Job overview

Are you passionate about working alongside individuals experiencing a range of acute mental health difficulties, or in crisis? This newly created post offers the exciting opportunity to work across the acute care pathway in Salisbury. 

This  split post is two days per week with South Wiltshire Intensive Service and two days per week at Ashdown inpatient unit, a 6-bedded male psychiatric intensive care unit. 

We support service users in their recovery from acute mental health challenges through multi-disciplinary professional teamwork and the adoption of evidence-based clinical practice. You will be joining established multidisciplinary teams, where the role of the psychologist is much valued. The successful applicant will be a Clinical/Counselling Psychologist with clearly demonstrable skills, experience and knowledge of working in a fast moving, often challenging multi-disciplinary environment.  You will be comfortable and confident working with a high level of involvement with a broad staff team and with a client group with high levels of complexity, risk, and need.

The acute care psychology team is part of the Wiltshire Psychological Therapy Service.  We are an enthusiastic and innovative team, which values the input and contribution of all team members and strives to offer the best services possible to our clients. The importance of support and supervision for psychology staff is well recognised, there are many opportunities for support, joint working and supervision.  

Main duties of the job

The post-holder will provide a comprehensive psychology service to both teams, including specialist assessment, evidence based formulation, individual and group brief interventions. 

There is also a strong focus on indirect work with staff teams, through team formulation, reflective practice, training and provision of supervision.

You will need to be well organised with the ability to prioritise your work according to clinical need and liaise effectively with team colleagues and professionals in other teams/services.

Supervision of junior psychologists.

Manage and supervise the assistant psychologist.

There is the opportunity to help shape and develop the service dependant on skills and experience.

Please see attached Job Description and Person Specification for detailed description of all aspects of this role. 

Working for our organisation

We are AWP (Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust): a diverse organisation with over 5,000 dedicated staff providing inpatient and community-based mental health care. 

We provide services from a range of locations to approximately 1.8 million people living in Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES), Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, across the county of Wiltshire and in parts of Dorset.

Our outstanding people promote mental health and wellbeing. The expertise and resources within AWP are dedicated to a person-centred approach for those who use our services and for all employees. We recognise that happy and fulfilled employees give better care.  

At AWP we actively encourage applicants from all backgrounds; we are particularly keen to encourage applications from people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, those with disabilities and from the LGBTQ+ community. We want people to bring their unique blend of experiences, backgrounds, perspectives and knowledge to AWP, as diversity makes us stronger.