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Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust

About

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust provides physical, mental health and social care for people of all ages across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Swindon, Wiltshire, Bath and North East Somerset.

Our services are delivered at community bases, hospitals, clinics and people’s homes. We focus on delivering care as close to home as possible.

Contact

Address: Trust Headquarters; Warneford Hospital; Warneford Lane; Headington; Oxford; Oxfordshire; OX3 7JX
Contact Number: 01865 901000

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Open

Ref: 267-CS7314430 Vacancy ID: 7314430

Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologist - Feeling Safer Programme

Accepting applications until: 10-Aug-2025 23:59

Vacancy status: Open

Accepting applications until: 10-Aug-2025 23:59

Location

Site: Department of Experimental Psychology
Address: University of Oxford
Town: Oxford
Postcode: OX2 6GG
Major / Minor Region: Oxfordshire

Contract type & working pattern

Contract: 18 months (fixed term contract linked to research funding; can be offered as a secondment opportunity)
Hours: 37.5 hours per week (full time)

Salary

Salary: £55,690 - £62,682 per annum | pro rata
Salary period: Yearly
Grade: (Band 8a)

Specialty

Main area: Psychology

Interview date: 21/08/2025

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust has been rated as Good by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

We are a responsive and innovative Foundation Trust that places our values of Caring, Safe and Excellent at the heart of everything we do. We take great pride in our staff and believe that investing in you is key to us achieving our vision of outstanding care delivered by outstanding people.

We work with a wide range of partner organisations to deliver care and support to people in their own homes and from a number of hospitals and community bases. We focus on delivering care as close to home as possible for people of all ages across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Swindon, Wiltshire, Bath and North East Somerset.

We actively support anti-racism, equality, diversity, and inclusion so, if you’re excited about this job opportunity and you meet our Trust values, but feel unsure about applying, then please get in touch and we will be happy to have a conversation with you.

We are also committed to increasing diversity in the workforce, that is why we actively encourage applications from those groups of people who are currently under-represented, which include amongst others: people with disabilities; men from all socio-economic backgrounds; people from diverse ethnic backgrounds; and people from the LGBTQIA+ community.

Good luck and we hope to hear from you.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

This is an exciting opportunity to join the Oxford Cognitive Approaches to Psychosis (O-CAP) team based in the Department of Experimental Psychology. We are a large clinical research team working to understand why mental health problems happen and how they can be best treated psychologically. The key focus is on improving outcomes for patients with psychosis. It is a thriving and supportive clinical research group that aims to carry out work to the highest standards for patients.

The focus of this post is delivering specialist psychological therapy for persecutory delusions in the context of a major new clinical trial. There are also supervision, teaching, and publication opportunities.

The position will suit a clinical psychologist keen to apply cognitive theory and therapeutic techniques to improve treatment outcomes. This is a fixed term 18month post in the first instance, but there are likely to be opportunities to extend. We are keen to develop the post-holder in a clinical academic career. The post-holder will be supervised by Prof Daniel Freeman and Dr Felicity Waite, and we welcome discussions with potential candidates.

Lead the delivery of a specialist, remote psychological therapies clinic for patients with psychosis, as part of the delivery of the Feeling Safer trial.
Deliver highly specialist psychological therapy to treat persecutory delusions as part of a large clinical trial: Feeling Safer. The postholder will maintain a caseload of approximately 15 patients seen remotely.
Help support the day-to-day management of the project at the local site, ensuring milestones are achieved and the work is carried out to the highest standards.
Contribute to the supervision of assistant psychologists/ graduate mental health workers and peer support workers in the delivery of psychological interventions.
Contribute to the supervision of research assistants in the recruitment and assessment of trial participants.
Work closely with the clinical teams in the collaborating NHS mental health trusts. This will include delivering new treatments to patients in these trusts as part of the clinical research and supervising and training others in the delivery of treatments.
Provide regular reports on the progress of the study. This will include providing information needed by the funder.
Work closely with other members of the O-CAP research group, helping to ensure the success of studies conducted within the group.

Please see the job description and person specification attached to this advert for more information on the job role.

Publications relating to this role:

Freeman, D., Isham, L., … Waite, F. (2025). A 6-month supported online program for the treatment of persecutory delusions: Feeling Safer. Psychological Medicine, 55, e179.

Freeman, D., Emsley, R., Rosebrock, L., … Waite, F. (2025). Efficacy of a 6-month supported online programme (Feeling Safer) for the treatment of persecutory delusions: protocol for a randomised controlled trial. BMJ Open;15:e104580.

All new starters have a thorough induction process, both local and Trust wide, which aims to create a positive supportive working environment allowing new employees to learn key elements of their role over a reasonable timescale.
Appointment to this post is subject to the trust receiving satisfactory references covering 3 years of employment or study. Please ask your referees to respond promptly to reference requests.
We’re advocates of flexible working and many of our roles offer a range of employment options to help you balance your work and personal life.
Employees are expected to undertake mandatory and statutory training related to their role.
We are ambitious in our pursuit of excellence, driven by the belief that a fair, just and fully inclusive organisational culture enables our teams to deliver the best quality of care and services possible and we work hard to ensure that our diverse workforce reflects the communities that we serve.
We welcome applications from all sections of the community, are an Equal Opportunities employer with a number of internal networking groups to support our employees and where possible will always look to make reasonable adjustments in order that you can fulfil the role to recognise your full potential. All our employees are committed to demonstrating through their behaviour our core values – safe, caring and excellent.
We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults, we expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
Oxford is a world-renowned centre of excellence for research. Oxford Health works closely with the University of Oxford department of Psychiatry and the Department of Primary care, has a Biomedical Research Centre dedicated to improving mental health and the NIHR Clinical Research Facility at the Warneford site. The Trust also hosts the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) which carries out applied research that directly impacts patient health and wellbeing

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.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (or equivalent). Qualification required by time of taking up the post – therefore applications are welcomed from those in the final year of doctoral clinical psychology training.
Registered with HCPC

Experience

Essential criteria

Experience of conducting individual therapy sessions with patients who are experiencing difficulties related to psychosis.
Excellent cognitive therapy skills - to enable treatment delivery and treatment development.
Experience of clinical research.
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 specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients with a range of psychological needs of a complex nature.
Experience that supports working with and addressing issues of diversity within local communities.

Desirable criteria

Experience of providing supervision.
Experience of clinical trials.
Experience of working with individuals with lived experience in the development of psychological research or practice.
Experience of authorship of publications.

Knowledge

Essential criteria

Knowledge of the theory, evidence base, and practice of specialised psychological assessments and interventions for people with psychosis
Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health issues, child and adult protection, and equalities.
Knowledge of clinical trials
In-depth understanding of the theoretical and empirical foundations of cognitive approaches to mental health disorders.

Skills

Essential criteria

Excellent skills in engagement of patients in psychological intervention.
Ability to communicate sensitively and skilfully (oral and written).
Ability to supervise psychology graduate research assistants.

Desirable criteria

Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.

Documents

Further details / informal visits contact

Name

Dr Felicity Waite

Job title

Consultant Clinical Psychologist

Email address

[email protected]

Telephone number

01865 618192

Additional information

At Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust we want to employ people not just with experience, but with the aptitude and motivation to succeed and whose values resonate with our own.

Therefore, if you don’t meet all the requirements of the role and are unsure about applying but are excited about the opportunity, please do get in touch. We will be happy to discuss the requirements in more detail ahead of making a written application.