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Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust
About
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT) provides integrated community and mental health, learning disability and social care services of the highest standard due to our continued commitment to quality and service improvement. We aim to support people of all ages to achieve the very best they can for their health and well being. To ensure that we achieve this goal we look to recruit candidates of a high calibre that share our passion for delivering excellent service user care, research and education.
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Higher Assistant Psychologist
Accepting applications until: 09-Sep-2025 23:59
Vacancy status: Open
Accepting applications until: 09-Sep-2025 23:59
Key details
Location
- Site
- George Mackenzie House
- Address
- Fulbourn Hospital
- Town
- Cambridge
- Postcode
- CB21 5EF
- Major / Minor Region
- Cambridgeshire
Contract type & working pattern
- Contract
- 12 months (12 months fixed term)
- Hours
- Full time - 37.5 hours per week
Salary
- Salary
- £31,049 - £37,796 Annual Secure allowance £1446 to be paid
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Grade
- (Band 5)
Specialty
- Main area
- Assistant Psychologist
Job overview
**12-month Fixed-Term post**
Are you a motivated, compassionate, and experienced individual seeking a rewarding and dynamic role? Then join our dedicated, diverse team on George Mackenzie House, where you’ll make a real difference in the lives of individuals on their journey to recovery.
George Mackenzie House is the only NHS specialist provider of secure services within the area, offering a supportive and collaborative environment where patient-centered care is at the heart of everything we do. Our secure unit provides a safe and therapeutic environment for individuals with complex needs.
As a Higher Assistant Psychologist here, you will play a pivotal role in delivering high quality, compassionate care, working collaboratively with the MDT in implementation of personalize treatment plans. Support patients in a holistic manner on their recovery journey, use your clinical expertise to contribute to a therapeutic environment and champion compassionate patient-focused approach.
The ideal candidate should have a strong team work ethic, positive can-do attitude, strong communication skills, sense of accountability and responsibility, accompanied by resilience and an ability to work under pressure at times. A good sense of humour is also valued.
Advert
To support and enhance the professional psychological care of service users within the service, across all sectors of care.
Undertake clinically supervised work with clients on a one to one and group basis delivering psychological interventions.
Under supervision, plan, organises and teach on a variety of psycho-educational courses.
Working independently according to a plan agreed with qualified psychologists and within the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures.
Undertaking R&D activities under the supervision of responsible Psychologist or others: To assist in clinically related administration, conduct of audits, collection of statistics, and development of audit and or research projects, teaching and project work.
To support delivery of therapeutic interventions and coordination (group and 1:1).
Working for our organisation
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust is a health and social care organisation dedicated to providing high-quality care with compassion to improve the health and wellbeing of the people we care for, as well as supporting and empowering them to lead a fulfilling life.
Our clinical teams deliver many NHS services, not only via inpatient and primary care settings, but also within the community. These services include children's, adult and older people's mental health, forensic and specialist mental health, learning disabilities, primary care and liaison psychiatry, substance misuse, social care, research and development.
To achieve our goal, we look to recruit high-calibre candidates who share our vision and values. As an equal opportunities employer, we encourage applications from all sectors of the community, particularly from under-represented groups including people with long term conditions and members of our ethnic minority and LGBTQ+ communities.
Please be advised we reserve the right to close adverts earlier than the closing date should we receive sufficient applications.
Regrettably, we cannot offer sponsorship for all our job roles. If you apply for a role that we cannot offer sponsorship for, unfortunately, your application form will be rejected from the process.
For further information on CPFT, please visit our website at www.cpft.nhs.uk
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details of responsibilities.
To support the provision of standardised psychological assessment of service users applying psychological including neuropsychological, tests, self-report measures, rating scales, with clients, family members and others involved in the service users care.
To support care provision of clients, through the provision of psychological therapies under the supervision of qualified Clinical/Forensic Psychology Colleagues.
To monitor and evaluate progress, refining interventions and necessary under supervision. To assess and manage risk within an appropriate psychological framework.
To assist in the formulation and delivery of care plans involving the psychological treatment and or management of service users’ problems, under the supervision of a qualified professional psychologist in forensic setting.
To assist in the development, coordination, running and evaluation of therapeutic groups.
To work with other staff to assess and review service users care in preparation for multidisciplinary treatment reviews.
To support development and updates of routine outcome measures.
To assist in the development of a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all service users, across all settings where care takes place.
To attend and contribute to appropriate multi-disciplinary and psychology meetings.
To plan and prioritise workload, exercising autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment and treatment of patients.
Applicant requirements
Person specification
Education/Qualification
Essential criteria
- An upper second-class honours degree or higher in psychology
- Entitlement to graduate membership of the British Psychological Society
Desirable criteria
- Further post graduate training in relevant areas of professional psychology, mental health practice and/or research design and analysis.
- An interest in working towards further qualifications in clinical or Forensic Psychology
Experience
Essential criteria
- Experience of inpatient service and working as part of a multi disciplinary team.
- Experience of working with people with serious mental disorders, learning disability and complex presentations/ challenging behaviours.
- Experience of completing specialised psychological assessments. Experience of Psychological Structured Professional (SPJ) Judgement or Psychometric assessment tools.
Desirable criteria
- Experience of direct care provision of service users.
- Experience of assisting in the delivery of therapeutic groups
- Experience of assisting in the production of audits or service evaluation projects
- Experience of working within Secure Environments.
- Experience of delivering structured therapy programmes (practical working knowledge of at least one relevant psychological approach e.g. CBT)
- Lived experience of mental health.
- Experience of completing risk assessments
- Experience of psychometric testing, scoring and report writing.
Skills & Abilities
Essential criteria
- Effective communication skills both verbally and written, including IT literacy (MS Office).
- Ability to work as part of a team, as a role model, empowering and motivating other team members
- Ability to build effective working relationships with staff across a wide range of professional and managerial groups
- Experience of maintaining working relationships and a high degree of professionalism in the face of emotive and distressing problems
- Ability to apply existing psychological knowledge, underpinned by theory, to a mental health context
- Shows appropriate professional and personal boundaries • Ability and willingness to reflect on work practice and be open to constructive feedback
- Ability to accept and use supervision appropriately and effectively
- Ability to recognise limits of competence and seek support when needed.
- Ability to manage stress and to plan and prioritise workload.
- Ability to provide and receive complex, sensitive or contentious information, where persuasive, motivational, negotiating, training, empathic or reassurance skills are required. This may be because agreement or cooperation is required or because there are barriers to understanding.
- Ability to advocate for the service users and colleagues that your supporting
- Able to demonstrate commitment to high quality care and service provision.
- Ability to recognise limits of competence and seek support and supervision when needed.
Desirable criteria
- Decision making, delegation and problem-solving skills.
- Experience of working with structured risk assessment tools such as the HCR20/SAPROF Awareness / experience of approaches suitable for working with more complex forensic clients
- A clear understanding of the importance of a multi-disciplinary approach to risk management within forensic services.
Knowledge & Understanding
Essential criteria
- Ability to communicate sensitive information to patients, carers and colleagues in a way that addresses psychological needs
- An understanding of the needs and difficulties of people with mental distress and an ability to think compassionately about the lived experience of mental illness.
- An understanding of psychology applied to mental health care.
- Enthusiastic, self-motivated, responsible
- Able to contain and work with high levels of distress from service users
- Able to contain and work with high levels of organisational stress.
- Capacity for frequent concentration in context of therapeutic settings and team meetings
- Accurate and attentive to detail
- Ability to undertake all necessary statutory and mandatory training required
- Ability to work with an appropriate degree of autonomy but knowing when to ask for supervision.
- Demonstrate understanding of acceptance and commitment to the principles underlying equal opportunities.
- Knowledge of NICE guidance
Desirable criteria
- Understanding of Relational Security
- Understanding of PREVENT
Physical Requirements
Essential criteria
- Flexibility and Reliability
- Energy/drive, enthusiasm and tenacity
- An ability to interact affectively with staff from all disciplines
- An ability to interact with people with mental health problems who may be in distress
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Kat Atkins Clark
- Job title
- Ward Manager
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Additional information
Dependant on nature of enquiry may re-direct to ward psychologist Stavros.
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