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Band 8b Principal Practitioner Psychologist - Ardenleigh
The closing date is 23 October 2025
An exciting new opportunity has arisen to recruit an 8b Principal Practitioner Psychologist across the Ardenleigh site, to provide additional leadership and specialist clinical input. This post offers a unique opportunity to contribute to the delivery of care for both young people and women, as well as lead on site wide developments and services.
The Ardenleigh site hosts two services. The Secure CAMHS (SCAMHS) service and the Women's Secure Blended Service (WSBS)
This post across Ardenleigh offers a substantial leadership role, working alongside the Consultant Clinical Psychologist, to provide leadership to the SCAMHS psychology team and represent psychology as part of the senior leadership team. You will also hold the team leader role for the site wide Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Team, overseeing the delivery of DBT across the site and ensuring the fidelity of the model. You will also contribute to site wide initiatives, such as delivering on Culture of Care, ensuring the continuation of Trauma Informed practice and other innovation projects. There will be an expectation to provide clinical work as well as consultation, supervision, reflective practice, and training for staff teams.
Main duties of the job
You will be joining a large and diverse psychological therapies team within the division, consisting of clinical and forensic psychologists, arts therapists, specialist psychological practitioners and assistant psychologists. Both services have a strong multi-disciplinary team ethos, in which psychology is well established and respected. The services are committed to providing the best care for women and young people, and as such service user involvement and co-production are central to what we do. As a psychology team we also contribute significantly to the staff well-being strategy.
We are committed to supporting our staff to have a positive experience of their time at work. We acknowledge that working across the Ardenleigh site can be challenging, so you will have access to a range of wellbeing support. As a division we are also committed to investing in staff and you will have opportunities for training, mentoring, supervision and career development.
It is essential that the successful candidate is a minimum of 5 days intensively DBT trained for them to take on the team leader role and preferably have additional training in this model. Leadership and service development experience is desirable, as well as managing and supervising a range of psychological professionals. The successful candidate will have extensive experience of working with service users with mental health presentations, psychological difficulties, neurodiversity and complex needs and risk.
About us
Welcome to Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust. Our 4000 clinical and support staff help us to improve mental health wellbeing and meet the needs of the 70,000 people we serve each year. We provide a range of mental healthcare services across Birmingham and Solihull, as well as specialised services nationally. We also offer medical, nursing and psychology training and are proud of our international reputation for both research and innovation.
Our population is culturally diverse, characterised in places by high levels of deprivation which create an increasing demand for our services and a necessity for us to make sure everyone can access the help they need. We are a team of compassionate, inclusive and committed people working together to provide excellent care to support our community. If you are looking for a place to belong, where you can make a real difference to people's lives, join our team where our warm welcome is waiting for you.
Job responsibilities
For further information about the main responsibilities please view the attached job description and person specification.
Please click on the link for a little insight into our services and our people
https://vimeo.com/benthompsonfilms/psychologyrecruitment?share=copy
Person Specification
Qualifications
* Satisfactory completion of a British Psychological Society accredited Doctoral Level postgraduate professional training course in clinical psychology (the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology, or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996), the completion of which includes the study of models of psychopathology, psychometric and neuropsychological assessment, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology.
* Eligibility for entry onto the Register of Chartered Psychologists
* Additional training in DBT, at a minimum to have completed the 5-day intensive training.
* Post-doctoral training in one or more highly specialist areas of psychological practice / therapy
Experience
* Assessed experience of working as a qualified clinical/forensic psychologist for a minimum of 4 years post qualification, with a minimum of at least 2 years at the Senior (highly specialist) level.
* Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, with clients of all ages across the lifespan and of wide-ranging presenting problems that reflect the full spectrum of clinical complexity and severity
* Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts.
* Experience of working therapeutically with 'difficult to treat' and or 'hard to reach' groups and clients in community settings
* Experience of safeguarding and risk management across several agencies, including appropriately escalating concerns
Skills
* Highly developed theoretical and practical knowledge of the field of clinical psychology, consistent with doctoral level professional training and further post qualification study, training and supervised experience during a minimum of 4 years as a qualified psychologist
* Skills in providing consultation and advice from a psychological perspective to members of other professional and non-professional groups.
* Awareness and understanding of the differential needs of people from black and minority ethnic groups and of the service issues arising within a multicultural urban area.
* In depth knowledge of information governance legislation and information sharing practices across agencies
Personal
* Ability to interact effectively with staff from all disciplines.
* Capacity for tolerating frustration, change and high levels of demand with an ability to work effectively under pressure.
* Willing and eligible to apply for higher level security clearance
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.
Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust
£64,455 to £74,896 a yearper annum, pro rata
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