NHS Scotland is committed to encouraging equality and diversity among our workforce and eliminating unlawful discrimination. The aim is for our workforce to be truly representative and for each employee to feel respected and able to give their best. To this end, NHS Scotland welcomes applications from all sections of society.
Location: Clinical Psychology
(Learning Disabilities Specialist Inpatient Services)
Based at The Islay Centre, Royal Edinburgh Hospital
Contract: Permanent
Job type: Part Time
Grade: Band 8B
Hours: 21.09 (0.57 WTE)
Please note: As this post is part-time, the salary will be pro-rata.
We have an exciting new opportunity for a Senior Principal Clinical Psychologist, Band 8B, in the Department of Psychology’s Learning Disabilities Service. You will play a key clinical leadership role in our specialist learning disability inpatient services at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. Your clinical input will focus on the Islay Centre, our specialist service for people with learning disabilities who present with significantly distressed behaviours that cannot be safely managed in the community. You will provide direct assessment, formulation and intervention around complex casework requiring a multi-disciplinary approach, and provide psychological consultation to the MDT. You will also work closely with colleagues in other leadership roles to embed high quality psychological care across our inpatient learning disability services, with a particular focus on implementation of Positive Behaviour Support and trauma-informed care. This is a newly created post, in recognition of the key clinical leadership role that psychology plays within the inpatient learning disability service.
You will possess demonstrable passion for providing excellent psychological services to people with learning disabilities and those who support them. As the post involves providing supervision and leadership to qualified psychologists, multi-disciplinary colleagues, and pre-qualified team members, it is essential you are skilled and confident in addressing the needs of people with learning disabilities who present with significant behaviours of distress and you will possess substantial post-qualification experience of working with this group. You will also possess a demonstrable aptitude for systemic, multi-disciplinary working.
NHS Lothian’s Learning Disability Psychology Service provides a friendly, supportive and stimulating environment in which to work. Staff within our service have a range of clinical interests reflecting a variety of theoretical and therapeutic orientations, and an emphasis is placed on good clinical supervision and support.
NHS Lothian is committed to fair and equitable conditions of employment and as an organisation it recognises that employees may require to change their place of residence as a result of taking up a post and so will ensure that where this is the case employees are reimbursed appropriately.
As from 1/4/26, the Agenda for Change full-time working week will be reducing from 37 to 36 hours per week. Part time hours will be reduced pro-rata. However, there will be a corresponding increase in the hourly rate so that pay will not be affected.
Potential applicants are encouraged to contact us for an