Specialist Clinical/Counselling Psychologist

Job overview

Specialist Clinical or Counselling Psychologist - Band 7 - Central London Adult Autism Service

We provide compassionate, person-centred and evidence-based care. We have secured funding for developing new pathways.

• We are seeking a Band 7 qualified psychologist interested in working with autistic adults. The post is funded until the end of March 2026 and is likely to be extended. The successful candidate will:
• Be a good team player with strong work ethics, capable of working efficiently in a fast-paced environment.
• Have knowledge and/or experience of the context of services for autistic individuals
• Work well with health and social care colleague
• Work directly with autistic adults or those seeking a diagnosis, their carers, and other professional

Further details in the JD and PS. We have good links with the North London Doctoral Training courses in Clinical Psychology and provides clinical placements to trainees.

Working for our organisation

Just as we care about our patients’ wellbeing, we care about yours!

We can offer you:

• A comprehensive induction into the community service followed by a local induction to introduce you to the role
• Car lease scheme *T&C’s apply
• Flexible working options
• Annual travel card loan
• Training, support and development in your career

To have a full look at our benefits and what it’s like working for us please go here: https://www.clch.nhs.uk/job/pay-and-benefits

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please refer to Job Description and Person Specification for outline of skills, knowledge and experience required.

Person specification

Qualifications

• Doctoral level training in clinical/counselling psychology, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics, and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology as accredited by the BPS and registered with HCPC.

• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.

Experience

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across a range of care settings, e.g. 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 of a motive and distressing problems, verbal abuse, and the threat of physical abuse.
• Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts.

• Experience of working in autism services and conducting autism assessments
• Trained in formal autism assessment tools (e.g., ADOS-2, ADI-R).
• Experience of teaching training and/or supervision

Skills

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.
• 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 develop and use complex multi-media materials for presentations in public, professional and academic settings

• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health.
• Knowledge of neuroaffirmative approaches for neurodivergent service-users

Key Attributes

• Strong work ethics, good team-player, positive attitude in face of challenges, creative problem-solving skills
• Sensitive and thoughtful about cultural diversitie

• Good sense of humour
• Ability to advocate for, support and empower disadvantaged service-users

Due to the high number of applications that are received for some posts we may close this vacancy before the advertised closing date. Therefore please apply for this post as soon as you can, if you are interested and you meet the requirements of the Person Specification

Only those candidates who clearly demonstrate how they meet the person specification will be shortlisted for this job.

Interview arrangements will be communicated via email so please check your email regularly following the closing date.

At CLCH we appreciate and are proud of the diversity in the communities we serve and the workforce we employ. Applications are open and welcome to anyone, regardless of your age, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, ethnicity, religion, and disability.

We are proud to say that we follow the workforce race equality standard and 28% of our senior staff (8A and above) are from a BAME background. CLCH also has active BAME and LGBTQI networks:

Disability and Wellbeing Network (DAWN)

Race Equality Network

Rainbow Network which supports LGBTQI staff.

Each network has a champion who is an executive director at the Trust and they hold regular meetings to discuss issues and make plans to improve CLCH.

The CLCH Equal opportunities statement is on our Website Equal opportunities :: Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust (clch.nhs.uk)

"We work Flexibly"