Main area Eating Disorder Service - North Mersey Grade Band 7 - Band 8a Contract Permanent Hours
30 hours per week (Full time and part time hours available)
Job ref 350-MHC6993382
Site Rathbone Hospital Town Liverpool
Salary £46,148 - £60,504 per annum pro rata
Salary period Yearly
Closing 12/03/2025 23:59
Interview date 19/03/2025
Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust celebrates diversity and promotes equal opportunities; we are committed to challenging and eliminating racism and other forms of discrimination and advancing and promoting equality of opportunity in the provision of services and creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.
We take positive action to support disadvantaged groups and also particularly encourage applications from ethnic minorities, disabled and LGBTQIA+ people that are under-represented in our workforce. Furthermore, we welcome applications from reservists and ex-armed forces personnel as we recognise the benefits of the values, skills, training and experience that they bring to their work with us. We encourage all applicants to share their equality information with us.
Job overview
An exciting opportunity has arisen to join the Adult Eating Disorders Service in Liverpool and Sefton as a Clinical Psychologist. We are looking for a permanent Clinical Psychologist, band 7 - band 8a preceptorship.
Our service has been undergoing transformation and expansion and this is an exciting time to join our supportive and friendly team. The service offers both group and individual interventions utilising a range of evidence-based models including CBT, CAT, CFT, Psychoeducation, SSCM and MANTRA. Client presentations include Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa and Binge Eating Disorder. We also see people with an Atypical Eating Disorder presentation.
We regularly provide placements for local training programmes, including Trainee Clinical Psychologists and work closely with other services and professionals including primary care, GPs, inpatient services (Specialist Eating Disorder Units and medical wards) and other secondary care mental health teams. We offer a monthly support group for relatives and friends of those who access our service and are passionate about our developing service user co-production group. Additionally, the service also provides psychological therapy for the local Weight Management Service.
Main duties of the job
To provide a qualified specialist clinical psychology service to clients of the service team, across all relevant sectors within an equality and human rights framework.
To provide specialist psychological assessment and therapy, offering advice and consultation on clients’ psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues and to other, non-professional carers.
To work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the Directorate’s and team’s policies and procedures. To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the area served by the team/service.
Working for our organisation
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.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
We are looking for a qualified Clinical Psychologist with the relevant skills, values and experience to provide a high quality psychological service to individuals with eating disorders.
The post holder will:
- Demonstrate a strong interest and commitment to working with people with complex psychological presentations, experience of working with people with eating disorders would be desirable.
- Work closely with the members of the wider team, will be responsible for holding a clinical caseload offering psychological intervention, in addition to conducting assessments and will receive regular clinical supervision.
- There are plenty of opportunities for growth and development, with the service regularly offering CPD opportunities and lots of exciting service development projects you can get involved with.
If you are interested in applying for this post, you must have a recognised qualification (or be in the process of completing). Post-graduate doctoral level training in clinical psychology accredited by the BPS, or its approved equivalent.
**Please refer to attached Job Description and Person Specification for further details**
Person specificationQualifications
- Doctoral level training in clinical psychology, or its approved equivalent accredited by the BPS.
- Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.
Values
- Accountability
- Support
- High professional standards
- Responsive to service users
- Engaging leadership style
- Transparency and honesty
- Discreet
- Change oriented
KNOWLEDGE/EXPERIENCE
- Experience of specialist psychological assessment, formulation and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and inpatient settings.
- Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical 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 of teaching, training and/or supervision.
- Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts.
SKILLS
- Expertise in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, formulation, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
- Well developed and effective communication skills, oral and written, to communicate complex, highly technical and/or 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 methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.
- Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health.
- Knowledge of IT systems including word processing, email and local electronic patient information systems.
- Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
- Reasonable adjustments will be made for those with sensory impairment.
- Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of service governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular practice of at least one specialised psychological therapy. exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
- Ability to self-reflect, use clinical supervision appropriately and consider complex organisational and team dynamics.
- 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 at least one specialised psychological therapy.
Employer certification / accreditation badges
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.
FULFIL YOUR POTENTIAL AND SPREAD YOUR WINGS WITH MERSEY CARE
At Mersey Care, our commitment to ‘perfect care’ lies at the heart of everything we do, a person centred care that starts with you. It’s a pledge to create an environment and staff support that will enable you to do the best job you can possibly do, to be the best you can possibly be.
You’ll be joining one of the most innovative and progressive NHS trusts in the country. One that offers specialist inpatient and community services to support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. We are the founding member of the Zero Suicide Alliance, and one of only three Trusts in the country which delivers high secure mental health care.
You’ll be made to feel at home, joining an 11,000 strong Mersey Care family comprising doctors and nurses, as well as countless other roles from dieticians to dentists, from data analysts to physiotherapists. You'll find a full list of our roles in our A-Z list.
You’ll have a home in the North West of England where your work/life balance is respected and working from sites easily commutable from Liverpool, Manchester, North Wales and Cheshire with many roles operating a hybrid working system.
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