Job summary
- Main area
- Psychology
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 8a
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time
- Flexible working
- Job ref
- 179-7508621-P
- Employer
- West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- West Suffolk Hospital
- Town
- Bury St Edmunds
- Salary
- £55,690 - £62,682 per annum, pro rata
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 08/12/2025 23:59
Employer heading
Clinical Psychologist - Staff Psychology Services
NHS AfC: Band 8a
Job overview
West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust’s Staff Psychology Service is excited to be in a position to recruit an enthusiastic, motivated and committed Band 8a Clinical/Counselling Psychologist to join our small but supportive and established team.
We would also be happy to recruit a newly qualified psychologist and support them through their preceptorship.
The Staff Psychology Service is a substantive service forming part of the Trust’s wider wellbeing provisions to the WSFT workforce. The team are part of the wider Psychological Services Department, which is managed within the Clinical Support Division.
We offer specialist assessment, formulation and evidence-based treatment to members of the workforce that may be experiencing psychological distress or trauma as a result of a workplace incident.
The service aims to offer a proactive approach to supporting the emotional wellbeing of the workforce through teaching, training and outreach, whilst also being able to offer evidence-based support in response to the potentially traumatic and the emotionally volatile nature of the events that healthcare staff may be exposed to during the course of their highly valued and vital work for our community.
The post is primarily based at the West Suffolk Hospital but also offers opportunities for both community-based and remote working.
Main duties of the job
Whilst related experience is highly valued, key to this role is an individual who is keen to collaborate in fostering genuine, authentic and meaningful professional relationships, with a willing and supportive nature.
The role involves taking a proactive approach to fostering working relationships with our multi-disciplinary colleagues across the Trust in both acute and community services to understand the themes and sources of potential distress that the workforce may be exposed to, with a view to ameliorating barriers to accessing support, and promoting the conditions that insulate staff against the potential challenges they might encounter.
In cases where a staff member has been faced with difficulties and either self-referred or been referred by their manager, the post holder will support in the management and triage of referrals, offer clinical assessments, co-construct clinical formulations, and deliver evidence-based treatments.
Additionally, the role involves developing and delivering bespoke teaching and training sessions, offering psychologically-informed reflective practice groups to MDT colleagues, offering clinical supervision and professional consultation to both qualified and non-qualified professionals, facilitating group-based interventions, and joining and participating in shared team discussions for both the maintenance and development of our proud service.
Working for our organisation
#BeKnown at West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust. By us. By our patients. By our community
We are a busy, friendly, rural NHS Trust providing high-quality care and compassion to more than a quarter of a million people across west Suffolk. We care for, treat and support people in hospital, at home and in various community settings.
The West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds provides acute and secondary care services (emergency department, maternity and neonatal services, day surgery unit, eye treatment centre, Macmillan unit and children's ward). It has 500+ beds and is a partner teaching hospital of the University of Cambridge.
Adult and paediatric community services, provided in collaboration with West Suffolk Alliance partners, include a range of nursing, therapy, specialist, and ongoing temporary care and rehabilitation, some at our Newmarket Community Hospital.
We do our utmost to achieve outstanding clinical outcomes for patients and our values of fairness, inclusivity, respect, safety and team work guide how we work and behave as a team.
With nearly 5,000 staff, from all over the world, we strive to make our organisation a great place to work. Whatever your role or ambition, we want to help you be the best you can be.
We promote a diverse and inclusive community where everyones voice counts and you can #BeKnown for whoever you are.
Join us. What will you #BeKnown for?
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Please see the full job description and person specification attached for more details on the job role.
Person specification
Education & Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology, or a BPS Statement of Equivalence.
- Undertaken training in the supervision of trainee clinical psychologists.
- Registered with the Health and Care Professions Council
Desirable criteria
- Undertaken post-doctoral training in one or more relevant additional specialised areas of psychological practice such as EMDR or Trauma Focused CBT
- Other relevant academic qualifications to Master’s or doctoral level.
Experience & Knowledge
Essential criteria
- Significant assessed experience of working as a qualified clinical psychologist
- High level knowledge of at least one evidence-based trauma intervention
- Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care, in-patient and residential care settings 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 exercising full clinical responsibility for clients’ psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care coordinator and also within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan.
- Experience of the application of psychology in different contexts.
- Experience working in a multi- disciplinary setting
- Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision
- High level of knowledge of health psychology or adult mental health services
- Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex multivariate data analysis
- Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and setting, and its implication for both clinical practice and professional management.
- Evidence of Continuing Professional Development
Desirable criteria
- Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management, frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration requiring the use of highly developed analytic skills.
- Skills in individual and group work and programme planning.
- Excellent communication skills, able to communicate effectively, verbally and in writing complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information including contentious and highly distressing information to service users, their families carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, enabling formation of networks with professionals within the Trust and to promote effective team working with clients
- Able to contain and work with high levels of distress from clients.
- Able to contain and work with organisational stress.
- Interpersonally calm and able to defuse difficult, volatile situations.
- Able to tolerate ambiguity and to take decisions in situations of incomplete information
Skills & Abilities
Essential criteria
- Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management, frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration requiring the use of highly developed analytic skills.
- Skills in individual and group work and programme planning.
- Excellent communication skills, able to communicate effectively, verbally and in writing complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information including contentious and highly distressing information to service users, their families carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, enabling formation of networks with professionals within the Trust and to promote effective team working with clients
- Able to contain and work with high levels of distress from clients.
- Able to contain and work with organisational stress.
- Interpersonally calm and able to defuse difficult, volatile situations
- Able to tolerate ambiguity and to take decisions in situations of incomplete information
Desirable criteria
- Experience of providing training or therapy via an online platform such as Microsoft Teams
Other
Essential criteria
- Good organisational skills
- Motivated towards personal and professional development with a strong CPD record.
- Ability to identify provide and promote appropriate means of support to staff exposed to highly distressing situations and severely challenging behaviours.
- Ability to develop and use complex multi-media materials for presentations in public, professional and academic settings. IT skills in order to fulfil the job description
Desirable criteria
- Knowledge and understanding of local adult mental health services and the referral pathways for those staff members presenting with a significant mental health risk
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.
Application numbers
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Dr Emily Baker
- Job title
- Consultant Clinical Psychologist
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 01284 712598
- Additional information
Dr Peter Southam, Clinical Psychologist 01284 712598
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