Band 8a Clinical/Counselling Psychologist - Salisbury

Job overview

Are you passionate about working alongside individuals experiencing a range of acute mental health difficulties, or in crisis? This newly created post offers the exciting opportunity to work across the acute care pathway in Salisbury.

This  split post is two days per week with South Wiltshire Intensive Service and two days per week at Ashdown inpatient unit, a 6-bedded male psychiatric intensive care unit.

We support service users in their recovery from acute mental health challenges through multi-disciplinary professional teamwork and the adoption of evidence-based clinical practice. You will be joining established multidisciplinary teams, where the role of the psychologist is much valued. The successful applicant will be a Clinical/Counselling Psychologist with clearly demonstrable skills, experience and knowledge of working in a fast moving, often challenging multi-disciplinary environment.  You will be comfortable and confident working with a high level of involvement with a broad staff team and with a client group with high levels of complexity, risk, and need.

The acute care psychology team is part of the Wiltshire Psychological Therapy Service.  We are an enthusiastic and innovative team, which values the input and contribution of all team members and strives to offer the best services possible to our clients. The importance of support and supervision for psychology staff is well recognised, there are many opportunities for support, joint working and supervision.

Main duties of the job

The post-holder will provide a comprehensive psychology service to both teams, including specialist assessment, evidence based formulation, individual and group brief interventions.

There is also a strong focus on indirect work with staff teams, through team formulation, reflective practice, training and provision of supervision.

You will need to be well organised with the ability to prioritise your work according to clinical need and liaise effectively with team colleagues and professionals in other teams/services.

Supervision of junior psychologists.

Manage and supervise the assistant psychologist.

There is the opportunity to help shape and develop the service dependant on skills and experience.

Please see attached Job Description and Person Specification for detailed description of all aspects of this role.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To provide a high‑quality, largely autonomous, and systematic clinical/counselling psychology service.
• To undertake highly specialist assessments, including neuropsychological assessments, risk assessments, and assessments of suitability for specialist psychological therapies with clients and their carers (as appropriate to the role).
• To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of clients’ mental health difficulties, based on an appropriate conceptual framework and using evidence‑based methods across the full range of care settings.
• To take responsibility for delivering a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, and groups, within and across teams, using approaches individually and in combination, and adjusting and refining psychological formulations by drawing on different explanatory models while maintaining multiple provisional hypotheses.
• To provide at least one specialist, evidence‑based psychological intervention as required by the needs of the servi

NOTE: Development (“Preceptorship”) Post We welcome applications from newly qualified psychologists as well as those ready to undertake an 8a position from the outset. Although this position is advertised at an 8a banding, we are also able to offer a preceptorship/development post for newly qualified applicants or those with less than two years of post‑qualification experience. Please contact us if you would like to discuss this further.

Please see the attached Job Description and Person Specification for a detailed description of all aspects of this role.