Job summary
- Main area
- Paediatric Psychology in Long Covid
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 8b
- Contract
- Fixed term: 6 months (Contract to end of March 2026.)
- Hours
- Part time - 18.75 hours per week
- Job ref
- 196-LIS9622
- Employer
- Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- St Thomas' Hospital
- Town
- london
- Salary
- £70,387 - £80,465 pa incl. HCA
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 29/06/2025 23:59
Employer heading
Highly Specialist Practitioner Psychologist in Paediatric Long-Covid
NHS AfC: Band 8b
Guy’s and St Thomas’ is among the UK’s busiest and most successful NHS foundation trusts. We provide a full range of hospital and community services for people in south London and as well as specialist care for patients from further afield including cancer, renal, orthopaedic, respiratory and cardiovascular services.
Guy’s is home to the largest dental school in Europe and a £160 million Cancer Centre opened in 2016. As part of our commitment to provide care closer to home, in 2017 we also opened a cancer centre and a kidney treatment centre at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup. St Thomas’ has one of the largest critical care units in the UK and one of the busiest emergency departments in London. It is also home to Evelina London Children’s Hospital.
Evelina London cares for local children in Lambeth and Southwark and provides specialist services across south east England including cardiac, renal and critical care services. We lead a number of specialist service networks aiming to ensure children are treated locally where possible, but have access to specialist expertise when they need it. Our community services include health visiting, school nursing and support for families of children with long-term conditions.
Our adult community services teams deliver care at the heart of the local communities we serve, working in partnership with GPs, local authorities and other healthcare and voluntary sector organisations. Working with our partners in Lambeth and Southwark, we are focusing on new ways of working to improve care for local patients.
In February 2021 the Royal Brompton and Harefield joined Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, bringing together world-leading expertise in the care and research of heart and lung disease. Our merger provides a once in a generation opportunity to build a lasting, world-renowned heart and lung centre, providing the highest quality care for patients and conducting world-leading research.
We have a reputation for clinical excellence and high quality teaching and research. We are part of King’s Health Partners, one of eight accredited UK academic health sciences centres. In partnership with King’s College London we have dedicated clinical research facilities including an MHRA accredited Phase I clinical trials unit.
Patients are at the heart of everything we do and we pride ourselves on ensuring the best possible patient experience as well as safe, high quality care. We are proud to have one of the lowest mortality rates in the NHS. Following a comprehensive Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection in 2019 we maintained our overall rating of ‘good’. Our adult community services achieved a rating of ‘outstanding’.
The commitment of our 23,500 staff is key to our success. We are one of the largest local employers and we aim to develop and support all our staff so they are able to deliver high quality, safe and efficient care. The 2019 NHS staff survey results show that we have one of the most engaged and motivated workforces in the NHS. We know this has a positive impact on the care provided to our patients.
We have one of the most ambitious capital investment programmes anywhere in the NHS.
Job overview
This is an exciting opportunity for a practitioner psychologist, to join our multidisciplinary team in Paediatric Long-Covid (0.5WTE, band 8b). the post is fixed term until end of March 2026.
The long covid service delivers multidisciplinary consultation (with external agencies), assessment, and brief treatment for children and young people with post-covid presentations.
Main duties of the job
The post holder will work as part of the team, comprised of paediatricians, child and adolescent psychiatry, and AHP team members, to develop and deliver high quality clinical care. They will collaborate in the management of patients from referral, triage, assessment and intervention as appropriate. This post includes internal and external liaison with senior professionals and management so excellent communication skills are of benefit.
In addition to direct clinical work, the post holder will be responsible for the collation and management of outcome data, so an interest and experience in service development and Quality Improvement will be an asset.
The post holder will join a dynamic group of practitioner psychologists within Paediatric Psychology, at Evelina London. This role will include leadership responsibilities, delivering line management and supervision as required for other clinicians within the service.
Being within the Paediatric Psychology Service offers good opportunities for collaborative working with other team members, audit & research, teaching and training. We meet regularly as a team to explore clinical dilemmas and share new learnings across our diverse services. Supervision will be provided by an experienced Psychologist within the team. Additional opportunities include but do not stop with; reflective practice groups, peer supervision as well as SIG networks across the South East and nationally. Service relevant CPD is actively encouraged.
Working for our organisation
Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust comprises five of the UK’s best known hospitals – Guy’s, St Thomas’, Evelina London Children’s Hospital, Royal Brompton and Harefield – as well as community services in Lambeth and Southwark, all with a long history of high quality care, clinical excellence, research and innovation.
We are among the UK’s busiest, most successful foundation trusts. We provide specialist care for patients including heart and lung, cancer and renal services as well as a full range of local hospital and community services for people in Lambeth and Southwark
Our integrated approach to caring for patients from before birth, through childhood, adolescence and into adulthood and old age has been replicated around the world and has gained Royal Brompton and Harefield an international reputation as a leader in heart and lung diagnosis, treatment and research.
We have around 23,500 staff, making us one of the largest NHS Trusts in the country and one of the biggest employers locally. We aim to reflect the diversity of the communities we serve and continue to develop new and existing partnerships with local people, patients, neighbouring NHS organisations, local authorities and charitable bodies and GPs.
We strive to recruit and retain the best staff as the dedication and skills of our employees lie at the heart of our organisation and ensure that our services are of the highest quality, safe and focused on our patients.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Please see attached Person Specification and Job Description.
Please contact Lisa Barkley for any questions.
Person specification
skills and abilities
Essential criteria
- Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by HCPC/BPS by completion of CPD log demonstrating a minimum of 40 hours per year.
- Ability and skills to supervise and line manage junior clinical psychologists and clinical psychology trainees having completed the relevant training.
- Advanced practitioner skills in at least one model of psychological therapy (e.g. cognitive behaviour therapy).
- Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment and interventions frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration, and which require making judgements involving highly complex facts/situations.
- Highly developed verbal and written communication skills including the ability to communicate complex, highly technical and clinically sensitive information in a form that can be understood by young people, families, and a wide range of lay and professional persons within and outside the NHS.
- Well-developed consultation skills to work with the multi-professional group and/or other professional groups in health and education.
- Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
- Ability to work effectively within a multidisciplinary team, hold leadership roles and contribute to effective team functioning.
- Ability to undertake risk assessment of client in relation to self and others, and refer on to appropriate services as necessary.
Desirable criteria
- Specialised skills in the selection, administration and interpretation of neuropsychological assessment.
Knowledge
Essential criteria
- Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology related to children and young people with physical health problems and complex statistical analysis.
- Advanced knowledge of theory and practice of psychological therapies for physical health problems, child and adolescent mental health issues, and clinical psychometrics as applied to children and young people.
- Advanced knowledge of theory and practice of psychological therapies for physical health problems, child and adolescent mental health issues, and clinical psychometrics as applied to children and young people.
- Knowledge of the principles of psychometric and neuropsychological assessment.
- Highly specialist knowledge relevant to working with children and young people with a medical condition, generalizable to long-covid presentations and related issues.
- Advanced level knowledge of at least two models of psychological therapy relevant to children and young people with medical conditions and knowledge of the theoretical and evidence base for them (one of these should be cognitive behaviour therapy).
Desirable criteria
- Specialist knowledge of the literature and issues associated with long-covid presentations in children and young people.
Experience
Essential criteria
- Post qualification experience of highly specialist psychological assessment and treatment in the area of chronic and acute physical health problems and disability.
- Experience in the psychological management of physical problems in children and young people including highly specialist experience and knowledge of using cognitive behaviour and systemic techniques for assessment, formulation and treatment of children and young people with complex health problems.
- 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 frequently highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.
- Experience of providing both group based and individual interventions
- Additional post graduate specialist training in area of working with children and young people with physical health problems. To include internal or external courses or conferences, e.g. specialist therapeutic approaches, neuropsychological testing, specific clinical populations, management, psychological treatment and interventions.
- Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients’ psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care co-ordinator and also within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan.
- Experience of consultation to and supervision of other staff.
- Experience of developing and providing teaching and training to psychologists and other professional groups.
- Experience of initiating and leading service development
- Experience of representing psychology within the context of multi-disciplinary care
- Experience of developing and carrying out complex audit, research and service evaluation projects
Desirable criteria
- Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
- Clinical experience in the management pain and fatigue in children and young people.
- Experience of working with highly emotive and distressing problems (e.g. life-threatening and life-limiting medical conditions)
Qualification
Essential criteria
- Good honours degree in psychology.
- Doctoral level qualification in clinical psychology (or its equivalent for those who trained before 1996) as accredited by BPS, including specific models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuro- psychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and life span developmental psychology
- Registration with Health and Care Professions Council as a practitioner psychologist.
Desirable criteria
- Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology e.g. health psychology
- Post-doctoral training in one or more specialised areas of psychological practice (neuropsychology or CBT)
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
- Lisa Barkley
- Job title
- Lead for Paediatric Psychological Professionals
- Email address
- [email protected]
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