Clinical / Counselling Psychologist

As a Principal psychologist in the Sandwell North CMHT you will be working alongside your colleagues and consultant psychologist to develop and deliver clinical pathways in the newly formed community service. This will include Trauma informed pathways alongside a psychological offer for those who experience psychosis as well possibilities of supporting our DBT services in-house. You will work as part of an integrated team and play a role in the governance and oversight of the psychologists and psychological practitioners in the team. You will work alongside another Principal psychologist in the team to achieve these aims, taking a lead on strategic and service development initiatives as agreed with your professional leads.

There will be opportunities to be directly involved in shaping the service model and developing the other Teams going forward. You will take a lead in developing and designing service evaluations, and will engage and empower service users and carers to continually work on improving the service.

We are linked closely to local universities and provide placements for trainees . The applicant will be expected to supervise and provide placements to such courses.

Members of our wider psychology team have wide-ranging therapeutic interests ranging from psychodynamic to systemic/narrative and cognitive-behavioural models as well as expertise in consultancy, supervision and training and form a supportive network for team and service members.

The successful applicant should be keen to apply their knowledge and skills in a new setting and is flexible and adaptable in their approaches to psychological work. Good team working skills and an ability to accommodate differing professional models is essential. The post holder will develop complex formulations, offer supervision, consultancy, and training. They will lead on developing the understanding of psychological approaches to mental health recovery.

This role is a 0.8wte post sitting in the Mental Health division of BCHFT. As the largest clinical Division in the Trust, the MH Division houses community, urgent care, specialist and Physical Health Psychology services alongside Talking Therapies (previously IAPT).

Our community services have been transforming, in line with the NHS long Term Plan, and you would be joining us at the point where our new CMHTs are formed but not yet established. This allows lots of opportunity to influence the development and delivery of the psychology offer within the North team as the team enters its 'storming' and 'norming' stages of development.

The successful applicants will join the local based team consisting of clinical and counselling psychologists, psychotherapists and intervention practitioners .

The post holders will be supported and accountable to the team/service manager team manager, and be professionally supported by a consultant psychologist., In BCHFT we are keen to promote cohesiveness and wellbeing in our psychology staff group. There are a number of Trust initiatives that support this, ranging from an annual event that brings all psychological professionals together to 'enhance our connectedness', to regular opportunities to engage, learn and share good practice through 'special interest groups'.

We value our staff groups and, as a leadership team, work hard to ensure that people feel valued for both their effort and delivered outcomes, and that this is reflected in regular feedback. We are pleased to be able to offer CPD to our staff through establishment of a dedicated budget, and we also utilise all Regional or National opportunities for training when they arise. Current training initiatives within community services include the National PT-SMHP framework, which has allowed several of our staff to undertake post graduate diploma training in NICE based therapies.