Job summary
- Main area
- Clinical/Counselling Psychologist
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 8a
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Part time - 22.5 hours per week (Must work Thursday)
- Job ref
- 455-NLFT-0686-B
- Employer
- North London NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Cedar Place
- Town
- London
- Salary
- £63,665 - £70,887 per annum pro rata inclusive of HCAS
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 19/04/2026 23:59
Employer heading
Senior Perinatal Clinical/Counselling Psychologist
NHS AfC: Band 8a
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
The North London Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Service (SPMHS) is a community mental health service for pregnant and postnatal women and birthing people with severe and complex emotional difficulties. The aim of the team is to detect, prevent and treat perinatal mental health needs to improve the experience of pregnancy and the two years postpartum for service users, the babies and their families.
The model operates with 3 clinical sub-teams:
South Team (Camden & Islington): First Floor, West Wing, St Pancras Hospital, 4 St Pancras Way, NW1 0PE
East Team (Enfield & Haringey): Forest Road Primary Care Centre, Ground Floor, 308A Hertford Road, London, N9 7HD
West Team (Barnet): Cedar Place, North London Partners NHS, 890 High Road, North Finchley, N12 9RH
The SPMHS is made up of a full MDT: consultant psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, nurses, occupational therapists, social workers, family therapist, nursery nurses, peer support workers and pharmacist. MDT sub-teams staff work closely with the maternity sites in North Central London, Barnet Hospital, Royal Free Hospital, North Middlesex University Hospital, University College Hospital and Whittington Hospital. Clinics normally run at team bases, maternity sites, children’s centres, and community centres across the boroughs as well as home visits. Some clinical work is additionally carried out via video call.
Main duties of the job
- To work with service users with complex perinatal mental health needs; to identify their goals using specialist assessment and interventions tools.
- To plan and deliver psychological interventions to parents caring for their babies to meet required standards in their babies' developmental needs.
- Good awareness of adult mental health and parent infant relationships theoretical models
- To work in partnership with parents, individuals or in group situations to promote appropriate play activities with children.
- To work in a variety of settings e.g., home, clinics and within the local community.
- To liaise with the wider multi-disciplinary team when there are concerns regarding the well-being of the parent and the child. To follow trust Adult & Child Protection process and strategies.
- To work with families who have children under Children’s Social Care; contributing to care plans and working within trust guidelines.
- To ensure accurate and concise record keeping for service users and interaction with their babies.
- To communicate effectively using a variety of communication skills: verbal and non-verbal, written, and electronic, with a range of individuals and organisations within and external to the organisation.
- To establish and maintain effective working relationships with members of the MDT using excellent interpersonal skills.
Working for our organisation
Working for North London NHS Foundation Trust
Why choose to join the North London NHS Foundation Trust?
We believe that by working together, our Trust can achieve more for the residents of North Central London and our patients than we can by working apart.
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.
4. We will be more effective as an organisation by pioneering research, quality improvement and technology.
Why NLFT?
· Transforming and creating a positive environment for our service users, staff and visitors.
- 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 allowance and NHS pension scheme
- We have excellent internal staff network support groups.
The postholder will need to be comfortable working in an environment of complex matrix management arrangements and will at all times behave and align with our Trusts’ values and cultural pillars:
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Services offered by the post-holder will include providing psychological assessments and interventions to service users in line with the evidence base and NICE guidelines. They will also offer advice and consultation based on psychological formulation to referrers, staff of the North London Partners Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Service and other professional and non-professional groups.
The post holder will actively contribute to the planning, development and evaluation of perinatal mental health services using advanced clinical leadership skills and knowledge to provide training and consultancy in clinical psychology within the specialty area of perinatal mental health. The post holders will be responsible for assessing and treating service users in up to two boroughs. 20% of their workload is expected to be management & leadership and 80% will be clinical interventions. They are expected to hold a highly complex caseload. The post holder will oversee the Psychology caseload of their sub-team.
They will ensure the formulation of profession specific highly specialist care and treatment plans which provide specialist interventions / care to service users with complex mental health conditions. The post holder will be responsible for supporting and supervising a band 7 Psychologists or trainees, ensuring that the Psychology team understands and operates to the requirements of the service line operational policy and service line strategy and that safe, evidence based, NICE concordant, effective, culturally competent care is delivered in a timely manner to service users.
This job description is written as an indication of the nature and scope of duties and responsibilities. Additional competencies may be required to fulfil the needs of specific areas and client groups. NHS England’s Long-Term Plan for Perinatal Mental Health means that the service is under continual development so there are many opportunities for innovation and creativity. This job description is not intended as a fully descriptive list and does not include specific skills or therapeutic interventions that may be required of the specialist service area.
The post-holder will be expected to carry out other duties assigned by the Operational Service Manager, which are appropriate to the grade.
Person specification
Education/qualifications
Essential criteria
- Doctoral level clinical/counselling psychologist
- HCPC registration
Experience
Essential criteria
- Perinatal or child & family work
- MDT working
Skills
Essential criteria
- Post-doctoral training in evidence-based psychological therapy
Desirable criteria
- Trauma therapy training, e.g. NET, CFT, EMDR
- Parent-Infant therapy training, e.g. CoS, VIG
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 Cherie Morgan
- Job title
- Senior Perinatal Counselling Psychologist
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Additional information
Dr Panos Vythoulkas
Lead Clinical PsychologistNLFT Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Service
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