Job overview

Are you a dedicated, compassionate mental health professional committed to providing great care? Do you want the chance to help shape a new and genuinely innovative service for the women of Kent and Medway?

We're creating Kent and Medway’s first, and only, NHS Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) for women, and are seeking a talented Principal Psychologist to help us deliver this vital service.

Please note that the start date for this post will be January 2026, to allow for sufficient time for onboarding, induction, and training before the anticipated arrival of the first patient in April 2026.

We are looking for an enthusiastic Clinical/Forensic/Counselling Psychologist with clinical and managerial leadership experience to provide specialist clinical input to the Female PICU. You will have an important strategic and liaison function to support the transition of patients between services. You will offer clinical supervision and have managerial responsibility for a number of Psychological Therapists and Applied Psychologists. 

If this sounds like the opportunity you have been waiting for, come and join our diverse and compassionate team committed to delivering excellent care and support for service users and their loved ones.

This role comes with a High Cost Area Supplement: 5% of basic salary, subject to a min. of £1303 per year and a max. of £2198 per year (divided into 12 equal amounts and paid monthly). The salary listed is inclusive of the High-Cost Area Allowance. 

Main duties of the job

• The systematic provision of Specialist Psychological Therapy to the patients in PICU. 
• To undertake high quality direct (assessment and therapeutic) and indirect (consultative, advisory and evaluative) specialist psychology interventions.
• To ensure the clinical effectiveness of the service, taking on a leadership and service development role within the PICU service.
• To be regularly responsible for providing training to the MDT and providing professional support, guidance and supervision to psychological therapists in the service.

A PICU is a dynamic environment and there will be the expectation that the candidate is able to take substantial professional responsibility and work autonomously providing high quality direct work which will include psychological assessments, formulations and brief therapeutic work, groups, family and individual work as well as assisting with positive behaviour support plans. The indirect (consultative, advisory and evaluative) work includes systemic work with staff, reflective case discussions and Serious Incident debriefs.

Working for our organisation

Working in a PICU is very rewarding but we want to be honest and share that it is demanding too. It is likely to be needed by people with severe and complex mental health conditions (e.g. Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder and may be associated with Personality Disorder, Substance Misuse and PTSD). 

While emotionally challenging, the opportunity to support critically unwell women back to their communities, ensuring 'right care, in the right place, at the right time', is immense, and your skilled, multidisciplinary, team will be there to support you. 

You would be working as part of a team of mental health experts, dedicated to making sure the most unwell women in our communities have the same access to specialist care as men. 

We are recruiting now to make sure our new female PICU team is in place with enough time to train, form team bonds and prepare. So you can all make a profound difference to patient outcomes from day one.  

We also offer ongoing professional development to help you adapt and progress your career, including bespoke training and a comprehensive induction program.  

At KMPT, we are serious about diversity and inclusion, and we are working hard to build this into our DNA. We warmly welcome applications for any of our roles from people from diverse backgrounds, and we are proactively encouraging applications from under-represented communities for our more senior roles, like this one.