Principal Practitioner Psychologist

Job overview

Come and work on the beautiful Isle of Wight! We can offer a rewarding role in a challenging environment, as well as access to lots of blue and green spaces to help maintain your own wellbeing.

Are you interested in working directly with people in custody, as well as working with the systems around them? This role will involve making a positive difference to the lives of the men in prison.

HMP Isle of Wight was created in 2009 as an amalgamation of HMPs Parkhurst and Albany. The prison now holds just over 1000 men across the two sites. Many men have complex trauma histories and there are varied opportunities within the role to develop your own clinical and research interests in working with this client group. You will provide consultation and formulation to colleagues, as well as providing some direct clinical work appropriate to the banding of the role.

For this post, MPFT will offer:

• A 20% ‘welcome to MPFT’ bonus; 10% on joining us and 10% after a period of 12 months service.
• An allowance can be offered which will enable the individual to pay for yearly professional registration fees up to £120.00 per year
• A contribution for relocation fees is also available upon application

Main duties of the job

We are looking for HCPC registered applied psychologists (we believe forensic, counselling or clinical psychologists may have the required competencies) who are passionate about social justice and reducing health inequalities. You may have experience of criminal justice services, but we are also keen to receive applications from people with different backgrounds, as this supports diversity within our psychology team. You will have experience of delivering psychological assessments and evidence-based interventions, as well as experience of working indirectly through MDT colleagues.

You will enjoy working independently and have the skills to develop excellent working relationships with service users, colleagues and commissioners. There will be opportunities to develop and deliver training, as well as to lead on development of evidence-based psychological interventions. Additional tasks may include providing reflective practice spaces for teams and offering supervision to more junior psychology colleagues.

The supportive Inclusion psychology team is led by a Consultant Clinical Psychologist. The team meet regularly for professional development, reflective space and collaborative projects. Working in prisons can be both challenging and rewarding, and you will have the opportunity to work with and learn from experienced prison psychologists across our sites. We will support you to access regular clinical supervision and appropriate professional development.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please refer to the attached Job Description and Person Specification for full details. A summary is provided below:

• To provide a clinical psychology service to patients, with moderate to severe mental health problems, seen within the prison mental health pathway within the areas of agreed responsibility
• To work with clients alone as necessary, or to work jointly with others depending on the relevant risk assessment
• To provide expert psychological assessment, formulation and therapy to an exceptionally high standard to patients with a range of mental health problems
• To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals and groups, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses

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.