Job summary
An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Consultant Applied Psychologist to join Durham Tees, Valley, Adult Mental Health Services as Personality and Relational co Lead. Your key role will be to support colleagues in developing their skills, knowledge and attitudes, supporting them to enhance the recovery of people presenting with complex emotion needs and relational challenges and aiming to ensure that service delivery in general is personality and relationally informed. You will be required to be registered with the Health and Care Professions Council as a Practitioner Psychologist and have post doctoral training in a specialism relevant to complex emotional needs, and extensive clinical experience working with complex emotional needs. The nature of the role means that driving will be essential. The post will involve travel across the Durham Tees Valley area. Base to be confirmed.
Main duties of the job
You will deliver a range of supervisory, consultative, and service development and improvement interventions, working both with internal colleagues in teams across Adult Mental Health as well as wider multi-agency networking. Candidates should be significantly experienced clinicians with excellent interdisciplinary working skills and interested in developing and delivering an innovative service. A proven track record of consultancy, clinical leadership and supervisory experience in the field of Adult Mental Health is essential. A working knowledge and understanding of Structured Clinical Management, is desirable. This is a challenging yet rewarding post that requires the post holder to hold and contain highly distressing material. You will join colleagues doing the same job in the other localities, all managed and professionally led from within their locality. One of the network is also the Trust Lead for Personality & Relational Services, though individual and group based opportunities for support are also provided.
About us
We are committed to co-creating safe and personalised care that improves the lives of people by involving them as equal partners. The most important way we will get there is by living our values, all of the time. Psychological Professions staff will be expected to display the Trust values at all times, working as part of the collective leadership team with shared accountability and responsibility for ensuring the safety and effectiveness of patient care is delivered in a patient centred manner. They will also contribute to ensuring the culture of our services is built upon the Trust Values and the trust's strategy - Our Journey To change (OJTC).
The Trust is committed to providing support and supervision for continuing professional development and we have an excellent track record for developing our psychology workforce. There are also strong links to the local Psychology Doctoral Programmes as we are key providers of academic and clinical experience components both in terms of teaching and supervision. Psychologists provide key leadership roles within the Trust. To support this we have developed leadership profiles for each psychology band and the profile card associated with this post is attached on NHS Jobs. You can find more information about the NHS Leadership Academy's Healthcare Leadership Model and the profiles on their website. We encourage you to look at these resources as they will play a part in the interview process.
Details
Date posted
26 January 2026
Pay scheme
Agenda for change
Band
Band 8c
Salary
£76,965 to £88,682 a year per annum
Contract
Permanent
Working pattern
Full-time
Reference number
346-DDA-014-26-A
Job locations
Lanchester Road Hospital
Lanchester Road
Durham
DH1 5RD
Job description
Job responsibilities
Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for further detailed information to ensure that you meet the role criteria before applying.
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential
1. Post-graduate training (doctoral level equivalent) in clinical / counselling / forensic psychology (or its equivalent prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS.
2. HCPC registration as a Practitioner Psychologist
3. Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice
4. Trained in clinical supervision and the supervision of doctoral trainees
5. Trained in care co-ordination
6. Evidence of continuing professional development
Desirable
7. Registration with BPS
Experience
Essential
8. Must have substantial experience of: Working as a qualified applied psychologist within the designated service including a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and full range of clinical severity across the full range of care settings.
9. Exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care as a care co-ordinator and leader of a multidisciplinary team.
10. Liaison and joint working with statutory, voluntary and private sector agencies
11. Teaching, training, clinical supervision and field supervisor for doctoral theses.
12. Research and development
13. Project management of quality and service improvement initiatives
14. Must have experience of: Providing clinical and professional leadership to other qualified and non-qualified members of the profession.
15. Managing multi-agency service delivery models
Knowledge
Essential
16. Doctoral level knowledge of: Evidence- based practice relevant to the role
17. Risk assessment and risk management
18. Clinical governance
19. Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health and its implications for clinical practice.
20. Audit and research methodology
21. Social Inclusion agenda
22. Highly developed knowledge of: The care of difficult to treat groups. dual diagnoses, additional disabilities or severely challenging behaviour.
23. The Trust's Quality Improvement System.
Skills
Essential
24. Provide effective clinical leadership and demonstrate operating at a strong level across the following 5 dimensions of the Healthcare Leadership Model:
25. Adapt creatively the evidence base for interventions in mental health for clients with communication difficulties / learning disabilities
26. Communicate highly complex, highly sensitive and highly contentious information effectively, to a wide range of people
27. Provide consultation to other professionals and non-professional groups
28. Articulate the value added by applied psychology services within the context of multidisciplinary mental health and learning disability healthcare provision.
29. Undertake complex multiagency working and liaise with multiple systems
30. Utilise psychometric tests competently
31. Provide effective teaching, training and clinical supervision for the multidisciplinary team
32. Identify, provide and promote appropriate interventions / means of support for carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and challenging behaviours
33. Utilise appropriate clinical governance mechanisms within own work
34. Project Management
35. Use approved breakaway techniques
36. Demonstrate effective keyboard skills
37. Use multimedia materials for presentations in professional, academic and public settings