Principal Clinical Psychologist | Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust

Posting date:	24 July 2025
Salary:	Not specified
Additional salary information:	£64,455 - £74,896 per annum pro rata
Hours:	Part time
Closing date:	23 August 2025
Location:	Worthing, BN11 1RY
Company:	Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust
Job type:	Permanent
Job reference:	7276277/150-MT1899-CC

Summary

Are you an enthusiastic and highly motivatedclinical or counselling psychologist with a commitment to sharing specialist knowledge and skills in the context of community neuro rehab? This post offers a rare and exciting opportunity to work as a senior psychologist and trust wide leader at Sussex Community Trust. The Trust is proud to be at the forefront of integrated physical and mental health approaches to patient care and employs psychological practitioners across a wide range of teams to support people living with long term conditions. The post holder would have the opportunity to be part of the Trust Psychological Professions Forum with highly valued network and learning forums.
• To work as a senior clinical psychologist in the context of community neuro rehab and integrated physical and mental health psychology provision.
• To work as a trust wide leader for community neuro psychology, representing, setting standards and governance for the recruitment and delivery of psychology services within community neuro rehab.
• To lead on strategic developments that are especially relevant to neuro psychology, including community neuro rehab and stroke pathways.
• To work as a core member of an identified multidisciplinary neurological rehabilitation team
• To carry a clinical caseload and to ensure the systematic provision of a high-quality specialist neuropsychology service to adults living with a neurological condition and to their carers.
• To support the psychological assessment and therapeutic interventions provided by other clinical members of the service who provide psychologically based care and treatments.
• To offer specialist advice and consultation to patients’ psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues and to non-professional carers
• To provide consultation, training, and support to the MDT and to other professionals working with people with neurological conditions, and to mainstream mental health teams.
• To work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice
• To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research
• To propose and implement policy changes within the Community Neurological Rehabilitation Team
• The post holder is expected to drive between visits using their own car and will be required to travel to other office/ hospital-based locations across the Trust for meetings, training and supervision.



We are the main provider of NHS community services across East and West Sussex, with 6,000 staff serving 1.3 million people. We deliver essential care to adults and children, helping them manage their health, avoid hospital admissions, and reduce hospital stays.

Our Trust vision is to provide excellent care at the heart of the community. We offer opportunities across medical, clinical, support, and corporate services.

Why work for us?
• Positive 2024 NHS Staff Survey results, highlighting compassionate leadership and wellbeing
• Varied environments: community hospitals, patients’ homes, and bases across Sussex
• Flexible working options: part-time, flexi-time, annualised hours, and flexi-retirement
• Excellent training, development, and research opportunities
• Cost-effective workplace nurseries in Crawley, Hove, and Brighton
• Active EMBRACE, Disability & Wellbeing, LGBTQIA+, and Religion & Belief networks
• Level 3 Disability Confident Leader and Veteran Aware Trust
• Beautiful Sussex location near the South Downs and coast

Our values—Compassionate Care, Working Together, Achieving Ambitions, Delivering Excellence—guide everything we do.

We embrace diversity and encourage applications from all backgrounds, particularly from ethnically diverse, disabled, and LGBTQIA+ individuals. We aim to create an inclusive environment and support reasonable adjustments during recruitment.

This post may close early if sufficient applications are received.



Main tasks

The post-holder will:
• Work autonomously as a clinician within the community neuro rehab MDT; providing psychological, neuropsychological assessment and interventions.
• Provide specialist supervision to other clinical psychologists working in the context of community neuro rehab (across at least 3 other teams) and other psychology practitioner roles as required.
• Provide responsive clinical leadership to strategic developments in the context of neuro rehab with both internal and external key stakeholders.
• Ensure a comprehensive assessment which may include psychological and neuro-psychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations, and semi-structured interviews with patients.
• Formulate and devise psychological treatment plans, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the patient’s problems, and employ methods based upon evidence of efficacy.
• Adjust and refine psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
• Provide reports and communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans for patients.
• Provide highly specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals, to assist in the formulation, diagnosis and treatment of patients.
• Treat each patient and their support network with dignity and respect taking into account their cultural differences and needs within the service.
• Interpret and integrate complex data from a variety of sources including psychological and self-report measures.
• Receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.
• Provide teaching, training and supervision and to provide supervision to other MDT staff’s psychological work as appropriate.
• Ensure the development and maintenance of the highest personal standards of practice, maintaining MaST requirements and through active participation in internal and external CPD training.
• Maintain an up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues of relevance to the service and patient group.
• Maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry and recording.
• Exercise professional self-governance in accordance with professional codes of practice of the HCPC.
• Use advanced psychological clinical skills applicable to the assessment of patients within the context of neuro rehab and integrated physical mental health settings.
• Summarise and interpret highly complex and sensitive data and write concise, accurate and readily understood reports that communicate the findings of the neuropsychological assessment to the MDT.
• Work under changing and pressurised clinical timetables and to be organised in their management of their clinical timetable.
• Provide comprehensive neuropsychological assessment of patients to assist the MDT in diagnosis, problem formulation and the planning of rehabilitation interventions.
• Function as a key therapist to ensure active co-ordination and management of the therapeutic interventions to achieve the agreed rehabilitation goals.
• Provide the psychology service as part of MDT and be involved with MDT service developments.
• Be responsible for planning and prioritising their own clinical caseload.
• Utilise research skills for audit, policy, service development and clinical research and regularly undertake research and development activities and encourage other team members also participating in research.


This advert closes on Sunday 3 Aug 2025