Principal Clinical psychologist/Clinical lead | Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust

Dyddiad hysbysebu:	25 Gorffennaf 2025
Cyflog:	Heb ei nodi
Gwybodaeth ychwanegol am y cyflog:	£64,455 - £74,896 pro rata
Oriau:	Rhan Amser
Dyddiad cau:	24 Awst 2025
Lleoliad:	Warrington, WA2 8WA
Cwmni:	Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust
Math o swydd:	Parhaol
Cyfeirnod swydd:	7361328/350-CC7361328

Crynodeb

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced Clinical Psychologist to take a senior role in the leadership of the Cheshire and MerseysideMaternal Mental Health Service (MMHS). TheMMHS delivers life-changing care to women, birthing people and their families following the devastating experiences of perinatal loss, birth trauma and fear of childbirth.

This is an ideal post for those looking for a leadership opportunity to enhance indirect clinical leadership skills and to contribute towards a nationally expanding field.

We are looking for a creative and tenacious clinical leader who aspires to or has experience of working in a leadership position with women and families. The ability to establish responsive relationships and collaborate with colleagues in maternity, mental health, and third sector organisations is key.

We are seeking people who have a robust understanding of the impact of social inequalities and are passionate about co-production to improve outcomes around health inequality.

The postholder will be supervised by a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and work as a part of a dynamic and caring perinatal psychological professions leadership team. The ideal candidate will have the ability to offer confident and sound clinical decisions within the team, and enable others to do the same.







To ensure the systematic provision of a high-quality specialist maternal mental health service to women and birthing people across Cheshire and Merseyside.

To advise, supervise and support the assessment and treatment provided by clinical members of the teams who provide psychologically based care and treatment within the service.

To provide line management to psychological professions. To work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service/team.

To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research.

To propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the service.

To work in an effective partnership with the clinical service leadership including maternity, perinatal, and Talking Therapies and members of other agencies responsible for a client’s care.

To provide clinical leadership within the established clinical service model and integrated care pathway of the pilot Maternal Mental Health Service (MMHS) for Cheshire and Merseyside.

To establish responsive relationships and collaborate with colleagues in maternity, mental health, and third sector organisations.

To work collaboratively with families and ‘experts by experience’ and support co-production methodologies to inform service model.

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.

To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the service based upon the appropriate use, interpretation, and integration of complex psychological data from a variety of sources including psychological and neuropsychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with clients, family members and others involved in the client’s care.

To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods of proven efficacy, across the full range of care settings.

To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals and groups, within and across Cheshire and Merseyside adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.

To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.

To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based care.
To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.

To ensure that all members of the treating service have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of clients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.

To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide general advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.
To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni-disciplinary and multi- disciplinary care.

To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment service.

Will be required to sit in a constrained position for client therapy and extended assessment sessions.

Will be required to tolerate and manage frequent verbal abuse and occasional physical aggression.

Will be required to deal with the intense emotional atmosphere surrounding therapy contacts which may be highly distressing on a daily basis, and to work with frequent intense concentration for much of the clinical sessions of assessment and therapy. This will include writing reports of a potentially distressing nature e.g., safeguarding adults.

Policy and Service Development
To participate as a senior clinician in the development of a high quality, responsive and accessible service including advising both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.

Professional Leadership and Management
Exercise delegated responsibility for managing the psychological resources available to the service, whether in the form of additional qualified and unqualified graduate psychology staff, or in the form of psychological materials employed in the assessment and treatment of patients.

To provide line management to psychological professions.

To exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service

To participate as appropriate in staff recruitment, both in the short-listing process and as a member of interview panels for assistant, trainees, and qualified clinical psychologists.

Clinical Supervision, Teaching and Training

To provide clinical placements for trainee psychologists and psychological therapists, ensuring that trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good mental health care and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.

To provide post-qualification training (CPD) and clinical professional supervision to recently qualified psychologists attached to the service.
To provide specialist advice, consultation and training and clinical supervision to other members of the service for their provision of psychologically based interventions to help improve clients’ functioning.

To provide pre- and post-qualification teaching of psychology as appropriate.
To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional pre- and post-graduate training and clinical supervision.

To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.
In common with all Clinical Psychologists, receive regular clinical supervision in accordance with good practice guidelines.

Receive specific specialist clinical supervision in psychological approaches in trauma focused /-related mental health issues and presentations.

Development of the team’s operational policies, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit and ensuring corporation psychological frameworks for understanding and provision of high- quality care.

To utilise theory, evidence-based literature, and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.

To undertake a personal research and development programme and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research as a major job responsibility.

To initiate project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within and across the service to help develop and improve services to clients and their families.

Information Technology
To use IT skills as required including updating client records.

General
To ensure the development and articulation of best practice in psychology within the service area and contribute across the service by exercising the skills of a reflexive and reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal, and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the field of clinical psychology and related disciplines.

GENERIC RESPONSIBILITIES FOR ALL STAFF
All post holders will agree to
Commit to the vision of supporting Mersey Care in becoming a leading organisation in the provision of community services, mental health care, addiction services and learning disability care, and in doing so fully utilise their skills and experience to support the objectives of the Trust.

Role model the values of the Trust – Continuous Improvement, Accountability, Respectfulness, Enthusiasm and Support– in all activities and interactions with employees, service users and other stakeholders.

Challenge the stigma associated with mental health and learning difficulties.

Comply with the Duty of Candour, defined by Francis as: 'The volunteering of all relevant information to persons who have or may have been harmed by the provision of services, whether or not the information has been requested and whether or not a complaint or a report about that provision has been made.’

Work across professional and organisational boundaries to improve services for all.

Maintain their specific knowledge base and develop new skills.
Value the contribution of the patient/ service user voice.

Operate within any organisational codes of practice or those from a relevant professional body.

Respect equality and diversity across all areas of working practice and communications with staff, service users and other stakeholders.
take responsibility for the accurate and timely collection and recording of data and ensuring all personally identifiable information is protected and used only for the purposes for which it was intended.

Comply with all health and safety legislation and local policies and procedures.

Adhere to all organisational policies.

Have knowledge and understanding of technology in the workplace which is sufficient to maintain their efficiency and also how technology can empower service users in a digital environment.

Comply with the NHS Constitution in relation to the staff responsibilities that it sets out for NHS employees.

Attend a one day Just and Learning & Civility and Respect training workshop.

Be an ambassador for Just & Learning and Civility & Respect following the training.

Positively advocate the just and learning culture within your team.
Be a confident supporter and implementer of the Trust CARES Values including Civility & Respect within your team.

Support their team/ services to create a positive environment for Just and

Learning Culture.

Participate in Just and Learning Culture events.
Bring Just and Learning Culture updates/ information to the attention of team members and other MCT colleagues they work with.

Support and encourage the sharing of concerns about the safety and quality of care with senior leaders with the aim of improving safety and quality.

Actively participate in creating an open culture within your team so that concerns and difficulties can be discussed safely and respectfully.

Speaking up in the event that they are exposed to incivility between colleagues in the workplace #iwillspeakup.

Listening and understanding others who have concerns and taking a collaborative approach to work towards a solution to improve civility and respect.






This advert closes on Wednesday 20 Aug 2025