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Job requirements
Requirements from the employer’s person specification. These describe the role, not your personal match.
Essential
14 listedRequirements the employer expects applicants to meet.
- Experience
Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of older clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, day services and inpatient settings.
- Experience
Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and threat of physical abuse
- Personal Qualities
A positive approach to working with older people with psychosis, dementia and other mental health difficulties
- Personal Qualities
Ability to work as part of a team and independently.
- Personal Qualities
Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
- Personal Qualities
Commitment to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults.
- Personal Qualities
Ability to travel between sites, to patients’ homes, other care settings and to regional meetings.
- Knowledge Requirements
Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies with clients with severe and complex mental health problems
- Qualifications - Academic/Skills/Professional
Doctoral level training in Clinical /Counselling psychology including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology.
- Qualifications - Academic/Skills/Professional
Registration with HCPC.
- Further Training or Job Related Aptitude and Skills
Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
- Further Training or Job Related Aptitude and Skills
Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
- Further Training or Job Related Aptitude and Skills
Skills in providing consultation to other professional and nonprofessional groups.
- Further Training or Job Related Aptitude and Skills
Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the relevant professional body.
Desirable
6 listedAdditional qualities the employer would prefer.
- Experience
Experience of working with people with dementia
- Experience
Experience of working within the NHS
- Personal Qualities
An awareness of own strengths and limitations
- Knowledge Requirements
Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health
- Qualifications - Academic/Skills/Professional
Pre-qualification training and qualifications or experience in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology. Training in neuropsychology in use of specialist psychometric assessments for dementia and other cognitive disorders.
- Qualifications - Academic/Skills/Professional
Eligible for BABCP accreditation
Job overview
Are you passionate about supporting older adults with complex mental health needs?
Would you like to develop your clinical/counselling psychologist skills working within a specialist older adults psychological therapies team and making a genuine difference to patients' lives?
We are seeking a Clinical or Counselling Psychologist to join our Psychological Therapies Team on a 12-month fixed-term contract to provide maternity leave cover. This rewarding role offers the opportunity to provide specialist psychological assessments and deliver evidence-based psychological interventions to older adults with a range of complex mental health needs, working as part of the North Oxfordshire Older Adult Community Mental Health Team (CMHT).
This post provides an excellent opportunity to develop your expertise within a secondary care psychological therapies team and gain valuable experience working with older adults in a supportive multidisciplinary locality team.
Main duties of the job
In this role, some of your key responsibilities will include to:
- Work as part of the locality psychological therapies team within the Older Adult Community Mental Health Team, providing formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems.
- Be responsible for the assessment, treatment, and discharge of patients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
- Evaluate and make decisions about treatment options considering both theoretical and therapeutic models and complex factors concerning the patients mental health difficulties.
- Provide specialist psychological advice, guidance, and consultation to the wider Older Adult Community Mental Health Team to help develop their patients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
- Receive professional clinical supervision for yourself from other appropriately trained senior psychological therapy staff.
- Contribute to the development and evaluation of the teams operational practices to ensure high quality, responsive and accessible services are available
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
We hope that the advert has given you a clear understanding of the skills we are seeking and the opportunity at hand. You will need to use the “supporting statement” element of your application form to demonstrate your suitability for this role and you should refer to the job description, person specification and the guidance notes attached to this role to help you tailor your application.
The essential and desirable criteria will be used to shortlist for interview, and you should ensure that you refer to these within your application to increase your chances of being selected for interview.
Applicant requirements
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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Applying for this NHS job
This advert is for Clinical/Counselling Psychologist with Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust in Oxford, England. It is listed as a Band 7 Psychologist role. The advertised salary is £49,387 - £56,515 per annum | pro rata. The contract type is Fixed term: 12 months (Maternity Leave cover). The application deadline is 29 Sep 2026.
Before you apply, compare the job description with the person specification and mirror the employer's essential criteria in your supporting information. Use the vacancy title, employer, location, salary, contract type, closing date and posted date (15 Sep 2026) to decide whether this role fits your current NHSjob search. If the employer can close applications early, prepare the application before the stated deadline rather than waiting for the final day.
For more context, review related Job Clerk pages for the same profession, band or location where they exist, then use the application-support guides to tailor your statement and prepare for interview.