Job summary
- Main area
- Clinical Forensic Psychology
- Grade
- Band 8b
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time - 37.5 hours per week
- Job ref
- 350-SC7353541-A
- Employer
- Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Resettle
- Town
- Speke
- Salary
- £64,455 - £74,896 per annum
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 25/09/2025 23:59
- Interview date
- 09/10/2025
Employer heading
Registered Principal Psychologist
Band 8b
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Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust celebrates diversity and promotes equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.
We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from ethnically diverse, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people that are under-represented in our workforce. Furthermore we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces personnel as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.
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Job overview
To apply psychological skills and experiences to support a psychologically informed, team based, multi-disciplinary intervention to individuals with complex needs, who screen into the Offender Personality Disorder Pathway. Resettle is a Intensive Intervention & Risk Management Service (IIRMS), offering a holistic intervention to individuals with previously unmet need. This role is pivotal in providing clinical support and leadership to the team, in partnership with the Senior Probation Officer with supervision from the Consultant Clinical & Forensic Psychologist and in partnership with the Assistant Chief Probation Officer. This will include deputising, chairing staff meetings, line management and supervision of staff, offering support, advice and consultation to the team. The role will involve working autonomously in offering assessments and interventions to service users. There will also be an opportunity to utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research as appropriate and to propose and implement practice improvements within the service.
Main duties of the job
To support and deputise for the Consultants Clinical Psychologist/Joint Service Director in aspects of psychological and organisational/operational matters.
To formulate and implement plans for psychological interventions and risk management to address a service user’s psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, within the community or prison.
To plan, implement and manage a range of psychological interventions for individuals and groups, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
To ensure that members of the team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of service users, through the provision of supervision, advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory to enhance the benefits of joint, inter-agency working.
To undertake line management responsibility of assistant psychologists, trainee clinical psychologists and sociotherapists, within the framework of the Directorate’s and team/service policies and procedures.
To be involved as required in the development, monitoring and evaluation of the team’s operational policies, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit and ensuring incorporation of psychological frameworks for understanding and provision of high quality care.
Working for our organisation
Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.
We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.
At the heart of all we do is our commitment to ‘perfect care’ – care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We’re currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.
Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
These are all indicated in the attached Job Description.
To participate as a senior clinician in the development and provision of a high quality, responsive and accessible service including advising both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational issues need addressing.
To undertake risk assessment and risk management for service users and to provide both general and specialist advice to other professions on the psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
To evaluate, monitor progress and make highly skilled evaluations and decisions about intervention options, taking into account both the theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Doctoral level training in clinical/forensic/applied psychology accredited by the BPS or its approved equivalent OR
- Masters level training in forensic/applied psychology followed by full completion of Stage 2 leading to Qualified Forensic/applied Psychologist.
- Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychology.
- Formal training in research methodology, staff training, supervision and/or other fields of applied psychology
- Professionally registered as a Practitioner Psychologist with the Healthy Professions Council (HPC) practice
Knowledge
Essential criteria
- Proven relevant experience for a significant period of time working as a qualified psychologist (a minimum of 4 years).
- Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients’ psychological care and treatment, both in individual work with service users and also within the context of a multi-disciplinary team.
- Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management, frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
- Experience of teaching, training and/or professional supervision
- Experience of representing psychology within the context of multi -disciplinary care.
Skills
Essential criteria
- Expertise in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, formulation, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
- Well developed and effective communication skills, oral and written, to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to service users, 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 assess and manage risk and make complex judgments about risk issues.
- Knowledge of legislation in relation to client group and mental health
- Doctoral level or equivalent knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical psychology.
- Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the relevant professional body.
- Knowledge of IT systems including word processing, email and local electronic patient information systems.
- Ability to identify provide and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and severely challenging behaviours
- Ability to identify, and employ, as appropriate, clinical governance mechanisms for the support and maintenance of clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
- Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials for presentations in public, professional and academic settings.
Personal
Essential criteria
- Ability to sit in a constrained position when working with clients.
- Ability to sustain intense levels of concentration responding and participating as required.
- Ability to self-reflect and use clinical supervision appropriately.
- Ability to cope and deal with highly distressing emotional circumstances.
- Ability to cope with unpleasant working conditions.
- Willing and able to work flexible hours in order to meet the needs of the service.
Other
Essential criteria
- Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive situations/information.
- Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media presentations within public, professionals and academic settings.
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
- Dr Sue Ryan
- Job title
- Consultant Clinical & Forensic Psychologist
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 0151 832 3340
- Additional information
For informal enquiries, please contact Dr Sue Ryan, Consultant Clinical & Forensic Psychologist on: 0151 832 3340 [email protected]
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