Clinical/Counselling Psychologist | Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust
| Posting date: | 05 January 2026 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | Not specified |
| Additional salary information: | £55,690 - £62,682 per annum |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 04 February 2026 |
| Location: | Cambridge, CB4 1PR |
| Company: | Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | 7693004/310-ASMH-7693004 |
Summary
Join our new Assertive Outreach Team as a Clinical/Counselling Psychologist (Band 8a) and help shape our service for adults with complex and enduring mental health needs. This is a unique opportunity to make a real difference for individuals who find it difficult to access traditional services, often with long histories of trauma and disengagement.
You’ll be part of a dynamic, multi-disciplinary team, delivering specialist psychological assessments and evidence-based interventions that empower service users to achieve meaningful change.
If you’re passionate about trauma-informed, person-centred care and thrive on challenge, we want to hear from you. Be part of a team that values compassion, innovation, and evidence-based practice, and help build a service that truly transforms lives
You will be required to travel independently around the county and will need to hold a full UK driving licence* and have the use of a vehicle. Unfortunately, public transport will not provide enough reliable transportation to enable you to meet the needs of the service. Please confirm in your application that you meet the specified criteria.
*DVLA have a number of reciprocal arrangements with overseas countries, for further information please visit the DVLA website.
• As a Clinical/Counselling Psychologist in the Assertive Outreach Team, you will provide a qualified clinical psychology service according to an agreed job plan, delivering specialist assessment, formulation, and intervention for adults with severe and complex mental health needs.
• You’ll work autonomously within professional guidelines, contributing to the team’s policies and procedures, and supporting the psychological care of clients who may have experienced significant trauma and disengagement from services.
• The role includes providing clinical supervision and leadership to other psychologists, supporting the training and development of the wider team, and contributing to service evaluation and research. You’ll work in partnership with clients, carers, and colleagues, promoting a psychologically informed approach to care, and ensuring the highest standards of governance, safety, and patient experience.
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust is a health and social care organisation dedicated to providing high-quality care with compassion to improve the health and wellbeing of the people we care for, as well as supporting and empowering them to lead a fulfilling life.
Our clinical teams deliver many NHS services, not only via inpatient and primary care settings, but also within the community. These services include children's, adult and older people's mental health, forensic and specialist mental health, learning disabilities, primary care and liaison psychiatry, substance misuse, social care, research and development.
To achieve our goal, we look to recruit high-calibre candidates who share our vision and values. As an equal opportunities employer, we encourage applications from all sectors of the community, particularly from under-represented groups including people with long term conditions and members of our ethnic minority and LGBTQ+ communities.
Please be advised we reserve the right to close adverts earlier than the closing date should we receive sufficient applications.
Regrettably, we cannot offer sponsorship for all our job roles. If you apply for a role that we cannot offer sponsorship for, unfortunately, your application form will be rejected from the process.
For further information on CPFT, please visit our website at www.cpft.nhs.uk
Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details of responsibilities.
• To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the assertive outreach team based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex 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 develop psychological formulations of presenting problems or situations that integrate information from assessments within a coherent framework that draws upon psychological theory and evidence and which incorporates interpersonal, societal, cultural and biological factors.
• To use psychological formulations to develop 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 based upon evidence of efficacy, and to use these plans to
inform and lead the work of non-psychology members of the team.
• To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses. This includes responsibility
for the delivery of psychological interventions by all team members.
• 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, carers or group.
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients, and manage and maintain a caseload in line with service guidelines and under the overall co-ordination of the Lead Psychologists.
• To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
• To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.
• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures.
• To communicate, in a skilled and sensitive manner, to clients, family carers and others as appropriate, information that may be contentious or highly distressing concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care
• To monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni-and multidisciplinary care, and to provide appropriate reports on this.
This advert closes on Monday 19 Jan 2026