Go back Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust
Senior Clinical or Counselling Psychologist
The closing date is 20 August 2025
Band 7 or 8A Senior Clinical/Counselling Psychologist
We are happy to consider interest from newly qualified applicants or those currently working as a Band 7 Psychologist who would be interested in a development post, working towards becoming an 8A psychologist. We welcome applications from individuals with no prior experience in drug and alcohol addiction services.
We are looking for a highly motivated and innovative Practitioner Psychologist to join a friendly team in our Addictions service: New Beginnings Brent. This is a an exciting and rewarding opportunity for a practitioner psychologist who is enthusiastic about working in a multi-disciplinary setting, who is adaptable and enjoys variety and working independently as well as within a team context. You will have excellent clinical skills and ideally possess supervision experience. You work alongside a range of professionals including psychiatrists, mental health nurses, social workers, drug and alcohol practitioners, experts by experience, criminal justice staff, recovery workers and group facilitators.
Main duties of the job
CNWL through its Addictions Directorate provides expert services to a variety of London Boroughs and beyond. Specifically in Brent, the New Beginnings service is an NHS and third-sector partnership providing comprehensive health care for local people with drug, alcohol and other addictions.
A significant percentage of addiction clients also present with diagnoses of Trauma, Personality Disorder, and Complex Mood and Anxiety Disorders, and the team is expected to deliver a range of evidence-based interventions as recommended by NICE Guidance including MI, MBT, DBT, CFT, EMDR and CBT. Other modalities are used dependent on patient need and best practice. The successful applicant will be involved in the provision of therapy and supervise both qualified and trainee psychology staff.
About us
Liaising and developing effective collaborative relationships with other services such as social care and mental health is a key part of the role. The post holder will have some management and clinical supervision responsibilities for assistant and trainee psychologists and other staff as required, and will assist in embedding a psychologically informed environment (PIE) across all levels of working. The post holder will be responsible for screening and assessing referrals, managing wait lists, and providing psychological consultation to colleagues and other services about the mental health and psychological needs of clients. You will be expected to work with clients individually and in groups, and with carers and families as required.
The successful applicant may have contact with patients or service users. As an NHS Trust we strongly encourage and support vaccination as this remains the best way to protect yourself, your family, your colleagues and of course patients and service users when working on our healthcare settings.
Job responsibilities
You will have assessment, formulation, therapy, and leadership and supervision skills; and you will have (and/or want to develop) experience, training and knowledge in working with Addictions and associated complex presentations. Although experience of working with people with addictions would be valuable, we recognise that not all applicants will have had this opportunity. Tailored induction and training will be provided to enable you to work effectively with this client group.
You will have good research and audit skills, be familiar with care quality and clinical governance and be expected to contribute to service development in this way.
You will be operationally responsible to the team manager and receive regular clinical supervision, support and reflective practice from your Professional Lead for Addictions, as well as peer support and guidance from other senior team members.
Person Specification
Qualifications
* Doctoral level training in clinical psychology as accredited by the BPS, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology as accredited by the BPS.
* HCPC registration
* Post-graduate training in an evidence-based therapeutic technique of use to the service
* Post-graduate training and qualifications in researchmethodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.
Experience
* Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and inpatient 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 teaching, training and/or supervision.
* Experience of the application of psychology and psychological therapy in different cultural contexts.
* Experience of the treatment of substance and behavioural addictions populations
* Experience of attending management meetings and of being senior psychologist in service
OTHER
* Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
* Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour
* Experience of working within a multicultural framework
KNOWLEDGE AND 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
* Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non- professional groups.
* Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.
* Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc).
* High level knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.
* Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health.
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust
£53,751 to £68,623 a yearper annum. inc HCAS pro rata
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