Job overview

Inpatient Complex Psychological Interventions: Recovery and Acute Wards

Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Trust is looking to recruit an experienced Assistant Psychologist to work across the Recovery Units in Cheltenham and Acute Inpatient wards at Wotton Lawn Hospital, Gloucester. This is a full-time post on a fixed term 12-month contract. 

Honeybourne and Laurel House are Inpatient Rehabilitation Recovery Units in Cheltenham. Wotton Lawn Hospital is in Gloucester and has four acute wards and a psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU). The Assistant Psychologist will become part of the Inpatient Complex Psychological Interventions department working across the Recovery Units and Acute Wards primarily to support the inpatient team to deliver psychological interventions.

There is a supportive and enthusiastic psychological team consisting of two clinical psychologists, an art psychotherapist and two clinical associate psychologists (CAPs). The team support regular trainee placements from the Bath Clinical Doctoral Training Course, undergraduate placements and art psychotherapy trainee placements. Regular service development and research is undertaken in collaboration with GHC research department. Publication is actively supported and encouraged within the team.

In the wider community, psychologists, psychotherapists and art psychotherapists working within Recovery, Assertive Outreach and Early Intervention Teams form complex psychological interventions (CPI).

Main duties of the job

This role provides the opportunity to work with people both in short term, acute contexts and longer-term rehabilitation settings. Across both Inpatient Acute and Recovery services, psychological assessment, formulation and intervention with patients under supervision will form part of the role. A main focus of the role will be delivering group interventions and promoting psychological understanding within the multi-disciplinary team, for example, through Team Formulation meetings. 

This post requires the post holder to be able to undertake all statutory and mandatory training and post holders must be able to undertake physical interventions. Fitness for physical intervention will be assessed by Occupational Health.

The ability to get to work independently via driving or public transport. For qualifying staff the Trust has a Lease Car Scheme in place and also offers a popular Salary Sacrifice Car Scheme with our partner Tusker.

The qualifications, training & experience requirements for the role are stated in the Job Description/Person Specification.

For further information or an informal discussion please contact Dr Vicki Weare, Specialist Clinical Psychologist, on 0300 421 4779 or email [email protected].

Working for our organisation

We have a skilled and dedicated workforce of over 5000 colleagues working in a diverse range of services over 55 sites and within people’s homes. We strive to enable a welcoming workplace culture that builds and celebrates civility, inclusivity and diversity, while providing a sense of belonging and trust.

Annual staff surveys, regular Pulse surveys and other engagement opportunities provide our people with lots of opportunity to tell us about their experiences of working with us.  In the latest staff survey, 61% of colleagues gave us their views.  It was great to hear that:

• 72% of colleagues would recommend the Trust as a place to work, ranking us 1st for Provider Trusts in the South West region on this question.
• 76% would recommend the standard of care provided in our services if a friend or relative needed treatment, also ranking us 1st in the South West region.
• 81% said that care of patients and service users is the Trust’s priority, compared with an average in comparable NHS Trusts in England of 64%.

This high-level overview shows we are in a healthy position, with higher scores than average for comparable organisations, alongside a great response rate, indicating good staff engagement.  However, we also know we have plenty of room for improvement in many areas. To that end, we continue to prioritise and invest in our commitment to genuinely becoming a Great Place to Work with consistent top-quartile performance in the annual staff survey and Pulse surveys.