Clinical/Counselling Psychologist or Accredited CBT Therapist

This permanent Band 8a or 7-8a post (for Clinical /Counselling psychologist) is a rare and exciting opening for a clinical/ counselling psychologist or an accredited CBT therapist to join our Community Mental Health Teams in Older Peoples Services.

The teams are located across the North and West of Leeds and this post will focus on supporting psychological and trauma informed thinking including assessments, formulations, and contributing to multi-disciplinary discussions and meetings. You will also be supporting psychological interventions and delivering specialist therapy to clients referred within the teams with a range of severe and enduring MH issues and/or cognitive impairment diagnoses. We are in scope to transform our community services across Leeds within the community transformation agenda and are currently in the first phase of this development in line with the national NHS long-termplan. There is a focus on increasing involvement from people who use our services and their families and carers working together on the care provisions that we deliver.

All the psychological professionals are integrated into multidisciplinary teams, where our input is highly valued across older people’s services; alongside the CMHT’s we have colleagues in memory assessment, inpatient settings, intensive home treatment and care home teams. This large group of psychological professionals in older people’s services provides excellent professional support, alongside the integrated work with multi-disciplinary colleagues. There are also increasing links across organisations in the city, integrating pathways with primary care, secondary services and the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector, which creates exciting opportunities for collaborative work across Leeds.

The post will focus on providing specialist psychological assessment, formulation, interventions, and specialist therapy to a wide range of older people with mental health problems and/ cognitive impairment. You will be based within two different CMHT’s supporting psychological thinking and understanding across the teams in the west and North of the city. The teams have two sites as office bases with clinic rooms as well as carrying out home visits where appropriate. The logistics of this community role indicate essential car driver criteria.

If you are not local to West Yorkshire, our Golden Hello package offers successful candidates up to £8,000 to help with relocation costs, or the support of a relocation specialist to take all the hard workout of a big move.

Compared to other regions in the UK, Leeds has one of the most reasonable costs of living, giving you a lot of value for your money.

We welcome applications from all those interested in working with older people and would welcome any enquiries for further discussion about the 8a role or the Band 7 – 8a developmental offer: contact Dr Gina Wills Consultant Clinical psychologist on 07989 412680 or emailg.wills@nhs.net

Applications are welcome from overseas candidates who have HCPC registration with the modality of clinical/counselling or who have submitted all paperwork to HCPC but are waiting for a decision. A package of pastoral support and all associated sponsorship/immigration skills costs are offered

There will be individual clinical supervision provided and a focus on undertaking additional training opportunities for example in specialist CBT approaches, trauma work and EMDR and CAT therapy (all of which other staff have recently been funded in). Other interests can be developed such as audit, service evaluation, research possibilities, delivering training and groupwork which can be part of the wider role.

We are keen to recruit people with experience, knowledge, and skills of working with severe and enduring mental health difficulties such as complex trauma, psychosis, interpersonal difficulties, and self-harm. Some of our clients also present with mild cognitive impairment through to having diagnoses of dementia. We may be involved in psycho-social interventions when clients have completed memory assessment work and at times some cognitive assessment may also be required. Experience of working with older people and understanding the complexities of later life mental health and cognitive impairment is desirable.

There is also a focus on the provision of supervision for both trainees and qualified staff and successful candidates will be expected to have trained in supervision and be providing this support. If appointed at Band 7 as a development position a willingness to undertake supervision training is essential and this will be supported as the role progresses.

Additionally other important skills within this role will be leadership skills, the ability to develop innovative practice, and to work independently as well as part of multiple teams. We are looking for people who can contribute to the vision for the service, working closely with colleagues in different parts of the system, over time this will include primary care and our valued voluntary sector partners.