Job summary
- Main area
- Clinical/Counselling Psychologist
- Grade
- Band 8a
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Part time - 30 hours per week (Flexibility on working days and hours within Monday-Friday 8-6 working pattern)
- Job ref
- 350-MHC7552918-A
- Employer
- Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- St Helens Recovery Team, Peasley Cross Hospital
- Town
- St Helens
- Salary
- £47,810 - £62,682 per annum pro rata
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 03/12/2025 23:59
- Interview date
- 11/12/2025
Employer heading
Clinical/Counselling Psychologist
Band 8a
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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
Are you a creative, compassionate and dedicated Psychologist looking to develop your psychological therapy skills within a supportive team? If so then read on.
A fantastic opportunity has arisen for an Applied Psychologist (clinical or counselling) or Psychological Therapist to join St Helens Step 4 Psychology Service. Depending on qualifications and experience the post could be offered at AFC Band 7 (as a preceptorship role) or Band 8a.
The team sits within the multidisciplinary Recovery team and comprises Clinical Psychologists, Counselling Psychologists, Cognitive Behavioural Therapists, EMDR therapists, specialist nurse practitioners and assistant psychologists. We also regularly offer placements to trainee clinical psychologists.
Main duties of the job
This is predominantly a clinical role and an excellent opportunity to develop psychological therapy skills. It is a secondary care service so clients presentations are complex often requiring bespoke and longer term approaches.
Further training to enhance clinical skills is supported and encouraged, over the past four years team members have trained in the following: Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), Mentalisation Based Therapy (MBT), schema therapy, Compassion Focussed Therapy (CFT), Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR), Psychodynamic Interpersonal Therapy (PIT), Behavioural Family therapy (BFT) and Structured Psychological Support (SPS).
Depending on qualifications and experience other key parts of the role may include supervision of other staff members, co-facilitating therapy groups or contributing to service design and development.
The main duties of the role will be providing 1:1 psychological assessment, formulation and intervention to clients referred into the service.
Our service users have complex presentations and difficulties and often liaison with other professionals, teams, or agencies involved in the clients care is needed. The successful candidate would be expected to contribute to a psychologically based framework for understanding their clients across these settings.
Depending on experience, supervision of trainee clinical psychologists or other members of the psychological therapies team may form part of the role.
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
The psychological therapies service sits in the multidisciplinary St Helens Recovery team so MDT working is also a key requirement of this role.
The psychological therapies team is a supportive team. As well as regular supervision there are numerous weekly forums where practitioners can obtain further support.
**Please see attached Job Description and Person Specification for further information**
Person specification
QUALIFICATIONS
Essential criteria
- Doctoral level training in clinical psychology, or its approved equivalent accredited by the BPS.
- Registration with Health Professions Council as Practitioner Psychologist.
Desirable criteria
- Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.
KNOWLEDGE/ EXPERIENCE
Essential criteria
- Experience of specialist psychological assessment, formulation and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and in patient settings.
- 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 highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.
- Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision. Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts
- Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate 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 working with people who have complex psychological difficulties/ disorders.
- Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies for people experiencing trauma, and complex difficulties Knowledge of the theory and practice of at least one specialised psychological therapy.
Values
Essential criteria
- Continuous Improvement
- Accountability
- Respectfulness
- Enthusiasm
- Support
- High professional standards
- Responsive to service users
- Engaging leadership style
- Strong customer service belief
- Transparency and honesty
- Discreet
- Change oriented
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 complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
- Skills in providing consultation to other professional and nonprofessional groups.
- Knowledge of IT systems including word processing, email and local electronic patient information systems
- Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multimedia materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
- Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of service governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
- Ability to self-reflect, use clinical supervision appropriately and consider complex organisational and team dynamics.
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
- Eve Applegate
- Job title
- Principal Clinical Psychologist
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 01744 415 620
- Additional information
Gina Smith
Consultant Clinical Psychologist
01744 415 620
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