Job summary
- Main area
- Clinical Psychologist
- Grade
- Band 8a
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time - 37.5 hours per week (9am -5pm)
- Job ref
- 310-MASMH-7588206
- Employer
- Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- S3 Outpatients
- Town
- Cambridge
- Salary
- £57,528 - £64,750 per annum pro rata
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 06/07/2026 23:59
Employer heading
Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologist
Band 8a
Job overview
An exciting opportunity has arisen to recruit a Band 8a Psychologist within the Cambridge Adult Eating Disorders Team based at Addenbrookes Hospital, working across the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough area.
The post holder will be involved in the part of our new service development pathway, to help lead the provision of NICE recommended treatments including Mantra, CAT, CFT, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, alongside other therapies relevant to the treatment of eating disorders.
Please note for this role you will be required to travel independently around the county meeting strict time deadlines.
Main duties of the job
The Community Adult Eating Disorder Service is a specialist team caring for individuals with an eating disorder who have been triaged and are considered to need an intensive and supportive approach to the treatment.
The Service is currently going through an exciting transformation in order to develop new pathways including Early Intervention Pathway, Intensive/outreach treatment, Supportive and Management pathway (for severe and enduring eating disorder patients) and a pathway to monitor and manage High Risk patients. We are also endeavouring to develop our pathway with acute hospital in order to facilitate safe access in due time to medical ward for our patients.
The Service will become a pioneer in the care of eating disorders and there are many opportunities to be involved in the transformation and develop a stimulating leadership role.
The team are an MDT comprised of highly specialist therapists, psychologists, medical staff and nurses.
The post holder will provide support and supervision to junior staff. You will also provide highly specialist clinical assessments and interventions as required and contribute a psychological perspective to multi-disciplinary reviews and discussions. To support you in this, we offer regular individual and group supervision.
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 fulfilling lives.
Our clinical teams deliver a wide range of NHS services across inpatient, primary care and community settings, including 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, and research and development.
To achieve our goals, we recruit high calibre candidates who share our vision and values. As an equal opportunities’ employer, we welcome applications from all sections of the community, particularly underrepresented groups including people with long term conditions and members of our ethnic minority and LGBTQ+ communities.
All appointments for new employees to CPFT are subject to the successful completion of a probationary period.
Please note we reserve the right to close adverts early should we receive sufficient applications.
Regrettably, we cannot offer sponsorship for all roles. If you apply for a post that does not attract sponsorship, your application will be withdrawn from the process.
For further information on CPFT, please visit our website at https://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 a highly specialist assessments of clients referred to the Team with eating disorders and engaging families and offering family-based interventions in conjunction with the multidisciplinary team.
- 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 provide interventions and make recommendations based on specialist NICE informed Psychological understandings of presenting problems for work to be carried out with clients with the team as a whole and provide support and supervision as necessary to team colleagues. (e.g. Mantra, CBT, CAT, MET, FBT)
- In conjunction with senior clinicians and managers, to develop procedures and processes to the application of specialist NICE informed psychological interventions (also giving consideration to group work) within the eating disorder service drawing on national, divisional and trust-wide standards of evidence based psychological therapy and best clinical care.
- Together with the Team, to provide appropriate care for clients not engaged in treatment including: psycho-education, liaising with other professionals, engaging in treatment including using structured approaches such as motivational interviewing, risk assessment, health promotion and crisis intervention.
- 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.
- To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment psychological formulation, treatment and discharge of clients and manage and maintain a caseload in line with service guidelines.
- To provide advice, psychoeducation, information and psychological interventions to relatives and carers as appropriate.
- To liaise closely with Eating disorder in patient units , attending review meetings for own clients as possible and participating in discharge planning and psychological follow-up
- To provide highly specialist advice, consultation and training of staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and setting as appropriate. (Including GPs, acute hospital staff, school nurses, universities).
- To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects or risk assessment and risk management in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures.
Person specification
Education/Qualifications
Essential criteria
- HPC registered Clinical Psychologist or Counselling Psychologist
- Other Recognised Mental Health Professional Qualification. (e.g. CBT, CAT, MANTRA)
Desirable criteria
- Evidence of post qualification development
- Post qualification training/development in a psychological therapy (eg. CAT/CBT/IP)
Experience
Essential criteria
- Experience of specialist psychological assessment, formulation, and treatment of service users across a range of care settings, including outpatient, community, and primary care settings
- Knowledge and experience of working with clients with eating disorders
- Experience of working with a wide variety of service user groups, across the whole life course that reflect the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse
- Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for service users’ psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care co-ordinator and also within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan
- Experience of application of psychology in different contexts
Desirable criteria
- Experience of representing psychology within the context of multi-disciplinary care
- Lived experience of mental health
Skills & Abilities
Essential criteria
- Knowledge and understanding of the development of eating disorder and an ability to demonstrate compassion for the lived experience of this illness
- Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration requiring the use of highly developed analytical and judgement skills
- Skills in individual and group work and in programme planning. Planning and organising skills for caseload management. Skills in self management, including time management.
- Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, verbally and in writing, complex, highly technical and / or clinically sensitive information including contentious and highly distressing information to service users, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS
- Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance, including regular supervision, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour
- Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the HCPC
- Formal training in supervision of other psychologists.
Desirable criteria
- Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. eating disorder, personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc).
Knowledge & Understanding
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 service users
- Able to contain and work with high levels of distress from service users.
- Able to contain and work with high levels of organisational stress.
- Interpersonally calm and able to defuse difficult, volatile situations.
- Motivated towards personal and professional development with strong CPD record.
Physical Requirements
Essential criteria
- Able to work independently
Desirable criteria
- Able to travel to different locations in the community
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
- Lynn Eldred
- Job title
- Service Manager
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 01223 596201
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