Band 8b Clinical or Forensic Psychologist - Bristol

Job overview

AWP Secure Inpatient Services are seeking an experienced clinical, forensic, or counselling psychologist for a Band 8b maternity cover position. This role involves working with individuals experiencing significant mental health difficulties, such as psychosis, who present a substantial risk to others.

Secure Inpatient Services comprises Fromeside, an 81-bed medium secure unit, and Wickham, a 30-bed low secure unit, both located on the Blackberry Hill Hospital site in north Bristol. The service includes a specialist women's ward and an 8-bed ward for men with learning disabilities and/or autism. Our large, friendly psychology team has expertise in addressing a wide range of issues, including violence, sexual offending, fire setting, learning disabilities, autism, personality disorders, and psychosis.

Main duties of the job

Key Responsibilities:

1. Lead on the delivery of Medium Secure inpatient psychology services across Secure providing highly specialist therapy and assessment services to individuals with severe mental health problems and forensic histories referred to Secure Services from within the West of England catchment area.
2. Co-ordinate and deliver the clinical service and manage team activities under the supervision of the Head of Psychological Therapies.
3. Supervise and support Band 8a, Band 7, Trainees and assistant psychologists.
4. Provide direct clinical work, consultation, teaching, and staff support.
5. Collaborate with the multidisciplinary team (MDT), including psychiatry, nursing, arts psychotherapists, occupational therapists, and speech and language therapists.
6. Conduct specialist assessments, develop complex formulations, and design and deliver individualised therapeutic interventions.
7. Facilitate therapeutic groups and engage in complex systemic work.
8. Participate in the continued development of the service, including liaising with key stakeholders.
9. Provide specialist clinical supervision to clinical psychologists and other staff working within the service and offer consultation to partner agencies and other stakeholders.
10. Engage in service development projects.

Working for our organisation

We are AWP (Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust), a diverse organisation with over 5,000 dedicated staff providing inpatient and community-based mental health care. We provide services from a range of locations to approximately 1.8 million people living in Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES), Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, across the county of Wiltshire and in parts of Dorset.

Our outstanding people promote mental health and wellbeing. The expertise and resources within AWP are dedicated to a person-centred approach for those who use our services and for all employees. We recognise that happy and fulfilled employees give better care.

At AWP we actively encourage applicants from all backgrounds; we are particularly keen to encourage applications from people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, those with disabilities and from the LGBTQ+ community. We want people to bring their unique blend of experiences, backgrounds, perspectives and knowledge to AWP, as diversity makes us stronger.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see attached Job description and person specification. For more detailed information regarding the role please contact Hannah Ray.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

1. Doctoral Clinical or Forensic Psychology qualification or equivalent
2. Eligible for Chartered Psychologist status
3. HPC Registered
4. Substantial post qualification and further specialist training in specified specialist intervention

Experience

Essential criteria

1. Training others in mental health services topics
2. Clinical supervision/ consultation with other professionals including offering complex multi-agency consultations
3. Aware of evidence based assessment and therapeutic interventions with client group and to undertake such assessments and interventions.
4. Expert Psychological assessment skills and knowledge as well as formulation skills and knowledge.

We are proud to be fostering a diverse workforce that reflects our communities. A key commitment to this is improving staff representation from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, those from the LGBTQ+ communities, people with 'lived-experience' of mental health conditions and people living with disabilities; we are a 'Disability Confident Employer' offering a guaranteed interview to Disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria. This includes people with a variety of disabilities and neurodivergent conditions (for example autism, ADHD, sensory, physical and learning disabilities).

We encourage applications from people who wish to work on a flexible basis, recognising that flexibility may mean a range of different working patterns and hours, we do our utmost to work with our staff to meet their needs and the needs of our service users.

Please apply to join us, we would love to hear from you. Any personal details you supply to us are kept safe in line with the General Data Protection Regulations.

Adverts normally close for application a few minutes before midnight on the closing date and we will let you know if we are offering you an interview by email via our recruitment system 'TRAC'. We contact all applicants within 4 weeks after the closing date, so please check your emails regularly once you have submitted your application; you are welcome to contact us, via the TRAC system, if you have any queries about your application.

Please note the use of AI is monitored and if you have used it in your application you are required to declare this.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

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.

Documents to download

1. Job Description and Person Specification (PDF, 432.4KB)
2. Inclusive Top 50 UK Employers List (PDF, 78.9KB)