Job summary
- Main area
- Clinical Psychologist
- Grade
- Band 8a
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time
- Flexible working
- Job ref
- 310-ASMH-7285722
- Employer
- Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Chesterton Medical Centre
- Town
- Chesterton, Cambridge
- Salary
- £55,690 - £62,682 per annum pro rata
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 16/09/2025 23:59
Employer heading
Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologist
Band 8a
Job overview
CAMEO provides full and comprehensive, assessment, treatment and management of all cases experiencing first episode psychosis and At-Risk mental states (ARMS) within the catchment area of Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. It operates across 2 bases in Cambridge and Peterborough.
Our mission is to put people in control of their care. We will maximise opportunities for individuals and their families by enabling them to look beyond their limitations to achieve their goals and aspirations.
In other words: “To offer people the best help to do the best for themselves.”
We are committed to the core NHS values which we underpin in all that we do -
Working Together for Patients
Compassion
Respect & Dignity
Everyone Counts
Improving Lives
Commitment to Quality of Care
Main duties of the job
To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families, and groups, within and across teams, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining several provisional hypotheses.
To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options considering 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, treatment, and discharge of clients, and manage and maintain a caseload in line with service guidelines and under the overall co-ordination of the Consultant Clinical Psychologist
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 in the identification, assessment, treatment and evaluation of first episode psychosis (FEP) cases in the CAMEO South 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 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, across the full range of care settings.
To provide a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.
To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures.
To monitor and evaluate progress during both uni-and multi-disciplinary care, and to provide appropriate reports on this. To maintain up-to-date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to both the specific client group and mental health.
To utilise theory, evidence-based literature, and research to support evidence based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
To participate and provide advice to other professionals as required on research design and methodology including complex audit and clinical and service evaluation to help develop service provision
Person specification
Personal Qualities
Essential criteria
- Motivated towards personal and professional development with strong CPD record
- Able to contain and work with high levels of distress from service users and carers
- Ability to exercise appropriate levels of self-care and to monitor own state, recognising when it is necessary to take active steps to maintain fitness to practice
- 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 organisational stress
- Interpersonally calm and able to defuse difficult, volatile situations.
- Able to tolerate ambiguity and to take decisions in situations of incomplete information
- Ability to exercise appropriate levels of self-care and to monitor own state, recognising when it is necessary to take active steps to maintain fitness to practice.
- Good organisational skills.
- Motivated towards personal and professional development with strong CPD record.
- Demonstrate understanding of acceptance and commitment to the principles underlying equal opportunities.
Desirable criteria
- Positive approach to Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) including willingness to be flexible in approach and attitude to embrace new ways of working
Other
Essential criteria
- Positive approach to EIP.
- Recognise peoples right to privacy and dignity, treating every person with respect
- Willingness to embrace integrated model and new ways of working.
- Willingness to be flexible in approach and attitude
- Ability to identify, provide and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and severely challenging behaviours.
- Able to sit for long periods
- Ability to travel independently across the county
Personal Qualities
Essential criteria
- Motivated towards personal and professional development with strong CPD record
- Able to contain and work with high levels of distress from service users and carers
- Ability to exercise appropriate levels of self-care and to monitor own state, recognising when it is necessary to take active steps to maintain fitness to practice
- 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 organisational stress
- Interpersonally calm and able to defuse difficult, volatile situations.
- Able to tolerate ambiguity and to take decisions in situations of incomplete information
- Ability to exercise appropriate levels of self-care and to monitor own state, recognising when it is necessary to take active steps to maintain fitness to practice.
- Good organisational skills.
- Motivated towards personal and professional development with strong CPD record.
- Demonstrate understanding of acceptance and commitment to the principles underlying equal opportunities.
Desirable criteria
- Positive approach to Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) including willingness to be flexible in approach and attitude to embrace new ways of working
Knowledge and Skills
Essential criteria
- Able to demonstrate commitment to high quality care and service provision
- Knowledge of and ability to deliver CBTp and behavioural family therapy
- 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.
- 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.
- Skills in providing consultation and supervision to other professional and non-professional groups.
- 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
- Formal training in supervision of other psychologists.
- Advanced IT and keyboard skills.
Desirable criteria
- Knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities, comorbid conditions, trauma).
- Knowledge of service improvement models and their application
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.
- In depth experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for service users’ psychological care and treatment within the context of a multidisciplinary team setting.
- Experience of teaching, training, and/or professional and clinical supervision.
- Experience of application of clinical psychology in different contexts.
Desirable criteria
- Previous experience of delivering cognitive behaviour therapy for psychosis clinical supervision.
- Experience of working with people experiencing psychotic symptoms and their families/ working in an EIP setting.
- In depth experience of representing psychology within the context of multi-disciplinary care including leadership skills
Education and Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Doctoral level training in clinical psychology, specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology
- Registered as Practitioner Psychologist with HCPC
Desirable criteria
- Evidence of post-doctoral training (CBTp, Early Intervention in psychosis,) or willingness to undertake
- Chartered Clinical Psychologist.
- Undertaken training in the supervision of trainee and qualified clinical psychologists
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
- Dr. James Plaistow
- Job title
- Consultant Psychologist
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 07841721469
- Additional information
Lorraine Bald Operational Team Lead
[email protected] Tel: 01223 341510 / 07563 379863
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