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Job summary

Main area
general psychiatry
Grade
NHS AfC: Band 7
Contract
Permanent
Hours
Full time - 37.5 hours per week
Job ref
455-NLFT-0742
Employer
North London NHS Foundation Trust
Employer type
NHS
Site
Old Magistartes court
Town
Enfield
Salary
£55,524 - £62,652 Per annum including HCAS
Salary period
Yearly
Closing
26/04/2026 23:59

Employer heading

North London NHS Foundation Trust logo

Clinical/Counselling/Forensic Psychologist

NHS AfC: Band 7

Thank you for your interest in the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT). This is an exciting time to join us and be part of our journey to improve mental health care across North London and deliver excellent services to our local people. We will achieve this through the North London Way, as we: 

  • Collaborate at every level by living our values to create the right conditions for us all to work together.
  • Develop our new Trust culture, to help make our new Trust a great place to work and to receive great care.
  • Empower our teams to lead the planned improvements in our services, by skilling them and giving them the tools to make the changes.
  • Focus on delivering excellence at every level to improve our performance and ensure consistently high-quality care across all our services.
  • Ensure that research, quality improvement, and technology lead the way and are embedded in our services.
  • Take a trauma informed approach to everything we do

We proactively welcome diversity in our workforce and pride ourselves on being an inclusive employer.  We aim to recruit from our local communities and provide opportunities to all including apprenticeships, veterans, care leavers and more.

The North London Way to deliver: Better Mental Health, Better Lives, Better Communities.

Our trust website is:  https://www.northlondonmentalhealth.nhs.uk/ 

As a values‑driven Trust, we recruit through our values. Our selection processes focus on behaviours, attitudes, and examples that reflect our organisational values and commitment to compassionate, high‑quality care.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a set of technology that can perform various tasks that typically required human intelligence. Your application is your opportunity to demonstrate to us how you meet the requirements of the role.

We recognise that AI tools can support accessibility, equity and confidence for applicants. However, it’s important that examples and responses genuinely reflect your own experience and abilities, as these will be explored further during the selection process. AI must not be used to provide misleading or false information during any stage of the application journey.

Further guidance can be found in the NLPSS Applicant Toolkit  https://royalfree.pagetiger.com/cuuomnr/1.

North London NHS Foundation Trust is committed to fair and transparent recruitment and requires applicants to provide accurate information, as misleading details may affect their application or employment and may be verified in line with the Fraud Act 2006. For further information please visit https://royalfree.pagetiger.com/cuuomnr/1.

 

Job overview

This Band 7 Clinical / Forensic Psychologist role is based within the Enable Substance Misuse Service, delivered by North London NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with Waythrough and the London Borough of Enfield. The postholder will work across Vincent House and the Old Magistrates Court, Enfield, within a multidisciplinary forensic and tertiary care setting

Main duties of the job

The role involves providing highly specialist psychological assessments and interventions for individuals with substance misuse and complex needs, including those with forensic histories. The postholder will work autonomously within professional and Trust guidelines, contributing to formulation, treatment planning, risk assessment, and care coordination as part of a wider MDT.

In addition to direct clinical work, the psychologist will lead and develop psychological provision within the service, offering consultation, supervision, training, and reflective practice to colleagues. There is a strong expectation of involvement in service development, audit, quality improvement, and research activity, aligned with the Trust’s trauma‑informed and co‑produced care agenda.
The role suits a practitioner with a strong interest in trauma‑informed, attachment‑focused approaches, and offers opportunities for CPD, research, and specialist therapy training (including Schema‑Focused Therapy and EMDR.

Working for our organisation

North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT) is committed to improving mental health care across North London to deliver excellent services to our local people.

Our Five-Year Strategy:  

  1.  We will provide consistently high-quality care closer to home.
  2. With our partners in North London and each borough we will ensure equity of outcome for all
  3. We will offer great places to work, providing staff with supportive environment to deliver outstanding care

Why NLFT?

  • We develop and retain our staff through leadership behaviours and managers programme and many more opportunities.
  • We promote flexible working and support staff with a range of health and wellbeing initiatives.
  • NHS Discounts, generous annual leave and NHS pension scheme
  • Excellent internal staff network

In order to meet the needs of the Trust you may be required from time to time to work at different locations to your normal place of work. This may mean that you are required to work at any location that fall under Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey or Islington. The Trust reserves the right to require staff to work at such other places or locations as it considers reasonable and necessary on a temporary or permanent basis.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

  • Provide specialist psychological assessments, integrating complex data from interviews, observations, psychometric measures, and collateral information from families and professionals.
  • Formulate and implement psychological treatment and management plans using evidence‑based approaches across a range of care settings.
  • Deliver a range of psychological interventions to individuals, families, carers, and groups, adapting formulations and interventions as required.
  • Exercise autonomous professional responsibility for assessment, treatment, and discharge of service users managed under psychological care plans.
  • Provide specialist psychological advice and consultation to MDT colleagues and other professionals involved in service users’ care.
  • Undertake risk assessment and risk management, advising colleagues on psychological aspects of risk.
  • Act as Care Coordinator where appropriate, including CPA planning and review.
  • Contribute to the design, delivery, and evaluation of psychological services within substance misuse and forensic pathways.
  • Provide consultation, training, and reflective practice to MDT staff to support psychologically informed care.
  • Support the development of psychological skills within the workforce, including supervision of psychological work undertaken by others where appropriate.
  • Contribute to pre‑ and post‑qualification teaching and training in clinical and/or forensic psychology.
  • Use research skills for audit, service evaluation, policy development, and research activity within the service.
  • Contribute to the Trust’s focus on quality improvement, innovation, and evidence‑based practice.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria
  • Essential Criteria Doctoral level training in clinical psychology, including specifically models of psychopathology and two or more distinct psychological therapies as accredited by the BPS.
  • Registration with the Health & Care Professions Council
Desirable criteria
  • Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.

Experience

Essential criteria
  • Experience of specialist psychological assessment and intervention/treatment of people across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, residential care homes and in-patient settings.
  • Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems.
  • Experience of working with people whose behaviour challenges.
  • Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts.
Desirable criteria
  • Training in other therapies, such as systemic.
  • Experience of neuropsychological assessments, particularly those relevant to working with dementia.

Skills/abilities

Essential criteria
  • Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
  • Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
  • Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
  • Ability to contain, explore and formulate an understanding of high levels of distress both directly with patients and indirectly via supervision of other staff.
  • Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practised within the clinical fields of psychology.
  • Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS/HCPC.
Desirable criteria
  • Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc).
  • Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health.
  • Skills in group work.
  • Skills in the delivery and interpretation of neuropsychological assessments

Personal Qualitites

Essential criteria
  • Ability to work effectively within a multidisciplinary service setting and establish constructive working relationships across services and care agencies
  • Flexibility and versatility in order to work effectively with the wide range of individual needs encountered in a service for Older People

Employer certification / accreditation badges

NHS Pastoral Care Quality AwardVeteran AwareApprenticeships logoNo smoking policyPositive about disabled peopleJob share policyAge positiveImproving working livesCare quality commission - GoodArmed Forces Covenant Gold AwardMindful employer.  Being positive about mental health.Disability confident employerCare Leaver CovenantStonewall equality policy. Equality and justice for lesbians, gay men, bisexual and trans people.Step into healthAccredited Living Wage Employer

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.

Application numbers

This vacancy may close early if it receives a high number of applications. Please complete and submit your application in good time to avoid disappointment.

Documents to download

Apply online now

Further details / informal visits contact

Name
sabrina miller-cummings
Job title
Operations Manager
Email address
[email protected]
Telephone number
020 83796010

If you have problems applying, contact

Address
Candi & Tavi
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