Lead Principal Psychologist (Parent-Infant Mental Health) | Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust

‘Relationships Are Everything! – Warrington BABS and Childrens Services Integration

An exciting opportunity has arisen within Building Attachment and Bonds Service in Warrington for an innovative Psychologist 0.5 wte 12-month Fixed Term contract to work within a truly collaborative and integrated ‘Health and Care’ model supporting Warrington’s most vulnerable complex parents/families and infants 0-2 years.

This post will sit both in Warrington BABS Parent Infant Mental Health Service and Warrington Childrens Services new Child Protection Multi-Agency Team, which is an integral part of Warrington’s Pathfinder ‘Family’s First for Children.

Warrington BABSis a specialist, easy to engage, therapeutic Parent-Infant Mental Health Service which supports vulnerable parents who have experienced ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) to build secure bonds and attachment relationships with their babies via the offer of its specialist, community-based preventative service.

Warrington BABS’s values, ethos, mission and model is aligned to work of the Pathfinder and its reforms - driving forward prevention, early intervention and offering the best possible care/support and outcomes for the most vulnerable families to enable families to stay together and prevent children from going into care.

This post will be key in ensuring that as an integrated partnership we safeguard parent infant relationships, mental health as well as risk.

Since Warrington BABS launched in 2024, the service has supported many of the most vulnerable/at risk parents and infants living in Warrington, helping them to build secure bonds, attachment relationships and good parent-infant mental health, via the delivery its strength-based, collaborative, psycho-social MDT programme of care and support.

BABS groundbreaking outcomes and cost savings have been evidenced over the past 10 years across other boroughs via BABS service evaluations, videos, media work/publications, national awards and BABS research published by Liverpool and Edge Hill Universities.

This post will strengthen both BABs and Warrington Childrens Services offer to Warrington families.

Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.

We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.

At the heart of all we do is our commitment to ‘perfect care’ – care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We’re currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.

Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.

Supporting Parents and Babies in Warrington to have Stable Homes Built on Love

McCallister’s Independent Review of Children Social Care (‘Reset’, 2022) put a spotlight on the need for radical reform/reset in Childrens Services to better support our most vulnerable families, nationally.

The Implementation Strategy and Consultation paper ‘Stable Homes Built on Love (2023) was later published, shared with government and has resulted in a £200 million investment to reset Childrens Services across the UK.

The golden thread and ethos throughout this new strategy mirrors the BABS model and service. ‘The best way of promoting children’s welfare is by supporting children’s families and the loving relationships around them’and recognises that ‘To achieve this reset, Childrens Services must put love and stable relationships at the heart of everything it does’.

Warrington Childrens Services has been selected as 1 of the UK’s 7 national pathfinders to take ambitious action across six pillars to transform children’s Social Care; laying down the foundations for whole system reform and setting national direction for change. BABS being recognised nationally (PIF, 2024) and across other Merseyside as a ‘Best practice parent infant mental health service and model for supporting vulnerable complex families’ is delighted to be joining forces with Warrington Childrens Services to be part of this exciting, transformational work

ThisPrinciple Clinical Psychologist post will be a key MDT team member in BABS, and Warrington’s Child Protection MDT Team and Multi Agency Hub.

The post will involve delivery of direct therapeutic parent infant mental health support/interventions to vulnerable parents and babies in the community. In addition to working systemically with Childrens Services via offering a model of joint working, assessments, supervision, consultation, reflective practice and training – to build workforce capacity and ensuring that vulnerable parents and babies receive the right, specialist, integrated support to help build secure bonds and break negative life cycles.

This advert closes on Wednesday 4 Nov 2026