The Specialist Community Perinatal Mental Health Team are seeking an experienced Clinical Psychologist (15 hours per week 0.4 WTE), to take a Senior Leadership role, within our Mid-Mersey Specialist Perinatal Team, working within Warrington, Halton, St Helens and Knowsley. This is part of our wider Cheshire and Merseyside Specialist Perinatal Service. This is a temporary post to cover maternity leave until 30th November 2025.

We are looking for a creative, dynamic and tenacious caring Clinical Leader who aspires to, or has experience of working in a leadership position with women and their families during the perinatal period. We are also seeking people who have a robust understanding of the impact of social inequalities on maternal mental health, and are passionate about improving outcomes around health inequality. The successful candidate will have experience of working collaboratively with families and 'experts by experience' in support of co-production methodologies to inform service models. This is a post that will be exciting and supervised by a Regional Consultant Clinical Psychologist, with the post holder working as part of the service-wide senior leadership team. The ideal candidate will have great relationship skills, will offer confident and sound clinical decision making, and manage the psychological therapies team resource within the Mid-Mersey. And will also be expected to take a lead role in local and regional service development activities.

Main duties of the job

To ensure the systematic provision of a high-quality specialist perinatal mental health service to women and birthing people across Cheshire and Merseyside. To advise, supervise and support the assessment and treatment provided by clinical members of the teams who provide psychologically based care and treatment within the service. To work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service/team. To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research. To propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the service. To work in an effective partnership with the clinical service leadership including maternity, perinatal, Talking Therapies, Maternal Mental Health, primary care, Family Hubs and members of other agencies responsible for a client's care. To provide clinical leadership within the established clinical service model and integrated care pathway Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Service (SPMMHS) for Cheshire and Merseyside. To establish responsive relationships and collaborate with colleagues in maternity, mental health, third sector organisations, and the regional transformation programmes. To work collaboratively with families and 'experts by experience' and support co-production methodologies to inform service model.

About us

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.

We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.

At the heart of all we do is our commitment to 'perfect care' - care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We're currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

Job description

Job responsibilities

PRINCIPAL RESPONSIBILITIESClinical1. To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the service based upon the appropriate use, interpretation, and integration of complex 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, family members and others involved in the clients care.2. To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a clients mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the clients problems, and employing methods of proven efficacy, across the full range of care settings.3. To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals and groups, within and across Cheshire and Merseyside adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.4. To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.5. To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based care.6. To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.7. To ensure that all members of the treating service have access to a psychologically based framework for understanding and care of clients of the service, through the provision of advice and consultation and the dissemination of psychological research and theory.8. To undertake perinatal risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide general advice to other professionals on psychological aspects of risk assessment and management.9. To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- disciplinary and multi- disciplinary care.10. To provide expertise, advice and support to facilitate the effective and appropriate provision of psychological care by all members of the treatment service.11. Will be required to sit in a constrained position for client therapy and extended assessment sessions.12. Will be required to tolerate and manage frequent verbal abuse and occasional physical aggression.13. Will be required to deal with the intense emotional atmosphere surrounding therapy contacts which may be highly distressing on a daily basis, and to work with frequent intense concentration for much of the clinical sessions of assessment and therapy. This will include writing reports of a potentially distressing nature e.g., safeguarding adults, safeguarding infants.Policy and Service Development1. To participate as a senior clinician in the development of a high quality, responsive and accessible service including advising both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.Professional Leadership and Management1. To exercise delegated responsibility for managing the psychological resources available to the service, whether in the form of additional qualified and unqualified graduate psychology staff, or in the form of psychological materials employed in the assessment and treatment of patients.2. To exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the service.3. To participate as appropriate in staff recruitment, both in the short-listing process and as a member of interview panels for assistant, trainees, and qualified clinical psychologists.Clinical Supervision, Teaching and Training1. To provide clinical placements for trainee psychologists and psychological therapists, ensuring that trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to good mental health care and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.2. To provide post-qualification training (CPD) and clinical professional supervision to recently qualified psychologists attached to the service.3. To provide specialist advice, consultation and training and clinical supervision to other members of the service for their provision of psychologically based interventions to help improve clients functioning.4. To provide pre- and post-qualification teaching of psychology as appropriate.5. To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional pre- and post-graduate training and clinical supervision.6. To provide advice, consultation and training to staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate.7. In common with all Clinical Psychologists, receive regular clinical supervision in accordance with good practice guidelines.8. Receive specific specialist clinical supervision in psychological approaches in trauma- focused / -related mental health issues and presentations.Research and Development Activity1. To take the psychology lead, as a senior clinician, in the evaluation, monitoring and development of the teams operational policies, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit and ensuring incorporation of psychological frameworks for understanding and provision of high- quality care.2. To utilise theory, evidence-based literature, and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.3. To undertake a personal research and development programme and provide research advice to other staff undertaking research as a major job responsibility.4. To initiate project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within and across the service to help develop and improve services to clients and their families.Information Technology1. To use IT skills as required including updating client records.General1. To ensure the development and articulation of best practice in psychology within the service area and contribute across the service by exercising the skills of a reflexive and reflective scientist practitioner, taking part in regular professional supervision and appraisal, and maintaining an active engagement with current developments in the field of clinical psychology and related disciplines.

Person Specification

Qualifications

Essential

• Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996) as accredited by the BPS, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology.
• Registered with the Health Professions Council as a Clinical Psychologist

Desirable

• Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice
• Post-qualification specialist training in particular psychotherapeutic approaches e.g., cognitive analytic psychotherapy, dialectical behaviour therapy, CFT, EMDR etc.
• Post-qualification specialist training in perinatal, maternal or parent-infant mental health

Knowledge & Experience

Essential

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• 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.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including complex multivariate data analysis as practiced within the field of clinical psychology.
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health
• Knowledge of attachment theory
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS.
• 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 a variety of settings including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse
• Specialist experience in the area of complex trauma- related mental health
• Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment
• Experience of planning and delivering ongoing training and CPD to clinical staff at steps two and three within a stepped care model
• Experience of planning and providing supervision of clinical staff at steps two and three within a stepped care model
• Ability to meet agreed/specified service targets.
• Expertise and knowledge across the spectrum of a perinatal and maternal mental health service
• Experience of working in Primary Care Services
• Worked in a service where agreed targets in place demonstrating clinical outcomes.
• Understanding of the national NHSE LTP for perinatal mental health
• Post doctoral supervision training
• Demonstrates an understanding for the need to use evidence based psychological therapies and how it relates to this post

Desirable

• 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 of the theory and practice of highly specialised psychological therapies and assessment methodologies
• Experience of representing psychology within the context of multidisciplinary care
• Experience of assessing and treating clients across the full range of care settings
• Experience of working within a multicultural framework
• Knowledge of models of leadership and experience of applying these in practice
• Knowledge and understanding of maternal and perinatal mental health

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