Principal Clinical Psychologist

Job summary

Are you passionate about embedding a trauma-informed and gender-sensitive model of inpatient care for women?

Are you committed to integrated, multidisciplinary working and improving access to psychologically-informed care for women?

Are you motivated by supporting the wellbeing of the workforce and contributing to a compassionate ward culture that promotes least restrictive, relational approaches?

If so, then we would love to hear from you!

This is an excellent opportunity to contribute to the development and strengthening of our female model of care; embedding a high-quality, evidence-based approach that will truly make a meaningful difference to our service users and their families / carers. The post forms a key part of substantial new investment in our female acute wards where our focus is on purposeful and therapeutic admissions, ensuring smooth transition and shared discharge planning from the outset with colleagues from community teams. Our commitment is to ensure a therapeutic environment that feels safe, collaborative and empowering for both service users and the staff who care for them.

This 1.0 WTE post is to work directly with our female acute wards across the trust.

For further information or to arrange a visit, please contact Tracey Smith, Chief Psychological Professions Officer, Tracey.Smith2@swyt.nhs.uk 07436 053005

Main duties of the job

• Provide clinical leadership and direction in the continual development and provision of a high quality specialist psychology service within the adult acute inpatient service, embedding trauma and gender informed care into the female wards
• Support with the transformation of acute inpatient care, in line with national direction
• Hold a clinical caseload undertaking evidence-based psychological assessment, formulation, and intervention (individual/ group). This may include a range of difficulties at the point of crisis including experiences of psychosis, depression and/or Complex Emotional and Needs
• Provide specialist psychological support, consultation, training and guidance to other professionals contributing directly to the assessment, formulation and intervention plan
• Ensure smooth transition and shared discharge planning from the outset with colleagues from community teams
• Ensure the team have access to a psychologically-based framework for understanding and providing care to service users, through the provision of advice, consultation and dissemination of psychological research and theory
• Undertake risk assessment and risk management and provide general advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management
• Support colleagues through the provision of supervision, reflective practice and post-incident reflective spaces
• Contribute to audit, policy/service development and research. To propose and implement policy changes within the areas served

About us

We are a specialist NHS Foundation Trust that provides community, mental health and learning disability services for the people of Barnsley, Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield. We also provide low and medium secure services and are the lead for the west Yorkshire secure provider collaborative.

Our mission is to help people reach their potential and live well in their communities, we do this by providing high-quality care in the right place at the right time. We employ staff in both clinical and non-clinical services who work hard to make a difference to the lives of service users, families and carers.

We encourage and welcome applications from all protected characteristic groups, we value diversity and want our workforce to be reflective of our communities.

Being a foundation Trust means were accountable to our members, who can have a say in how were run. Around 14,300 local people (including staff) are members of our Trust.

Join us and you will be one of over 4,500 staff committed to supporting and improving the mental, physical and social needs of the thousands of people we meet and help each year.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expects all colleagues and volunteers to share this commitment.

We do reserve to right to close vacancy before the advertised closing date if necessary, so please apply as soon as possible.

Details

• Date posted: 02 June 2026
• Pay scheme: Agenda for change
• Band: Band 8b
• Salary: £66,582 to £77,368 a year
• Contract: Permanent
• Working pattern: Full-time, Flexible working
• Reference number: C9378-W1491
• Job locations: Fieldhead Hospital, Ouchthorpe Lane, Wakefield, WF13SP, United Kingdom

Job responsibilities

JOB SUMMARY

The post holder will provide a high quality specialist clinical psychology service to clients as part of the multidisciplinary team within the service.

The post holder will provide psychological assessments and interventions to clients within the service

The post holder will provide psychological assessment and interventions in keeping with evidence based practice working autonomously within the professional guidelines and within the overall framework of the Trusts policies and procedures.

The post holder will be involved with service development, research and audit in line with the service priorities

The post holder will be expected to supervise and support the psychological assessment and therapy provided by other psychologists and other clinical members of the team who provide psychologically based care and treatment.

The post holder will work in collaboration with professionals, carers and service users offering advice, consultation and supervision as appropriate.

KEY RESULT AREAS:

Clinical

1 The post holder will develop and maintain therapeutic relationships with clients, including in group settings. This will include joint working with complex cases which require more specialised levels of assessment and therapeutic skills.

2 The post holder is expected to provide autonomous, highly specialist assessments of clients referred to the service based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of psychological of psychological 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 clients, and, where appropariate, family members and others involved in the clients care.

3 The post holder will be expected to communicate with clients with a wide range of difficulties and other presentations, including clients with complex mental health difficulties and plan and organise broad range of complex activities.

4 The post holder will be expected to formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and /or management of a clients mental health problems including associated challenging behaviours, based on appropriate conceptual framework of the clients problem and employing methods of proven efficiency across the full range of care settings.

5 The post holder will be expected to make decisions and clinical judgements involving a range of highly complex factors in the context of inadequate or unavailable information, equivocal research/ evidence or where expert opinion differs.

6 The post holder will be expected to exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based care plans.

7 The post holder is expected to act as care co-ordinator where appropriate, ensuring the provision of a care package for the clients needs, co coordinating the work of others involved with care, arranging the clients reviews as required and communicating effectively with the client, the family and all others involved in the care and to monitor progress during the course of multidisciplinary interventions.

8 The post holder will have skills to communicate sensitive and complex information regarding personal psycho-social problems in an empathic and supportive way using the highest levels of interpersonal skills in situations which can be highly emotional and sometimes antagonistic.

9 The post holder will be expected to have responsibility and autonomy for the treatment and discharge of clients, whose problems are managed as a psychologically based care plan, ensuring appropriate assessment, formulation and interventions, communicating with the referral agent and others involved with the care on a regular basis.

10 The post holder will undertake risk assessments that will be used to inform/advise other professionals and carers where there are concerns in relation to mental health or risk taking behaviour.

11 The post holder will work with colleagues from other professional backgrounds and agencies to enable them to incorporate specialist psychological knowledge into their work.

12 The post holder will be expected to provide a flexible approach to engaging service users who may have difficulties engaging with the service by offering appointment in other, health centres, and home where appropriate.

All employees of the Trust are strongly encouraged to have their up-to-date flu vaccination to protect staff and patients.

At the time of advertising, this role does meet the minimum requirements set by UK Visas and Immigration to sponsor candidates to work in the UK. We look forward to receiving your application.

For full job description, please see attached supporting documents.

We are aware that an increasing number of applicants are using AI technology to generate responses on NHS Job application forms. Over reliance on AI-generated content in application forms is strongly discouraged and we will conduct a thorough screening process before selecting candidates to progress to the next stage. If you are using AI to enhance your application, please disclose this in your NHS Jobs application form.