Job summary
- Main area
- Applied Psychology
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 8b
- Contract
- Secondment: 6 months
- Hours
- Full time - 37.5 hours per week
- Job ref
- 334-CLI-7528295
- Employer
- South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Maudsley Hospital
- Town
- London
- Salary
- £72,921 - £83,362 per annum inclusive of inner HCAs
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 11/11/2025 23:59
Employer heading
Practitioner Psychologist, Psychotherapist & Psychological Therapist
NHS AfC: Band 8b
South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust has a rich history, well-established community links and an international reputation. We deliver specialist services in the London boroughs of Croydon, Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark, Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich, Wandsworth and Richmond.
We are committed to provide a high quality and specialist care to our service users and we are recognised for our care and treatment we provide. The Care Quality Commission already rates our services as ‘good’.
We launched our five-year strategy, Aiming High; Changing Lives in 2021 together with Our Care Improvement System as our quality management system methodology to make a positive impact on patient care, outcomes and staff experience. By joining SLaM, all staff will get the opportunity to be part of this exciting improvement journey supported with learning and development to harness everyone’s potential as change makers.
The trust recognises the unique and valuable contribution that people with lived experience of mental illness can bring to a role. We therefore welcome applications from people with lived experience and consider them as an asset to the Trust.
Our Values
We take pride in providing specialist care to our service users where our Trust values and our promise to be caring, kind, polite, prompt, honest, listen and do what I say I’m going to do is at the heart of everything we do. When you join us, you’ll be part of something special.
As a Trust we are happy to talk flexible working.
Job overview
We are seeking an experienced Psychological Practitioner to support an innovative project to improve how we approach, assess, and manage suicide risk. The Personalised Approach to Risk of Suicide project is a trust initiative forming part of our Culture of Care work. South London & Maudsley is one of several national pilot sites, aiming to embed a new way of thinking about risk assessment and management across the NHS. The need for change is based on the latest NICE guidance and research showing traditional risk assessment, especially risk stratification, is ineffective and may lead to poorer outcomes. The project aims to equip staff to think differently about risk and engage in collaborative, trauma-informed, person-centred safety assessment and planning, grounded in therapeutic relationships and underpinned by psychological formulation. This work will be co-produced with service users, carers, and staff and requires an organisational culture shift.
The successful candidate will join a small MDT of clinical leads supporting this work across Adults of Working Age and Specialist Services. They will deliver the strategy in collaboration with MDT stakeholders, service users, carers, and the local community. The project supports strategic priorities around anti-racism, building trust with communities, and delivering outstanding mental health care. The candidate will have extensive experience in risk assessment, trauma-informed approaches, and stakeholder engagement.
Main duties of the job
This role will work alongside clinical leads and the Improvement Service to develop and lead the early stages of a trust-wide culture change strategy to improve how we approach, assess, and manage suicide risk. The strategy will include training and team-based behavioural interventions. The post-holder will support development of a measurement and evaluation plan, provide updates for monthly reporting, and manage interdependencies with other trust-wide programmes, such as the Calocane review action plan. They will participate in the Steering Group and Lived Experience Reference Group, working with stakeholders to identify additional needs for the strategy.
They will work with all stakeholders, including peer workers, service users, and leads from medical, nursing, therapies, social work, and psychological professions. The postholder will lead the design and commissioning of elearning and video content to integrate into existing clinical risk training and for wider use. This work will be co-produced with the Lived Experience Reference Group. They will liaise with relevant programmes to integrate team-based behavioural interventions supporting delivery of a Personalised Approach to Risk of Suicide. They will also work with the Trauma-Informed Care team in inpatient settings and with community care development programmes.
The post-holder will work closely with PCREF leads to ensure the strategy reflects our anti-racism commitment. Flexible working can be discussed at interview.
Working for our organisation
This post will work with the Improvement Service and Clinical Leads for the Personalised Approach to Risk programme and be co-located with the Trauma-Informed Care team, working closely alongside them. It will sit within the Corporate Psychology & Psychotherapy team at South London & Maudsley, a small, central team providing support, governance, and leadership for Psychological Professionals and staff support across the trust. It is a diverse, experienced team with a warm and supportive culture. The post will be supported by the Improvement Service, part of the Quality Centre. The service plays a key role in enabling the Trust to use improvement methodology within Our Care Improvement System (the Trust’s quality management system) to deliver strategic ambitions set out in the Changing Lives, Aiming High strategy. The service’s work is underpinned by improvement and organisational science, theory, and evidence-based practice to help services, teams, and individuals deliver safe, effective care and outcomes that matter to patients, families, and carers. The post will have access to office space at Maudsley Hospital, Trust HQ, alongside the Trauma-Informed Care Team. Trust HQ is at Denmark Hill, less than 5 minutes from the station (Zone 2), near Ruskin Park and a vibrant high street with shops and restaurants. The Trust operates across Croydon, Lambeth, Lewisham, Southwark, and substance misuse services in Bexley, Lambeth, Greenwich, and Wandsworth. Travel may be required.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
The Personalised Approach to Risk Project is a initiative in the trust which forms part of our Culture of Care Work. South London & The Maudsley is one of a number of national pilot sites for this work which seeks to embed a new way of thinking about and approaching risk assessment and management across the NHS. The need for a new approach is based on the latest NICE guidance around risk of self-harm and suicide and research which shows that the way we traditionally approach risk assessment and, in particular the stratification of risk, is ineffective and may led to poorer outcomes. We will aim to equip staff to think differently about risk and engage in collaborative, trauma-informed and person-centred safety assessment and planning grounded in a therapeutic relationship and underpinned by psychological formulation. This work will be co-produced with service-users, carers and staff and will require a culture shift across the whole organisation.
Job Purpose:
· To develop, in collaboration with the Clinical Leads, the Improvement Service and service-users, a strategy for trust-wide culture change in embedding the new approach to risk assessment and safety planning. To co-ordinate and ensure the systematic provision of psychological consultation trust-wide in the area of personalised approach to risk and safety planning and personally provide highly specialist clinical input
· To manage interdependencies between this and other risk projects in the trust and to ensure joined up working with colleagues and to link the work to other pieces of culture change work happening in the trust such as those projects looking at trauma-informed care in inpatient wards, Dialog+ and community transformation including the pilot project in Lewisham N2.
· To provide clinical supervision and consultation as appropriate, functioning as a lead specialist in approaches to psychological formulation, collaborative risk assessment and safety planning and trauma-informed ways of working.
· To ensure that systems are in place and working effectively for the clinical and professional supervision and support of psychological practitioners and MDT staff across the trust in relation to a personalised approach to risk and safety planning.
· To promote and, in collaboration with the improvement service, the evaluation of the programme and the changes achieved. To lead on the dissemination and writing up of this work.
· To work as an autonomous professional within registration body guidelines and codes of conduct, and guided by principles and policies or procedures of the service, taking responsibility for interpreting policies within defined parameters.
· To agree outcomes/results with clinical/professional leads and improvement service and to decide how they are best achieved. To support the production of monthly highlight reports.
· To participate in the steering group for the project and the lived experience reference group.
· To lead the design and delivery of e-learning and/or in person training for staff across the organisation in the new approach.
· Engage with a wide range of stake-holders including around embedding policy change and in making minor changes (where possible) to the Electronic Patient Record system (EPJS)
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- To have undertaken a recognised qualification in one of the core mental health professions, e.g. psychiatric nursing, clinical psychology, medicine, social work and occupational therapy OR to have equivalent relevant experience and demonstrable competence to work in the mental health field in the NHS.
- Entry-level qualification in applied psychological therapy (professional Doctorate, or combination of MSc plus PG Diploma level/supervised practice/additional training) that has been accepted for the purposes of professional registration.
- Registered with professional body as appropriate to discipline
Desirable criteria
- Specific training in trauma-informed care approaches
Experience
Essential criteria
- Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients with a range of psychological needs of a complex nature in any relevant specialty.
- Experience of carrying out post-qualification research, audit or service evaluation projects
- Experience of leading service development projects and culture change within services and/or broader organisations
- Experience of working with, and addressing issues of, diversity, including experience of working within a multicultural framework.
Desirable criteria
- Experience of collaborating on or leading large-scale cultural change projects at an organisational level
Knowledge
Essential criteria
- To deliver psychological/psychotherapeutic therapy across cultural and other differences
- Knowledge of racial and other diversity issues and factors affecting access to mental health care.
- An understanding of organisational dynamics and principles of culture change and change management
Skills
Essential criteria
- Skills in providing teaching and training to other professional groups.
- To select and administer specialist assessments, interpreting and integrating complex data that require analysis, interpretation and comparison, drawn from several sources.
Abilities
Essential criteria
- Ability to work effectively within a multi-disciplinary team, contributing to effective team functioning and holding team roles.
- Ability to develop and use complex multi-media materials for presentations in public, professional and academic meetings
Employer certification / accreditation badges
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
- Heather Bokota
- Job title
- Principal Quality Improvement Lead
- Email address
- [email protected]
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