Clinical/Counselling Psychologist Band 7 / 8a Recruitment Event

​Clinical/Counselling Psychologist Band 7 /8a Recruitment Event

Main area Mental Health
Grade Band 7 - Band 8a
Contract Permanent
Hours
Full time
Part time
37.5 hours per week (Full and Part time hours available)
Site Across all services
Town Liverpool/Sefton/St Helens/Knowsley/Warrington
Salary £43,742 - £57,349 per annum
Salary period Yearly
Closing 13/03/2024 23:59 

Job overview

A range of exciting opportunities have arisen within the Trust’s Mental Health Care Division to join well established, supportive teams of practitioners meeting the psychological needs of service users across our mental health services.

We’re excited to offer a bespoke Recruitment Event on the 22nd March 2024 for permanent Band 7/8a (dependent on experience and subject to preceptorship) practitioner psychologist posts which will provide you with the opportunity to learn more about the Division and the areas where we currently hold vacancies. 

Please see attached document for posts that are available across the Mental Health Care Psychology Service.  

Main duties of the job

If you’re a qualified practitioner psychologist with experience, skills and enthusiasm, you’ll help to provide quality services to our service users.

You’ll work within a team to support people with a range of psychological issues by providing specialist psychological assessment, therapy and interventions to service users and carers, making use of a range of models, where appropriate. You’ll also offer specialist advice, leadership and consultation to non-psychologist colleagues and support the development of psychological skills across the whole workforce through specialist training, supervision, mentorship and reflective practice.

Psychological input is highly valued by staff within services, so you’ll need experience of working with other services, championing psychological interventions and developing working partnerships.

Working for our organisation

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.

We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.

At the heart of all we do is our commitment to ‘perfect care’ – care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We’re currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.
 
Detailed job description and main responsibilities

You’ll be a team player, part of a supportive multidisciplinary team delivering multi tiered psychosocial interventions. We’ll be particularly keen if you have a strong background in person centred and human rights based approaches to healthcare, with a positive attitude and a strong understanding and commitment to integrated team working.

You’ll have a strong commitment to social justice as we’re committed to supporting people from socially disadvantaged communities. You’ll have excellent communication and people skills and a proven passion for improving the lives of clients and their families.

You may be expected to audit and evaluate a range of outcomes in terms of the benefit for service users, staff and the wider service. An active interest in research, publication and supporting others to develop their evaluation skills will be an advantage.

All posts are suitable for newly qualified and current clinicians. Relevant training, support and experience will be provided to ensure that if you’re successful, you’ll be eligible to apply for preceptorship to an 8a clinical psychology post - if professional qualifications allow and after demonstrating significant demonstrable post qualifying experience. If you already have relevant training and experience, you’ll be able to start at band 8a.

Can you please state in your application which post(s) you are interested in and whether you are seeking full or part time hours.

Person specification

KNOWLEDGE/EXPERIENCE

Essential criteria

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment, formulation and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and in patient 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 clinical psychology in different cultural contexts

VALUES

Essential criteria

• Continuous Improvement
• Accountability
• Respectfulness
• Enthusiasm
• Responsive to service users
• Engaging leadership style
• Strong customer service belief
• Transparency and honesty
• Discreet

Skills

Essential criteria

• Expertise in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, formulation, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration
• Well developed and effective communication skills, oral and written, to communicate 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 nonprofessional groups.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health
• Knowledge of IT systems including word processing, email and local electronic patient information systems
• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multimedia materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
• Reasonable adjustments will be made for those with sensory impairment
• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of service governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
• Desirable criteria
• 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).
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of at least one specialised psychological therapy 

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Doctoral level training in clinical psychology accredited by the BPS or its approved equivalent, 

Desirable criteria

• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology
   

We celebrate diversity and promote equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from BAME, disabled and LGBT people that are under-represented in our workforce. Furthermore we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we offer a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants who consider themselves to be disabled who meet the minimum (essential) criteria for the role in the person specification. If you would like your application to be considered under the Trust’s guaranteed interview scheme you can indicate this in the personal information section of your online application form.

Please ensure you check the email account from which you apply for all correspondence.  All information regarding your application will come from apps.trac.jobs not NHS Jobs. Only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview.

Should you require a reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process please contact the recruitment team to ensure that measures can be put in place to support you.

We reserve the right to close any vacancy earlier than advertised in exceptional circumstances once we have received a high volume of applications.

The Trust expects all post holders who require an enhanced DBS for their role subscribe to the DBS Update Service. You will be required to enrol for this service for a fee of £13 per year and maintain registration. Trans applicants who require a DBS check and do not want to reveal details of their previous identity can contact the DBS Sensitive Applications Team (01516761452 or email sensitive@dbs.gsi.gov.uk) with their application number once they have completed their DBS application form. The team is able to prevent any previous identity showing on the DBS Certificate, unless the applicant has a conviction under their previous details in which case this will need to be disclosed.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles. 

Documents to download

• Job Description (PDF, 512.3KB)
• risk ID (PDF, 141.5KB)
• Available Posts (PDF, 96.5KB)
• A Great Place to Work (PDF, 2.1MB)
• Staff Networks Information (PDF, 204.2KB)

Further details / informal visits contact 

Name Claire Seddon
Job title Consultant Clinical Psychologist
Email address claire.seddon@merseycare.nhs.uk

Additional information

The Recruitment Event will provide an opportunity to meet staff and learn about each service area. However if you wish to enquire about specific roles beforehand contact details are below:

Older Adults posts: Dr Sarah Butchard - sarah.butchard@merseycare.nhs.uk 07973535442
Adult Inpatient posts: Dr Donna Gardiner – donna.gardiner@merseycare.nhs.uk 0151 330 7239
Eating disorders post: Dr Uma Patel – uma.patel@merseycare.nhs.uk 0151 471 7751
Adult Community posts: Dr Kayleigh Syrett – Kayleigh.syrett@merseycare.nhs.uk 0151 479 3800
Step Forward posts: Dr Frank Chapman – frank.chapman@merseycare.nhs.uk 0151 472 7575
Urgent Care posts: Katie Pownell – katie.pownell@merseycare.nhs.uk 0151 330 7239
Psychotherapy/PD Hub - Julie Blakeley – Julie.blakeley@merseycare.nhs.uk 0151 250 6128
Sefton Homeless Service – Phil Preston – phil.preston@merseycare.nhs.uk 07721 722915
St Helens Recovery Team – Gina Smith – gina.smith@merseycare.nhs.uk 01744 415620
Warrington Recovery Team – Rachael Line – Rachael.line@merseycare.nhs.uk 01925 666660

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