Trac proudly powers the recruitment for
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.
Principal Psychologist - Neurology
Accepting applications until: 05-Aug-2026 23:59
Vacancy status: Open
Accepting applications until: 05-Aug-2026 23:59
Key details
Location
- Site
- Addenbrookes Hospital
- Address
- Hills Road
- Town
- Cambridge
- Postcode
- CB2 0QQ
- Major / Minor Region
- Cambridgeshire
Contract type & working pattern
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Part time - 15 hours per week
Salary
- Salary
- £57,528 - £64,750 per annum, pro rata
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Grade
- (Band 8a)
Specialty
- Main area
- Health Psychology
Job overview
We are advertising 0.4WTE 8a psychology post working within the Paediatric Neurology services as a part of the larger paediatric Psychological Medicine Service.
Neurology
The post holder will work alongside 8b and 8a and band 7 psychology colleagues to provide a specialist clinical psychology service to patients and their families referred to the Paediatric Neurology service.
This will include offering specialist psychological and neuropsychological assessment and interventions to patients (up to 17 years of age) and families. Part of this post will require input into the Multiple Sclerosis clinic, which takes place on a Thursday. The role offers the opportunity to work closely with a well-established team of Consultant Paediatric Neurologists alongside the wider multi-disciplinary team to offer support to children and their families.
Advert
The Psychological Medicine Service for Children Young People and Families is dedicated to meeting the needs of children, adolescents and young adults with complex medical and surgical needs in hospital-based settings at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.
The job involves assessment and delivery of care involving both the patient and parents and family systems where there are complex social needs. The intervention level ranges from the specialist tertiary multidisciplinary team level and associated paediatric surgical ward nursing teams to community paediatric teams, social work, education and primary health care. Interventions routinely cross professional and Acute Health Trust and Community Mental Health Trust boundaries and sometimes involve Child Protection work.
The job involves physical effort of the nature of sitting in constrained position for extended patient / client therapy sessions, frequent intense concentration on assessment and formulation, it is sometimes highly distressing, dealing with such issues as chronic illness and family breakdown, and may deal with issues such as acute physical distress or illness, death, serious mental illness and child abuse.
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 fulfilling lives.
Our clinical teams deliver a wide range of NHS services across inpatient, primary care and community settings, including 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, and research and development.
To achieve our goals, we recruit high calibre candidates who share our vision and values. As an equal opportunities’ employer, we welcome applications from all sections of the community, particularly underrepresented groups including people with long term conditions and members of our ethnic minority and LGBTQ+ communities.
All appointments for new employees to CPFT are subject to the successful completion of a probationary period.
Please note we reserve the right to close adverts early should we receive sufficient applications.
Regrettably, we cannot offer sponsorship for all roles. If you apply for a post that does not attract sponsorship, your application will be withdrawn from the process.
For further information on CPFT, please visit our website at https://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 exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, psychological formulation, treatment and discharge of clients, working to the specified job plan. This includes managing and maintaining a caseload in line with service guidelines and PPN recommendations.
- To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the psychological medicine service, based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex 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 client’s care.
- To develop psychological formulations of presenting problems or situations that integrate information from assessments within a coherent framework that draws upon psychological theory and evidence and which incorporates interpersonal, societal, cultural and biological factors as well as health needs and impact of health problems on the family.
- To develop and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a client’s mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the client’s problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of hospital and community-based settings.
- To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
- 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, carers or group. To do this in the context of health and surgical interventions.
Applicant requirements
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Doctoral level training in clinical psychology, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology as accredited by the BPS, or a BPS Statement of Equivalence.
- Registered with the Health Care Professions Council.
Desirable criteria
- Further training in systemic, paediatric neuropsychology and or trauma.
- Further training in clinical supervision
Experience
Essential criteria
- Experience of specialist psychological assessment, formulation and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and in-patient 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 the application of clinical psychology in different contexts.
Desirable criteria
- Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
- Experience of working within a paediatric medical setting.
- Experience of working within a paediatric medical setting.
Knowledge and Skills
Essential criteria
- Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, psychological formulation, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration. This requires the use of highly developed analytical and judgment skills.
- Skills in individual and group work and in programme planning.
- Planning and organising skills for caseload management.
Desirable criteria
- High Level Knowledge of the theory and practice of at least two specialised psychological therapies.
- Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health.
- Knowledge of the impact of physical health on children, young people and their families.
Other
Essential criteria
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, enabling formation of networks with professionals within the Trust and from other agencies to promote effective team working with clients.
- Able to contain and work with high levels of distress from clients.
- Able to contain and work with organisational stress.
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Dr Ella Rands
- Job title
- Lead Psychologist - Neurology
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 01223 216 878
- Additional information
Dr Suzanna Watson - [email protected] 01223 216 878
.png "NHS Rainbow badge")
Start your application
Sign in
Create an account
Create your account and apply for your new job!