, inclusive and committed people working together to provide excellent care to support our community. If you are looking for a place to belong, where you can make a real difference to people's lives, join our team where our warm welcome is waiting for you.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
For further information about the main responsibilities please view the attached job description and person specification.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Satisfactory completion of a British Psychological Society accredited Doctoral Level postgraduate professional training course in clinical/forensic psychology completion of which includes the study of models of psychopathology, psychometric and neuropsychological assessment, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology.
- Eligibility for entry onto the Register of Chartered Psychologists
Experience
Essential criteria
- Experience of specialist psychological assessment and individual and group based treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including primary and secondary/ specialist care and inpatient/residential, outpatient and community team settings.
- Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, including forensic contexts with clients of all ages across the lifespan and of wide-ranging presenting problems that reflect the full spectrum of clinical complexity and severity.
Desirable criteria
- Experience of working therapeutically with ‘difficult to treat’ clients.
- • Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts.
Knowledge
Essential criteria
- Skills commensurate with doctoral level training in the formulation of problems from a psychological perspective and in the implementation of highly specialist psychological therapies, interventions and management techniques that are appropriate for use with complex presenting problems. Able to deliver established/evidenced based psychological therapy to fidelity.
- Highly developed interpersonal and communication skills (written and verbal) including the ability to empathically, sensitively and effectively communicate clinical and condition related information to clients, their families, carers and professional colleagues (within and outside the NHS) that is extremely complicated or technical; extremely sensitive and potentially distressing to the recipient; or that is extremely contentious or challenging.
- Skills in providing consultation and advice from a psychological perspective to members of other professional and non-professional groups.
Desirable criteria
- Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific ’difficult to treat’ groups (e.g. personality disorder, challenging behaviour, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc).
Personal
Essential criteria
- Ability to interact and to build and sustain relationships with people with mental health problems and associated disabilities
- Is a ‘team player’ and has demonstrated ability to work and deliver to team and organisational objectives
Other
Essential criteria
- Ability to accept and use supervision appropriately and effectively.
- Awareness and understanding of the purpose and mechanisms of clinical governance and an ability to employ such mechanisms to maintain and improve standards of clinical practice
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
- Rachel Oakley
- Job title
- Principal Forensic and Clinical Psychologist
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 0121 301 4535
- Additional information
We currently have a 0.6wte team psychologist vacancy following an internal promotion. If you are looking for a full-time role, please do get in touch and we can see what we can do to make this happen. We encourage interested applicants to come and visit us to get a feel of the people, space and dynamics.
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