Senior Psychotherapist | Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust in Warrington

An exciting opportunity has arisen for an experienced Senior Psychotherapist/Clinical Psychologist to work within Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust in the Warrington Recovery Team. Warrington Recovery Team is a large specialist secondary care community mental health team. The successful applicant would be part of a large team of psychologists, CBT/EMDR therapists, assistant psychologists, occupational therapists, mental health nurses, support workers, psychiatry and peer workers. You will be joining a hard-working and busy team providing holistic care/therapies with people who experience complex mental health difficulties.

In line with Mersey Care's community transformation programme, we are working in partnership with our primary care colleagues and strive to provide a seamless mental health offer. Our Recovery Teams provide high-quality intervention-based care in both high and low intensity formats. Training opportunities will be available and you will be supported to follow CPD opportunities to further develop your career.

The post holder will apply and maintain those skills acquired through further specialist training and experience to monitor and ensure the systematic provision of highly specialised psychological services, provide a service to clients referred to the team, across all sectors of care, within an equality and human rights framework, and supervise and support the other clinical members of the team who provide psychologically based care and treatment.

The post holder will exercise delegated management responsibilities where appropriate and work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the team. The post holder will utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research and propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the team. A work plan will be developed with the post holder which will be reviewed on a regular basis depending on the needs of the service.

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.

Clinical Responsibilities:

• To provide specialist psychological assessments of service users referred to the 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 service users, and others involved in the service user’s care.
• To be responsible for the systematic provision of cognitive behaviour therapy, CAT and/or EMDR at a highly specialist level to people experiencing significant and/or severe psychological problems.
• To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a service user’s psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the service user’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.
• To evaluate, monitor progress and make highly skilled evaluations and 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 or group.
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of service users whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
• To provide specialist psychological advice guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to service users’ formulation, diagnosis and treatment plans.
• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual service users 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, highly complex information concerning the assessment, formulation, and treatment plans of service users under their care.
• To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment team.

Teaching, Training and Supervision:

• To receive regular clinical professional supervision from a senior clinical psychologist and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.
• To provide clinical placements for trainee clinical and/or counselling psychologists, ensuring that trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good mental health care.
• To assist with the clinical supervision of practitioner psychologists, CBT Therapists, EMDR practitioners, CAT practitioners, and other MDT staff as agreed by the service lead/professional lead and operational manager.
• To provide post-qualification training (CPD) and clinical professional supervision to qualified clinical psychologists and other psychological services staff.
• To provide advice, consultation and training and clinical supervision to other members of the team for their provision of psychologically based interventions to help improve service users’ functioning.

Management, Recruitment, Policy and Service Development:

• To manage the workloads of assistants, trainees and recently qualified psychological services staff, where appropriate, within the framework of the team’s/service’s service policies and procedures.
• To participate as a senior clinician in the development of a high quality, responsive and accessible service including advising both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
• To exercise delegated responsibility for managing the psychological resources available to a team, whether in the form of additional qualified and unqualified graduate psychology staff, or in the form of psychological materials employed in the assessment and treatment of patients.

This advert closes on Sunday 14 Dec 2025.