Specialist Clinical or Counselling Psychologist

Job overview

We are seeking an experienced, innovative, and enthusiastic Specialist Clinical or Counselling Psychologist to join our exciting new Universities of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin Mental Health Student Service (UCARMHSS) pilot which is set to launch in 2025.

This new service will offer multiple pathways: psychiatry, psychology, and care coordination, allowing students to access tailored interventions. The goal is to improve access to support for students' mental health, inform about available support, and guide them in managing their mental health.

• A focus on student needs rather than diagnosis, with every referral undergoing thorough triage and, where necessary, formulation assessments.
• Proactive support to help students succeed academically and socially at university.
• Flexible access to services, with face-to-face, telephone, video, and other online options available to meet individual preferences.
• Comprehensive care coordination, encompassing assessment, case management, self-management support, and liaison with university services.

• This post allows the post holder an exciting opportunity to provide a specialist applied psychology service to. students from the University of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin University who present with moderate to severe mental health difficulties.
• To provide specialist psychological assessments and therapy as well as offering advice and consultation on clients’ psychological care to professional colleagues and staff from other agencies.
• To work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of both the Trust’s and the service’s policies and procedures.
• To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the area served by the team/service.

Working for our organisation

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust is a health and social care organisation dedicated to providing high-quality care with compassion to improve the health and wellbeing of the people we care for, as well as supporting and empowering them to lead a fulfilling life.

Our clinical teams deliver many NHS services, not only via inpatient and primary care settings, but also within the community. These services include children's, adult and older people's mental health, forensic and specialist mental health, learning disabilities, primary care and liaison psychiatry, substance misuse, social care, research and development.

To achieve our goal, we look to recruit high-calibre candidates who share our vision and values. As an equal opportunities employer, we encourage applications from all sectors of the community, particularly from under-represented groups including people with long term conditions and members of our ethnic minority and LGBTQ+ communities.

Please be advised we reserve the right to close adverts earlier than the closing date should we receive sufficient applications.

Regrettably, we cannot offer sponsorship for all our job roles. If you apply for a role that we cannot offer sponsorship for, unfortunately, your application form will be rejected from the process.

For further information on CPFT, please visit our website at www.cpft.nhs.uk

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

1. To provide specialist psychological assessments of students referred to UCARMHSS based upon the appropriate use and integration of complex data from a variety of sources, including psychological and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with clients and others involved in the client’s care (including professionals from other agencies).
2. To individually formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatments and/or management of a client’s mental health or other complex psychological problems based on an appropriate conceptual framework adapting/utilising several psychological models and employing methods of proven efficacy.
3. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individual clients, and via groups, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing on different explanatory models including developmental, cognitive, learning theory, biological, and neuropsychological, and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
4. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of own clients and manage and maintain caseload in line with service requirements.
5. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management, in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures.
6. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to client’s formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
7. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of own (case holder) clients and to monitor progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care.
8. To work in partnership and maintain effective links with the statutory and non-statutory, and primary-care agencies as appropriate.
9. To regularly deal with serious mental illness and trauma.
10. The postholder will need to be able to work flexibly.

Person specification

Education / Qualifications

• Postgraduate doctoral level qualification (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) in clinical or counselling psychology as accredited by the BPS – or expectation that the qualification will be achieved within six months of application for the post. Training to specifically include: models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct therapies and lifespan development psychology.
• Registration with HCPC as a Practitioner Psychologist – or the expectation that registration will be achieved within six months of application for the post.

Experience

• 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 the application of applied psychology in different contexts

Skills & Abilities

• Able to demonstrate commitment to high quality care and service provision.
• Excellent skills of assessment, formulation, evaluation and treatment, using complex methods frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, verbally and in writing, complex technical and/or clinically sensitive information including contentious and highly distressing information to service users, their families, careers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance, including regular supervision, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to emotive material and challenging behaviour.

Knowledge & Understanding

• Good knowledge of psychological evidence-based interventions applicable to referred clients.

• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.

Here at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT) we are dedicated to providing high quality care with compassion. We deliver many of the NHS services that are provided outside of hospital and in the community such as physical, mental health and specialist services.

We are a health and social care organisation, offering a wide range of services, including:

• Integrated physical and mental health services for adults and older people;
• Specialist mental health and learning disability services;
• Children and young people’s mental health services;
• Children’s community services in Peterborough;
• Social care;
• Ground-breaking research

We strongly encourage applications from all sections of the community, particularly from under-represented groups including disabled people and members of our ethnic minorities and LGBTQ+ communities. For further information about our positive equality, diversity and Inclusion work, please visit https://www.cpft.nhs.uk/equalityanddiversity.

CPFT is looking to build upon its pool of temporary workers with Temporary Staffing Services (TSS). You will be asked at interview if you would be willing to register with TSS. This is an excellent opportunity for those looking to take on additional hours that are flexible around your personal circumstances.

Please be advised that in line with the WHO Health Workforce Support and Safeguards List, 2020 Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust currently are unable to accept applications from overseas candidates whose country of residence is classed as a ‘Red List’ country.

Applicants who require entry into the UK will be required to provide a valid police certificate from the relevant authority from each country (except the UK) where the applicant has been present for 12 months or more, 10 years before the date of visa application, while aged 18 or over.

If you are successful at interview you will be subject to pre-employment checks, including a DBS (if appropriate), references and Occupational Health. To ensure a smooth process please bring all identity documents to your interview. A list of required identity documents will be attached to your interview invitation.

All communications will be sent to you via TRAC Systems. By applying for this post you are agreeing to CPFT transferring the information contained in this application to TRAC. If you are made an offer, information will also be transferred into the national NHS Electronic Staff Records system.