Senior Clinical Psychologist

Cnwlnhshealthcharity; Milton Keynes; On-site; GBP 55,000 - 63,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading healthcare provider is looking for a highly motivated Senior Psychological Therapist to join their Mental Health Inreach Team in Milton Keynes. This role involves integrating clinical services within mental health teams, conducting specialist assessments, and providing psychological support to service users. The ideal candidate will have doctoral-level training in clinical psychology and experience in various care settings. This position offers the chance to make a significant impact on health and well-being among incarcerated individuals.

Benefits

Generous relocation package

Flexible working options

Professional development opportunities

Qualifications

• Minimum of 50 hours clinical supervision as specialist clinical psychologist.
• Experience in psychological assessment across various settings.
• Ability to work with complex needs and diverse client groups.

Responsibilities

• Provide key role in integrating psychological services with mental health teams.
• Conduct psychological assessments and implement treatment plans.
• Offer clinical supervision to junior staff.

Skills

Psychological assessment

Clinical supervision

Communication skills

Cognitive behavioral therapy

Multi-disciplinary teamwork

Cultural competence

Education

Doctoral level training in clinical psychology

HCPC Registered

Job description

Search here to find a new job, a new career, an opportunity to up skill or to simply change your career direction.

Become part of our team. We care for you as much as you care for others.

There’s a place for you at CNWL. We’re passionate about delivering first‑class patient‑centred, safe and effective care, whether it is in a hospital setting, in a community clinic or in the patient’s own home. Patients are at the heart of everything we do.

Providing top quality care depends on our ability to employ the best people. We’re always looking to recruit outstanding people who will go the extra mile to support our patients, colleagues, teams and the Trust. With every new employee we’re hoping to find our future leaders and we’ll support our staff by providing opportunities to develop your career.

With a diverse culture and equally diverse range of opportunities across mental health, community services, addictions, eating disorders, learning disabilities and more – whatever stage of your career you’re at, there's always a place for you at CNWL.

Site HMP Woodhill Town Milton Keynes Salary £55,690 - £62,682 per annum (pro rata if P/T) Salary period Yearly Closing 04/01/2026 23:59 Interview date 21/01/2026

CNWL (Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust) has almost 8,000 staff providing integrated healthcare to a third of London’s population, Milton Keynes and areas beyond. We involve service users, carers, the public, staff and partner organisations in the way that we are run.

Our catchment area spans diverse communities, with over 100 first languages spoken. It contains areas of great affluence as well as areas of much deprivation. We are committed to providing services that meet the needs of the people who use them, and we actively encourage involvement from local people who can help make a difference. We’re proud of our diversity and we continue to undertake new initiatives to advance equality for LGBT+, BME and people with disabilities to promote good relations and understanding between our staff.

We are recognised locally, nationally and internationally for providing high quality, innovative healthcare. We aim to employ only the best people, and our experts are frequently called upon to contribute to national health strategy and policy, and many models of our care have been adapted for use in other countries.

We offer a generous relocation package (subject to eligibility assessment) and flexible working options, including bank assignments for most roles. For more information on these and other benefits of working for us, see our Benefits, Reward and Wellbeing page.

CNWL NHS Foundation Trust are committed to safeguarding all children and vulnerable adults and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. We follow safe recruitment practices to protect children and vulnerable adults.

Job overview

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust is a Top Employer Award Winner and works in partnership to provide responsive and dependable primary care, mental health, intellectual disability and substance misuse services to the diverse and culturally rich communities we serve.

In our quest to deliver patient‑focused quality care we are looking to recruit a highly motivated, innovative and enthusiastic Senior Psychological Therapist to join our forward‑thinking, friendly and expanding Mental Health Inreach Team at HMP Woodhill. By joining our Surrey Prisons Health Care Team, you will not only look after the healthcare needs of the prisoners, but also have the opportunity to have a real impact on promoting health and well‑being. We are keen to recruit someone with a passion for working with people in custody, and those who have experienced trauma, adversity and offending.

Working in partnership with the criminal justice system and other agencies, we provide responsive, dependable and high‑quality primary care and mental health services to those in prison, to improve their health status and to encourage social inclusion.

We strive to deliver a culturally competent and responsive service that can meet the needs of our population. We welcome applications from people from all backgrounds, especially from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities.

Main duties of the job

To provide a key role in integrating clinical psychology within the wider mental health team.

To provide a comprehensive specialist clinical psychology service to service users.

To provide specialist psychological assessment and therapy as well as offering advice and consultation on service users’ psychological care to other members of the clinical team.

To work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the service’s policies and procedures.

To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the Health & Justice Services Directorate.

To provide clinical supervision to other members of the team when appropriate.

To contribute to the reflective practice and critical thinking of the team on a case‑by‑case basis (e.g. complex case reviews) and in service improvement.

Working for our organisation

CNWL’s Health and Justice Services are led by a highly motivated team with vast experience in healthcare within secure environments. We employ a range of psychologists and psychological therapists with clinical, counselling and forensic trainings. Psychologists work within the mental health services in numerous sites, across prisons, YOIs and secure hospitals, with children and adults, men and women and across the range of security categories. Psychologists also lead four specialist Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) commissioned services and Sexual Behaviour Services in the youth estate.

Joining a large, forward‑thinking Trust will bring successful candidates excellent development opportunities, an exciting career structure, and job satisfaction. Psychologists from across Health and Justice come together for professional and clinical development. High quality supervision and continuing professional development are integral to our approach and to our intent to support and retain an excellent team. Focused training which contributes to your own development and to our service development will be supported.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

To carry out specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the service, based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex psychological 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, in order to reach a psychological formulation of the client’s difficulties.

To formulate 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 care settings.

To be responsible for implementing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.

To provide specialist assessments of clients presenting with cognitive impairment due to a variety of causes or organic conditions, including pre‑assessment counselling and neuropsychological and functional assessments, and to be able to adjust psychological interventions to work effectively with people presenting with complex needs due to cognitive impairment and organic disorders.

To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.

To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients’ formulations, diagnoses and treatment plans.

To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all clients of the service, across all settings and agencies serving the client group.

To undertake risk assessment, formulation and management for individual clients with complex presentations and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment, formulation and management.

To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor progress during the course of both uni‑ and multi‑disciplinary care.

To promote and participate in multi‑disciplinary team working, development and liaison.

To promote actively, user and carer involvement in care planning and service development.

To be up to date with both de‑escalation, physical breakaway and PMVA techniques appropriate to the service environment.

Person specification

EDUCATION AND QUALIFICATIONS

• Doctoral level training in clinical, forensic or clinical psychology, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology, equivalent to that accredited by the BPS.
• Evidence of post‑qualification specialist training, experience and developing expertise in a specialist area of clinical practice relevant to this role.
• HCPC Registered as a practitioner psychologist.
• Pre‑ or Post‑qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE

• Demonstrate further specialist training / experience through having received a minimum of 50 hours clinical supervision of working as a specialist clinical psychologist, or an alternative agreed by the Chief Psychologist.
• Experience of specialist psychological assessment 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 working effectively in multidisciplinary settings.
• Experience of working with men with complex presentations, including trauma.
• Advanced knowledge, experience and expertise in at least one specialist area of clinical practice gained through specialist training and supervised practice (e.g. psychotherapy, neuropsychology, risk assessment, clinical supervision).
• Experience of teaching and training.
• Experience of representing psychology within the context of multi‑disciplinary care.
• Experience of working in secure environments and/or forensic mental health.
• Experience of working with complex men in a secure setting.

SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE, ABILITIES

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Well developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, 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 non‑professional groups.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.
• Possesses range of clinical knowledge, skills & information technology expertise relevant to post.
• Can demonstrate competence in supervision of junior qualified psychology and MDT staff and professional psychology trainees.
• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi‑media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
• Broad knowledge of models of assessment, management, and treatment of offenders with mental health difficulties and personality disorders.
• Ability to work intensively with people who present challenges in the complexity of their problems and needs, including sexual and violent offending and self‑harming and suicidal behaviours.
• High level of ability to plan and organise clinical service provision to meet service demands, and to maintain high quality professional practice.
• Evidence of continual development of specialist knowledge and skills through engaging in relevant study and Continuing Professional Development relevant to the forensic population.
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult‑to‑treat groups (e.g. people with additional disabilities).
• Can apply psychological knowledge creatively in developing new initiatives.
• Ability to write reports for varied audiences, including courts and purchasers of services.

ATTITUDES, APTITUDES PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

• Excellent interpersonal skills.
• Team player.
• Appreciation of the interface between our personal and professional lives, high level of self awareness and knowledge of principles of self‑care.

The successful applicant may have contact with patients or service users. As an NHS Trust we strongly encourage and support vaccination as this remains the best way to protect yourself, your family, your colleagues and of course patients and service users when working on our healthcare settings.

• Due to the high response levels we receive for some vacancies, we may expire any of them prior to the advertised closing date and advise you to submit your application as soon as possible.
• Applications from job seekers who require sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. Before submitting your application and to avoid disappointment please check that you are eligible under the UKVI points based system.
• Our Agenda for Change employment contracts are subject to a contractual 13 week probationary period.
• If you are offered a job, information will be transferred into the national NHS Electronic Staff Records system.

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.

Contact information

Name: Dr Nicola Thomas
Job title: Lead Psychologist for Health & Justice
Email: [e-mail]

We are a friendly team and are really keen to find the right person for this role. We therefore encourage any prospective candidate to contact us for a discussion, with any questions and/or to book an informal visit, thank you.

You can also find more information on our services and the work we do within the Health & Justice Directorate please do take a look at our new website https://www.cnwl.nhs.uk/health-and-justice.

Any enquiries please contact Dr Nicola Thomas: Lead Psychologist for Health & Justice [e-mail].