Job requirements
Essential
25 listedRequirements the employer expects applicants to meet.
- Skills
Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
- Skills
Well developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, highly technical, and clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS. Skills in providing consultation to other professional and nonprofessional groups
- Skills
Skills in providing consultation to other professional and nonprofessional groups
- Skills
Formal training in supervision of other psychologists or equivalent experience 50 hours supervision in a specific modality, case presentations, group supervision supported by short courses approved by the Psychology Head of Service
- Skills
Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS
- Skills
Analytical and judgemental skills
- Skills
Ability to identify provide and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and severely challenging behaviours
- Skills
Ability to identify, and employ, as appropriate, clinical governance mechanisms for the support and maintenance of clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour
- Skills
Ability to develop and use complex multi-media materials for presentations in public
- Skills
IT literate
- Skills
The means, ability and willingness to travel in the course of performing duties
- Skills
Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice
- Skills
Demonstrate a commitment to respecting and displaying the Trust Values at all times
- Knowledge
Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex multivariate data analysis as • practiced within the field of clinical psychology
- Knowledge
Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health
- Experience
Experience as a HCPC-registered practitioner psychologist at a highly specialist level, within parent-infant mental health services
- Experience
Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care, in patient and residential care settings severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.
- Experience
Specialist experience in the area of perinatal mental health.
- Experience
Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients’ psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care coordinator and also within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan.
- Experience
Experience of teaching, training and/or professional and clinical supervision. Experience of representing psychology within the context of multidisciplinary care.
- Experience
Experience of assessing and treating clients across the full range of care settings.
- Experience
Experience of representing psychology within the context of multidisciplinary care
- Qualifications
Doctoral level/or equivalent training
- Qualifications
HCPC registration as a Practitioner Psychologist
- Qualifications
Registered with the Health Professions Council as a Clinical Psychologist
Desirable
11 listedAdditional qualities the employer would prefer.
- Skills
Ability to demonstrate clinical leadership with a service sector
- Skills
Ability to contain and work within organisational stress
- Skills
Enthusiasm for a broad range of psychological approaches and interest in models of service delivery and ability to articulate the value added by clinical psychology services within the context of multi-disciplinary team working
- Knowledge
Well-developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g., personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc)
- Knowledge
Knowledge of the theory and practice of highly specialised psychological therapies and assessment methodologies, including infant mental health
- Experience
Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts
- Experience
Experience of working within multicultural framework
- Experience
Experience of coproduction of supervising coproduction approaches to service development and service evaluation
- Qualifications
Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice.
- Qualifications
Post-qualification specialist training in particular psychotherapeutic approaches e.g., video-interaction guidance, circle of security, cognitive analytic psychotherapy, dialectical behaviour therapy
- Qualifications
Post qualification in a leadership programme
Job overview
‘Relationships Are Everything! – Warrington BABS and Childrens Services Integration
An exciting opportunity has arisen within Building Attachment and Bonds Service in Warrington for an innovative Psychologist 0.5 wte 12-month Fixed Term contract to work within a truly collaborative and integrated ‘Health and Care’ model supporting Warrington’s most vulnerable complex parents/families and infants 0-2 years.
This post will sit both in Warrington BABS Parent Infant Mental Health Service and Warrington Childrens Services new Child Protection Multi-Agency Team, which is an integral part of Warrington’s Pathfinder ‘Family’s First for Children.
Warrington BABS is a specialist, easy to engage, therapeutic Parent-Infant Mental Health Service which supports vulnerable parents who have experienced ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) to build secure bonds and attachment relationships with their babies via the offer of its specialist, community-based preventative service.
Main duties of the job
Warrington BABS’s values, ethos, mission and model is aligned to work of the Pathfinder and its reforms - driving forward prevention, early intervention and offering the best possible care/support and outcomes for the most vulnerable families to enable families to stay together and prevent children from going into care.
This post will be key in ensuring that as an integrated partnership we safeguard parent infant relationships, mental health as well as risk.
Since Warrington BABS launched in 2024, the service has supported many of the most vulnerable/at risk parents and infants living in Warrington, helping them to build secure bonds, attachment relationships and good parent-infant mental health, via the delivery its strength-based, collaborative, psycho-social MDT programme of care and support.
BABS groundbreaking outcomes and cost savings have been evidenced over the past 10 years across other boroughs via BABS service evaluations, videos, media work/publications, national awards and BABS research published by Liverpool and Edge Hill Universities.
This post will strengthen both BABs and Warrington Childrens Services offer to Warrington families.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Supporting Parents and Babies in Warrington to have Stable Homes Built on Love
McCallister’s Independent Review of Children Social Care (‘Reset’, 2022) put a spotlight on the need for radical reform/reset in Childrens Services to better support our most vulnerable families, nationally.
The Implementation Strategy and Consultation paper ‘Stable Homes Built on Love (2023) was later published, shared with government and has resulted in a £200 million investment to reset Childrens Services across the UK.
The golden thread and ethos throughout this new strategy mirrors the BABS model and service. ‘The best way of promoting children’s welfare is by supporting children’s families and the loving relationships around them’ and recognises that ‘To achieve this reset, Childrens Services must put love and stable relationships at the heart of everything it does’.
Warrington Childrens Services has been selected as 1 of the UK’s 7 national pathfinders to take ambitious action across six pillars to transform children’s Social Care; laying down the foundations for whole system reform and setting national direction for change. BABS being recognised nationally (PIF, 2024) and across other Merseyside as a ‘Best practice parent infant mental health service and model for supporting vulnerable complex families’ is delighted to be joining forces with Warrington Childrens Services to be part of this exciting, transformational work
This Principle Clinical Psychologist post will be a key MDT team member in BABS, and Warrington’s Child Protection MDT Team and Multi Agency Hub.
The post will involve delivery of direct therapeutic parent infant mental health support/interventions to vulnerable parents and babies in the community. In addition to working systemically with Childrens Services via offering a model of joint working, assessments, supervision, consultation, reflective practice and training – to build workforce capacity and ensuring that vulnerable parents and babies receive the right, specialist, integrated support to help build secure bonds and break negative life cycles.
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 Lead Principal Psychologist (Parent-Infant Mental Health) with Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust in Warrington, England. It is listed as a Band 8 Psychologist role. The advertised salary is £66582.00 to £77368.00. The contract type is Secondment: 18 months (ends 31/03/2028). The application deadline is 04 Nov 2026.
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