Job summary
- Main area
- Clinical/ Counselling Psychologist
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 8a
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time
- Flexible working
- Job ref
- 455-NLFT-0039
- Employer
- North London NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Lowther Road
- Town
- London
- Salary
- £61,927 - £68,676 per annum inclusive of HCAS
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 26/05/2025 23:59
Employer heading

Clinical/ Counselling Psychologist
NHS AfC: Band 8a
Thank you for your interest for the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT), it is an exciting time to join us and being 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/
Job overview
This is an exciting opportunity for a Senior Psychologist to join the multi-disciplinary Community Team in the Camden and Islington Personality Disorder Service in North London Foundation Trust. The post-holder will join the Team Manager, Senior Social Worker and Consultant Psychiatrists in leading the team which is made up of Social Workers, Occupational Therapists, Nurses and counselling psychologists. The Community Team works alongside the Therapies Team and the Liaison Team in the Personality Disorder Service and the post holder is also a member of the whole service management group.
The main purpose of the role is to bring a psychological perspective to the work of the Community Team, which functions within a framework of psychologically-informed and change-focused case management and provides assessment, consultation and interventions to people with difficulties understood as severe 'personality disorder'. The post holder will also hold a small caseload offering individual and group interventions. The team currently uses psychologically-informed and change-focused case management and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) in their work with clients, and the post holder will be part of the DBT Team which works across both the Community Team and the Therapies Team in the service.
The post holder will have the opportunity to provide senior clinical input for the management of complex cases and to chair a weekly formulation-based discussion.
Main duties of the job
· Screening and responding to Community Team referrals
· Providing assessment to clients and consultation to staff
· Providing psychological interventions to clients within a CPA/Dialog + framework
· Clinically supervising Psychology colleagues and those from other disciplines
· Contributing to the clinical and operational management of the Personality Disorder Service
· Providing training to Trust colleagues and partner agencies
· Service development/QI/research
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:
-
We will provide consistently high-quality care closer to home.
-
With our partners in North London and each borough we will ensure equity of outcome for all
-
We will offer great places to work, providing staff with supportive environment to deliver outstanding care.
-
We will be more effective as an organisation by pioneering research, quality improvement and technology.
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
The post holder will be aligned with our Values:
- We Are Kind
- We Are Respectful
- We Work Together
- We Keep Things Simple
- We Empower
- We Are Proudly Diverse
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
CLINICAL / OPERATIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
- To provide psychological assessments for referred clients.
- To formulate and devise psychological treatment and management plans for referred clients with a range of problems, severity and complexity, including those with challenging behaviours, and to provide psychological treatment for such clients, using a range of psychological interventions appropriate to the service.
- To provide psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals, to assist in the formulation, diagnosis and treatment of clients.
- To provide reports and communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients.
- To liaise with other health and social care staff, from a range of agencies, in the care provided to clients.
- To provide professional and clinical supervision to junior psychologists, trainee clinical and counselling psychologists and assistant psychologists.
- To provide advice, consultation, training and supervision, where appropriate, to other health and social care staff working with the client group.
- To regularly attend and facilitate group supervision.
POLICY, SERVICE, ORGANISATIONAL AND PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
- To utilise evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.
- To undertake appropriate research and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research.
- To participate in and contribute to clinical audit and service evaluation with colleagues within the service, to help evaluate and improve service provision, proposing changes to working practice and procedures for own work area as required.
- To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical or counselling psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.
- To participate in an agreed programme of training and continuing professional development and maintain an active engagement with current developments in psychological practice in areas related to the post.
- To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues of relevance to the service and client group.
Person specification
Qualifications/ Registrations
Essential criteria
- Doctoral level training in clinical or counselling psychology
- Current registration with the Health & Care Professions Council as a practitioner psychologist
Desirable criteria
- Post-Doctoral training in Mentalisation Based Treatment (MBT), Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) or brief psychodynamic therapies
Skills/ Abilities
Essential criteria
- Skills in the use of a range of methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management for the full range of problems of severity and complexity presented in adult mental health
- Ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, with 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
- Skills in contributing to service development and supporting services through organisational change
- Skills in research, audit and service evaluation in a clinical setting
- Ability to form good working relationships with others in a multidisciplinary setting
- Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of multimedia materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings
- Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice
Experience
Essential criteria
- Experience of psychological assessment and therapy with people with difficulties conceptualised as personality disorder
- Experience of psychological assessment and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including community, primary care, and inpatient settings
- Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity
- Experience of teaching and training
- Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts
- Experience of working using therapy models with people diagnosed with personality disorder (such as MBT, DBT, brief psychodynamic models)
- Experience of working in a multi-disciplinary team that works within Care Programme Approach frameworks or Dialog +
- Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology
- Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health
Desirable criteria
- Experience of providing clinical supervision to trainee and/or assistant clinical psychologists, and professionals from other disciplines
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
- Sophie Colman
- Job title
- Therapies Team Manager
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 02033176963
If you have problems applying, contact
- Address
-
Candi & Tavi
List jobs with North London NHS Foundation Trust in Allied Health Professions or all sectors