Overview
We are looking for a Clinical/Counselling Psychologist who is enthusiastic, hardworking, and dedicated to working with young people and families, to join our team at the Darwin Centre.
The Darwin Centre for Young People is a Tier 4 adolescent inpatient unit based in Cambridge. The unit offers assessment and treatment to young people, aged 13-18, experiencing psychiatric, emotional or psychological problems that interfere with their social, interpersonal and educational functioning. We have a full multidisciplinary team with nurses, health care assistants, a clinical nurse specialist and a ward manager, including psychologists, systemic family therapist, occupational therapist, dietician, speech and language therapist, social worker, art and music therapy.
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 NHS services in inpatient, primary care, community, and other settings across 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. We are an equal opportunities employer and 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. We reserve the right to close adverts earlier than the closing date should we receive sufficient applications. We cannot offer sponsorship for all roles; if sponsorship is not possible, applications may be rejected from the process. For more information, visit www.cpft.nhs.uk. This advert closes on Monday 22 Sep 2025.
Responsibilities
1. To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the team based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including assessment interview, psychological and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect observations, with clients, family members and others involved in the client’s care.
2. To develop psychological formulations of presenting problems or situations that integrate information from assessments within a coherent framework that draws upon psychological theory and evidence and which incorporates developmental, interpersonal, societal, cultural and biological factors.
3. To develop and implement plans for the therapeutic treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.
4. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
5. To evaluate and make decisions about the most effective therapeutic approach and intervention taking into account a range of theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family, carers or group.
6. To monitor progress during the course of multi-disciplinary interventions.
7. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation and treatment plan.
8. To promote psychological formulation and apply psychological models within the team in order to support other professionals to make sense of, manage and respond to a wide range of complex situations, feelings and reactions associated with working on the ward.
9. To facilitate a self-reflective and compassionate environment on the ward both within the team and client group.
10. To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.
11. To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures.
12. To communicate, in a highly skilled and sensitive manner, to clients, family carers and others as appropriate, information that may be contentious or highly distressing concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care.
Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details of responsibilities.
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