Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust

Clinical Psychologist Band 7/8a Preceptorship
The closing date is 17 November 2026

Job summary
We wish to recruit a band 7/8a preceptorship Clinical Psychologist for Halton Recovery Team. We are a large team of psychologists, psychological therapists, nurses, occupational therapists, psychiatrists, pharmacist and support workers. We provide needs led care and therapy to adults in Runcorn and Widnes with complex mental health needs.

The successful candidate will join a passionate and welcoming team and provide trauma-informed interventions to clients and carers aged 18 upwards with a range of difficulties.

The post being advertised is full-time.

Main duties of the job
The post holder will provide, supervise and support the highly specialised psychological assessment and therapy provided by other psychological professions and other members of the team who provide psychologically based care and treatment.

The post holder will exercise delegated management responsibilities where appropriate and work autonomously within professional guidelines and exercise responsibility for the systematic governance of psychological practice within the team.

The post holder will utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research and propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the team.

About us
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.

Details
Pay scheme: Agenda for change
Band: Band 7
Salary: £49,387 to £64,750 a year per annum
Contract: Permanent
Working pattern: Full-time
Reference number: 350-MHC8344529

Job responsibilities

• To provide specialist psychological assessments of clients referred to the team 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 clients care.
• To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychological treatment and/or management of a clients psychological problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the clients problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy.
• 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 where appropriate.
• 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 or group.
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based standard care plans.
• To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment and treatment of clients whose problems are managed by psychologically based enhanced care plans.
• To provide specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to clients formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan.
• 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 and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on psychological aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
• To act as care coordinator, where appropriate, taking responsibility for initiating planning and reviewing of care plans under enhanced CPA including clients, their carers, referring agents and others involved in the network of care.
• 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.

Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential: Doctoral level training in Clinical/Counselling/Health psychology, or its approved equivalent accredited by the BPS, allowing registration with the HCPC as a Practitioner Psychologist
Desirable: Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology

Experience
Essential:

• 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 teaching, training and/or supervision
• Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts

Knowledge
Essential:

• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health
• Knowledge of IT systems including word processing, email and local electronic patient information systems

Desirable:

• Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities etc)
• Knowledge of the theory and practice of at least one specialised psychological therapy

Skills
Essential:

• Expertise in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, formulation, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration
• Well developed and effective communication skills, oral and written, to communicate 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 nonprofessional groups
• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings
• Reasonable adjustments will be made for those with sensory impairment
• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of service governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour
• Ability to self-reflect, use clinical supervision appropriately and consider complex organisational and team dynamics

Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).

Employer details
Employer name: Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust
Address: Halton Recovery Team, 2nd Floor, The Brooker Centre, Halton Hospital, Hospital Way, Runcorn, WA7 2DA
Employer contact: Emily Wingfield, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, emily.wingfield@merseycare.nhs.uk, 01928247115