Job overview

This is an exciting opportunity to be a Clinical Psychologist (Band 8a) within the Adult Acute Inpatient Service as part of the First Response pathway. This post is also suitable for a newly qualified or soon to be qualified Clinical Psychologist as a Development Post where the Post Holder would start at a Band 7 and move into 8a on completion of the development period. Transition to the next Agenda for Change band will only occur when the Development Post Holder has achieved a sufficient level of competency development to warrant that transition, with a minimum requirement of meeting the higher banded person specification essential criteria and competencies, as listed in the relevant job description. For soon to be qualified Clinical Psychologists, the offer of employment will be made conditional upon completing and passing all elements of the DClinPsy and gaining HCPC registration.
This post is part of an ongoing initiative to develop our acute pathway psychology provision in the Trust and demonstrate CWP’s commitment to improving the psychological and trauma informed care provided to patients, families, and staff in the inpatient services pathway within Cheshire West. This post is part of the next phase in creating an established and sustainable Psychology workforce within the acute adult mental health pathway with Consultant Clinical Psychologist posts based in inpatient services firmly established.

The post involves working predominantly into two acute inpatient wards and a PICU (Psychiatric Intensive Care Ward) within one mental health hospital site, Bowmere hospital. The post is 0.9 wte. You will join an established psychology team and work within a team of two Consultant Clinical Psychologists, a Clinical Psychologist, Trainee Clinical Psychologists, and Assistant Psychologists. The team is established within Rehab services and is developing into acute care so there are opportunities for adapting the nature of the work to suit the interests and skills of the successful applicant.

This post is part time 33.75 hours per week.

Main duties of the job

As the Clinical Psychologist you will be responsible for providing clinical and professional leadership predominantly within the acute services in the West locality. You will provide highly specialist psychological assessment and intervention, and input to care and treatment planning and discharge planning for individual patients, working as part of the multidisciplinary team and as an autonomous Clinical Psychologist. We are keen to support our inpatient staff therefore the post includes offering staff support which can include facilitating reflective practice, formulation meetings, and supporting staff in debrief following incidents.

This will include developing and maintaining a systematic, high quality, evidence-based psychology service for patients accessing the First Response Service in the locality. You will work with the Consultant Clinical Psychologist, locality leadership team(s), and speciality clinical network to enhance and evaluate the psychological care offer provided by a multi-professional workforce. Providing training, consultancy, supervision and support to multi-professional staff, teams, and managers will be essential. There are strong links with the three local DClinPsy training programmes and there is an expectation to provide placements for our Trainee Clinical Psychologists.

Working for our organisation

CWP is an innovative and transformational all-ages mental health service provider. There will be opportunities to join internal and external professional and clinical networks, undertake research, and provide training and support to the next generation of psychology and mental health practitioners. There are strong connections to the three main DClinPsy regional training programmes (Liverpool, Lancaster and Manchester). You will join the CWP Senior Psychologists Group, a group that supports leadership, clinical and professional development of Psychologists. Clinical and professional supervision will be provided, and on-going continuing professional development supported.  

Flexible, part-time and job-sharing requests will be considered favourably. We encourage applications from suitably qualified and experienced people with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.

All applicants must be HCPC registered Clinical Psychologists with significant, relevant experience as per the job description and person specification.