Clinical Associate Psychologist - WF Refugee Psychology Service

Joining #TeamNELFT means you’ll become part of a welcoming and supportive working environment. We’re CQC rated Good, and we want you to join us on the journey towards an Outstanding rating. NELFT has sites across North East London, Essex, Kent and Medway. We provide community and mental healthcare services to adults and children within these areas. The Trust has award winning equality and diversity initiatives and staff health and wellbeing activities. We invest heavily in your development, because when you are valued and supported, we provide the best care to our patients.

An exciting opportunity has arisen for qualified Clinical Associate in Psychology (CAP) in the Waltham Forest Refugee Psychology Service, a specialist service for asylum seekers and refugees. We are keen to recruit a qualified CAP experienced in working with forced migrants who shares our team’s passion for human rights and social justice. Successful applicants will undertake assessment, formulation and evidence based psychological interventions with clients experiencing complex mental health issues from forced migration backgrounds, as well as developing meaningful links between our service users and community-based resources which support social inclusion. You will work under the supervision of an experienced Clinical Psychologist, and be a part of our supportive and skilled psychology team. Applicants must have completed and passed the MSc CAP training and show a commitment to working within the NHS as a CAP to support improvement in access to psychological therapies.

Main duties of the job

• Provide psychological assessment, using evidence based tools, formulation and evidence-based interventions to adults with forced migration backgrounds who have complex needs, under the supervision of a qualified Clinical Psychologist.
• To communicate constructively with a range of healthcare professionals in a variety of services including psychologists, nurses, social workers, allied health professionals (AHPs) and medical colleagues in multidisciplinary teams (MDTs).
• Build relationships with key stakeholders, which include Service Users, people who care for and about service users, Lived Experience Representatives, Local Operational Leads in health and social care, Psychological Therapies Lead/supervisor, Qualified, trainee and assistant psychologist & psychological therapists, Multi professional colleagues working in community services and Primary Care Networks, Local Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise Organisations and other community assets, Key stakeholders in the wider health and social care system.
• Work as part of a specialist Refugee Psychology Service and liaise with relevant external agencies to facilitate and enable psychological interventions.

Our Values 2025 - 2030

Working with our colleagues, patients and carers we have co-produced three new values that we aim to embed within our culture here at NELFT. They are: We are kind. We are respectful. We work together with our communities. These three values help us to strive to provide the best care by the best people.

This post will be subject to a probationary period. Internal applicants are exempt from the probationary period (unless you are an internal applicant currently part way through a probationary period or currently a bank member of staff).

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see the attached job description and person specification for more information about this role. We encourage you to refer closely to this when completing your application.

Person specification qualification

• Additional training in relevant modalities trauma-informed care, Tree of Life, cross-cultural psychology.
• Experience of work in the NHS with adults with complex mental health needs.
• Delivering evidence based psychological interventions with individuals and groups presenting with severe and/or complex mental health problems.
• Work with interpreters.
• Work with forced migrants or other marginalised communities.

Knowledge

• An awareness of NHS priorities.
• Up to date knowledge of psychological research and national guidance relevant to the client group.
• Knowledge of asylum system and issues that commonly affect refugee and asylum seeking clients.

Skills

• Work cross-culturally and/or in different languages.
• Demonstrate excellent interpersonal, communication and active listening skills with service users, carers, staff and community partners.
• Ability to work in a language commonly spoken by this client group Arabic, Urdu, Farsi/Dari, Pashto or Albanian.

We believe in bringing your authentic and best self to work, in order to deliver the best care to our patients. We are committed to supporting our employees holistically. Here is a snapshot of what is on offer at NELFT: A long-standing and award-winning approach to equality and diversity with supportive networks for ethnic minority staff, staff with disabilities or long term/chronic conditions and LGBT staff. A commitment to supporting colleagues to achieve a work life balance, through flexible working opportunities and our efforts to support our working parents and carers. This has resulted in us being recognised as a ‘Top 10 Family Friendly Employer’ from the Working Families Charity. Proactive health and wellbeing support, including access to our employee assistance programme, staff psychological support, individual wellbeing conversations and a network of health and wellbeing ambassadors.

As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that’s a job share, part time hours or another flexible pattern.