Specialist Psychological Therapist (Preceptorship) | Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust

There is currently a vacant Band 7 to Band 8a preceptorship psychological therapist role based in the Inpatient Forensic Psychology service across the Bracton Centre and Memorial Hospital. You will work with a team of psychological therapists and multi-professional mental health colleagues to embed psychologically informed care in the service. You will be based on a ward, but also have input into cross-service psychological activities including the group programme.

As well as holding a clinical caseload in the secure setting, another significant aspect of the role is providing input to the community psychology service based at the William Morris Centre (DA2 7AF). This is a psychological assessment and intervention service that specialises in working with people in the community who are seeking interventions to address their difficulties with interpersonal functioning and risk of harm to others.

You will promote an environment in which therapeutic relationships facilitate safety and change, by offering psychological perspectives and emotional support to nursing teams, and promoting psychological thinking in teams. You should have interests in working with psychosis and complex trauma where there is associated risk, including providing direct psychological assessments and interventions, engaging with families and loved ones and working in multi-disciplinary and multi-agency contexts with other mental health disciplines and with other agencies.

Further to the above, you will supervise and manage pre-qualified staff, supervise psychological interventions delivered by MDT colleagues, and supervise psychology students and doctoral trainees. Supervision training will be provided as required.

Oxleas Forensic Psychological Therapies department is an unusually large, long established and nationally well regarded specialty. The Psychological Therapies team is warm and friendly, whilst also being dynamic and innovative. The Forensic Psychological Therapies department in Oxleas provides a breadth of professional opportunities across community, prison and hospital settings and opportunities for research and career progression through ongoing professional development. The post holder will be encouraged to consolidate and further develop their skills and clinical interests in a friendly and supportive multi-professional and multi-agency context. Aside from the stimulating clinical work, benefits of the post include monthly teaching sessions within the psychology department, monthly peer supervision in addition to regular individual supervision, a range of interesting CPD opportunities and opportunities for future career progression within the department. There is access to a network of specialist psychological supervision groups across the forensic directorate. Professionally, psychological therapists in Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust are highly valued and occupy a variety of directorate and Trust-wide leadership roles, including quality assurance, quality improvement, and operating as Responsible Clinicians.

Clinical and Client Care

· To provide direct psychological care (assessment and intervention) and support the delivery of psychologically informed care by all disciplines within the service.

· To provide highly specialist psychological therapy assessments, formulations and interventions.

· To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of community clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans, including taking responsibility for initiating planning and review of care plans with input from clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.

· To provide culturally appropriate psychological therapy interventions with service suers, carers or families of referred clients when required.

· To communicate, in a highly skilled and sensitive manner, to clients, family carers and others as appropriate, information that may be contentious or highly distressing concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care.

· To produce reports on clients, in a timely manner, that convey the key findings of psychological assessment and formulation and treatment outcome in a way that does justice to the complexity of the problems described, but that are understandable to the recipients of the reports, including clients and referrers.

· To undertake psychometric and neuropsychological testing as appropriate, including selecting the appropriate tests, administering and scoring the tests in accordance with the manual, and interpreting the findings in the context of all relevant information.

· To undertake risk assessment, risk monitoring and risk management for individual clients in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures, and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.

· To work in partnership with other disciplines and to maintain links with statutory and non-statutory agencies as appropriate.

Responsibilities for team and service clinical functioning

· Attend and contribute to directorate level meetings and forums, as directed.

· Contribute to the delivery of accessible and acceptable services to diverse communities.

· To be proactive in challenging discrimination.

· To advise other colleagues on specialist psychological care of clients.

· To liaise with referrers, GPs and other professionals concerned with clients in order to develop and review care plans.

· To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.

· To liaise with the service/s MDT and other professionals.

· Implement relevant policies and procedures for the safe running of the service.

Service development

· To engage in service improvements through audits and quality improvement initiatives.

· To ensure the consultation and engagement of service users in planning and delivering services which meet the needs of local communities.

· Advise professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.

· To participate in Trust and Directorate strategic development and implementation of new initiatives (e.g. national guidelines), including through membership of committees and/or working parties.

· Apply clinical governance standards within the service and ensure that these are maintained and improved.

· Provide high quality services that are managed efficiently, according to the overall requirements of the Trust, NHS and government guidance and standards.

· Participate in service outcome monitoring.

Management and supervision

· To provide line management to designated assistant psychologists.

· Provide supervision to students and trainees and to multi-disciplinary colleagues delivering psychological interventions.

· To support recruitment of assistant psychologists to the service.

· For those line managing, to ensure local standards are implemented for the allocation and review of work, job planning, review of performance, sickness management and initial stages of grievance or disciplinary action.

· To oversee quality line management and supervision within the team structure, ensuring that staff and trainees acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to health care, and to contribute to the assessment and evaluation of such competencies.

· To provide highly specialist advice, consultation and training of staff working with the client group across a range of agencies and settings, where appropriate. This may include work with the Criminal Justice System and Children’s Services.

Teaching and Training

· To provide and support specialist clinical placements for students and trainees in applied psychological practice.

· To contribute to the delivery of teaching and training to junior psychological practitioners and specialist training to other professions.

· To contribute to the development of the knowledge and skills base within the service by maintaining an active awareness of current developments in psychological therapy and risk assessment / management and to implement knowledge gained in practice.

· To disseminate research and service evaluation findings through presentations and published articles.

· To continue to gain wider post-qualification experience of psychological therapies and risk assessment / management, over and above that provided within the principal service area where the post-holder is employed.

Record-keeping and Information Governance

· To ensure that all information generated by own work is recorded as required by Trust policies and local procedures.

· To ensure the highest standards of clinical record keeping and report writing, according to professional and Trust guidelines, including electronic data entry, in those parts of the service for which the post-holder has management or leadership responsibility.

Research and development

· To undertake the planning, initiation and completion of research, service evaluation and audits, and quality improvement projects relevant to the service and the directorate research agenda.

· To oversee the planning, initiation and completion of research, service evaluation and audits by students and trainees.

· To utilise theory, evidence-based literature and research to support evidence-based practice in individual work and work with other team members.

Maintaining professional standards and continuing professional development

· To receive regular clinical and professional supervision from a senior psychological practitioner according to professional and Trust guidelines and, where appropriate, other senior professional colleagues.

· To attend Reflective Practice reliably.

· To maintain own Continuing Professional Development in line with registered body and Trust Personal Development Plan requirements.

· To maintain an up-to-date knowledge of current developments in professional and clinical practice and of relevant legislation and policies.

· To comply with the registered body Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics/Standards of Proficiency.

· To ensure that all psychological practitioners for whom the post-holder has leadership or management responsibility maintain professional standards, adhere to all organisational HR policies and procedures.

· To ensure that all psychological practitioners for whom the post-holder has management responsibility continue professional development, assessing and evaluating to ensure they acquire the necessary skills, competencies and experience to contribute effectively to health care.

· Maintaining registration and standards of practice according to the employer and any regulating bodies eg the UKCP, BABCP & HCPC etc.

· Ensuring all aspects of confidentiality relating to both the service and individuals are maintained at all times.

General

· To travel to clinical venues, training activities and meetings as appropriate and across the Trust when required.

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On Call/Unsocial Hours

To off a degree of flexibility in working hours where there is client need (e.g. family work which can only be attended out of regular office hours) in discussion with supervisors and line management

· To be aware of risk relating to aggressive and challenging behaviour amongst the client group, and follow Trust policies relating to its management.

· To respond appropriately and professionally to emotionally distressing situations of people in distress or in crisis and who may be abusive and to support others involved in such situations.

· To work flexibly which may include offering some regular commitment to late clinics or weekend working, within the overall Job Plan.

· To be proficient in the use of IT for purposes such as email, electronic calendar, intranet, video calls and electronic clinical records.

· To be familiar with word processing, database and statistical packages, and to use such packages appropriately as necessary.

· To maintain high standards of clinical record keeping, including electronic clinical records and report writing, in accordance with professional codes of practice and Trust policies and procedures.

· To maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues pertaining to the client group.

This advert closes on Thursday 11 Jun 2026

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