Principal Clinical Psychologist in Preston

Our Vision is to provide the best mental health, learning disability, autism, community, and physical health services for the populations we serve.

As an integrated Trust, Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust (LSCFT) delivers a comprehensive range of services, including:

• Primary and secondary mental health care for children and adults, including specialist inpatient child and adolescent mental health provision, perinatal mental health, and forensic services with low and medium secure care.
• Specialist mental health inpatient care for individuals with learning disabilities, alongside specialist community support for children and adults with learning disabilities and autism, including intensive support.
• Extensive community physical health and well-being services for children and adults, covering prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and long-term condition management.

The Trust was first established in 2002 and employs approximately 7,500 staff who provide care from more than 400 sites. The organisation offers opportunities for medics, mental health, general nurses, children’s nurses, allied health professionals, psychology, administration and clerical staff, apprentices and volunteers, as well as those specialising in learning disabilities and community physical health services.

This is an exciting opportunity to work as part of a multi-disciplinary team within SCAYT+. This is a team of emotional health workers, social workers and clinical psychologists.

We support carers, parents and professionals by providing advice about parenting, child behaviour and development, serious emotional, behavioural and relationship problems, past abuse, trauma and neglect.

The focus will be on working out what each individual child needs and enabling that to be incorporated within their overall care plan.

The team also provides an immediate response following any issues raised by the completion of the Strengths and Difficulties (SDQ) questionnaires, a national indicator for the emotional health of children looked after.

Main duties of the job

We will usually start our work together with a consultation. This can be with a single worker or carer or can be a wider meeting with a number of relevant professionals and carers. This may be a one off, or if it is helpful, we might agree a series of meetings.

Although our primary focus is on consultation with carers and professionals we can also engage in direct work with children in conjunction with their parents/carers.

Working for our organisation

LSCFT values diversity and inclusion, recognising that talent from varied backgrounds creates a flexible, creative, and effective workforce. We actively challenge discrimination and welcome applications from all, regardless of age, disability (including those with experience of accessing or caring for someone who has accessed mental health or learning disability services), ethnicity, gender, religion, belief, or sexual orientation.

Our aim is to reflect the communities we serve, so we particularly encourage applications from under-represented groups. If you’d like to discuss your application, please ask.

We also welcome individuals with lived experience relevant to the role or service area, as your insight brings authenticity to our services.

LSCFT support flexible working, we believe that a positive work/life balance benefits NHS employees through improved health and wellbeing. We would consider working patterns such as term time, part time, compressed hours and flexi-time.

The wellbeing of our people is at the heart of everything we do. We offer a wide range of resources, tools and support to help you thrive both in and out of work.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

For more details on this vacancy please review the attached job description and person specification.

Qualifications

• Doctoral level training in clinical psychology (or equivalent for those who trained prior to 1996) or a similar psychological field (ie forensic or counselling psychology) including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology as accredited by the BPS.
• Post-doctoral training in one or more additional attachment focused area of psychological practice, for example, DDP or Theraplay ®.

Experience

• Substantial post-qualification experience working as a qualified psychologist with children, young people and their parents/carers.
• Substantial experience of contributing a psychological perspective within the context of multidisciplinary and multiagency care for children, young people and their parents/carer
• Experience of working with a wide variety of child and family presentations that reflect the full range of clinical need, including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing difficulties.

Knowledge

• Formal training in supervision of other psychologists.
• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Doctoral level knowledge of clinical, counselling or forensic psychology, including highly developed knowledge of lifespan developmental psychology.

If the post is subject to DBS disclosure, a charge will be made to the successful candidate(s).

Employer certification / accreditation badges

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

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