Clinical / Counselling Psychologist, CBT Therapist or EMDR Therapist

We are excited to offer this opportunity for a clinical/counselling psychologist, CBT or EMDR therapist to join our Perinatal Mental Health Service for 12 months to cover maternity leave within our team, commencing April 2025. We hope this provides a fantastic opportunity for someone to develop skills in this unique field or enjoy a secondment opportunity in a different setting.

We are a secondary care multi-disciplinary service (with an innovative and expanding therapy team), working with women with severe or complex mental health needs who are pregnant or have a child under one. This role will work across the north of the county covering Peterborough, Huntingdon and Fenland. However, we operate hybrid working and your office base can be one of our four clinical hubs across the county (Cambridge, Peterborough, Huntingdon or Wisbech). Travel across the county is required but compensated in line with NHS terms.

Perinatal Mental Health is a growing specialty and provides opportunity for you to develop specialist skills. You will provide therapeutic interventions, including individual, group, and dyadic work between parent and infant.

We would encourage applications from individuals with an interest in the specialty, regardless of previous experience. You will have the opportunity to join an exceptional team.

If you are successful, we will expect you to contribute to the provision of a high-quality specialist perinatal psychology service to clients of the Perinatal Mental Health Service. This will involve conducting psychological assessments and providing therapy, drawing on a range of models (dependent on training), to women and their families. You will do so through individual, group and dyadic work between parent and infant.

You will be expected to support work provided by other clinical members of the team, as well as providing training and consultation to the wider pathway, and working alongside professional colleagues in health visiting and midwifery teams. You will join a multi-disciplinary team, made up of psychology, psychiatry, mental health nurses, occupational therapists, nursery nurses, social workers, and support workers.

We will expect you to work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of the psychological practice within the Perinatal Mental Health Service. To support the development of the service you will be expected to utilise skills for audit, policy and service development and research and propose and implement policy changes within the area serviced by the Perinatal Mental Health Service.

In this role you will be part of the Psychological Medicine Service and therefore you will be able to access peer supervision and support through this team.

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., Working with mothers, babies and other family members and other team members to provide specialist psychological assessments based on appropriate use, interpretation, and integration of highly complex psychological data from a variety of sources including psychological and neuropsychological test, 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
(dependent on training and discipline).

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 assist the Perinatal Mental Health Service team in communicating difficult, complex, and sensitive information, which is both developmentally appropriate and psychologically informed to mothers and families.

To be responsible for implementing a range of evidence based psychological interventions (based on training/discipline) for users of the Perinatal Mental Health Service in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.

To evaluate and make decisions about psychological 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 standard care plans.

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 team 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 advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management in line with hospital and inter-agency policies and procedures.