Clinical/Forensic Practitioner Psychologist | Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust
| Posting date: | 16 February 2026 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | Not specified |
| Additional salary information: | Band 7 or Band 8a dependent on experience |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 18 March 2026 |
| Location: | Leyland, Lancashire, PR26 8NE |
| Company: | Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust |
| Job type: | Contract |
| Job reference: | 7811130/350-SC7761876-A |
Summary
Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust is the health provider for the delivery of a prison-based assessment and treatment service for residents with personality related needs.
This service is based within HMP Garth which is a category B men's adult prison based in Leyland, Lancashire. The service is part of the National Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) pathway and is delivered as a partnership between HMP Garth and Mersey Care NHS Trust.
We believe that this post provides a unique opportunity to be part of a psychologically led service with formulation and integrated team working at its core. The service provides 1:1 and group based interventions based on Professor John Livesley's framework and model of interventions for individuals with personality related needs.
These structured interventions are provided as part of a therapeutic milieu which involves a focus on attachment, trauma and systemic approaches, alongside comprehensive risk assessment and management. Core aims of the service are consistent with those of the Offender Personality Disorder Pathway in improving psychological wellbeing, reducing risk, improving staff skills and competencies and pathway focussed intervention.
The post holder will be joining a dedicated team of clinical and prison officer staff from a range of backgrounds and experience. Team members have high levels of skill, passion and enthusiasm (and humour!) and are committed to ensuring the on-going successful development of the service and the opportunities it provides for our population.
The post holder will contribute to the systematic provision of specialised psychological services to residents within the Beacon. Applicants should have doctoral level training in clinical psychology or equivalent or will be a qualified chartered forensic psychologist. You should have some experience of working with individuals with complex clinical and risk presentations including within institutional settings and as part of a multi-disciplinary team. This should include work with clients whose needs may meet criteria for a diagnosis of personality disorder and who may find it difficult to engage with services. Experience of working in complex service and organisational settings is required alongside an ability to constructively manage the personal, professional and ethical opportunities and challenges such work can involve.
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.
We are recruiting a clinical or forensic psychologist to join the team on a temporary basis for 12 months, this is to cover a period of maternity leave. Applicants at Band 7 or Band 8a level are eligible to apply.
Full details of roles and responsibilities can be found in the attached job description.
Clinical roles and responsibilities:
To provide specialist psychological assessments of offenders referred to the unit 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 offenders, family members and others involved in the offender’s care.
To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a offender’s psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the offender’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.
To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses where appropriate.
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 offenders whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
To provide specialist psychological advice guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to offenders’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plans.
To ensure that all members of the clinical team have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of offenders 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 offenders and to provide both general and specialist advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of offenders under their care and to monitor progress during the course of multidisciplinary care.
To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the team.
This advert closes on Sunday 1 Mar 2026