Job summary
A great opportunity for a clinical or counselling psychologist provide psychology input to the Kingston Hospital Psychiatric Liaison Service. This is a varied role with opportunities to use your skills in direct assessments and interventions with service users, as well as indirect work to support the whole team in gaining a psychological perspective when formulating and planning interventions.

You will have a wide breadth of work, including working with people presenting to hospital due to mental health crisis, as well as supporting other hospital inpatients who have co-occurring mental health difficulties. You will work along side other professionals including psychiatrists and nurses, helping to develop the whole team approach to managing their cases.

You will have strong links with the SWLSGT Acute and Urgent care Psychology team.

Main duties of the job

• The Kingston Liaison Psychiatry Service provides a comprehensive specialist service to patients, clinicians and carers on the Kingston Hospital site and within the Kingston Hospital Emergency Department. You will be responsible for the delivery of a specialised psychology service providing highly specialist psychological assessment and therapy at the same time as offering advice and consultation on clients' psychological care to non-psychologist colleagues and to other, non-professional carers, working autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the team's policies and procedures.
• To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research within the area served by the team/service.
• To provide clinical and professional supervision to trainees undertaking Doctoral training.
• To undertake service development within own area of practice.

About us
Unless expressly stated in the job advert this role is not subject to sponsorship, please be advised that all offers of employment are subject to evidence of right to work in the UK.

We are Proud to Belong at South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust.

We have expert services, a rich history and a clear commitment to providing the best quality care for those with mental ill-health. The Care Quality Commission already rates our services as 'good' - we aspire to be 'outstanding'.

This is a great time to join us. We are transforming the way we care for our communities to support our mission of Making Life Better Together. We have built two brand new mental health facilities at Springfield University Hospital, which are amongst the best in the world. More developments are planned across our sites and services as we invest a further £120m to upgrade and modernise our estate by 2027.

We are inclusive and diverse and strive to be actively anti racist. We want to attract people from all backgrounds and experiences to enrich the work we do together. We are proud to co-produce and involve our local communities in all that we do.

We offer flexible working, career development and a variety of benefits to enable a positive, welcoming environment in which our people and their careers can thrive.

Come and join our inclusive teams and help our patients on their recovery journey.

Job responsibilities

• Direct work with service users. Assessments, Formulations, Crisis planning and care planning, providing recommendations for treatment. Providing brief psychological interventions to address difficulties, such as work on emotion regulation, relapse prevention etc.
• Indirect work with service users: Contribution to team meetings to communicate psychology perspective in planning their care. Engaging with other stakeholders to establish treatment needs when discharged from Liaison team.
• Clinical work will include supporting people presenting in A&E with mental health crisis including helping to establish pathways for frequent attenders. You will also work with people across the range of physical health wards in the hospital who have comorbid mental health difficulties.
• Team work: Supporting the team more generally through provision of regular reflective practice, teaching and case formulations.
• Opportunity for supervision of clinical psychology trainee.

Training and Qualifications

• Essential: Doctorate level training in Clinical or Counselling Psychology, or its' equivalent, including two or more distinct psychological therapies as accredited by the HCPC.
• Essential: Registered as a practitioner psychologist with the HCPC under the appropriate domain specific title (Clinical Psychologist).
• Essential: Evidence of continuing professional development as required by the HCPC.
• Essential: Post qualification training in clinical supervision of trainee psychologists.
• Desirable: Pre-qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.
• Desirable: BABCP accredited CBT practitioner or eligibility for provisional registration of the BABCP as a CBT therapist.
• Desirable: Qualifications in other forms of psychotherapy.

Experience

• Essential: 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.
• Essential: 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.
• Essential: Experience of delivering NICE adherent interventions especially CBT for psychological problems.
• Essential: Demonstrate further specialist training/experience through having received a minimum of 50 hours clinical supervision of working as a specialist clinical / counselling psychologist over a minimum of 18 months, or an alternative agreed by the Director of Psychology.
• Desirable: Experience of working in Liaison Psychiatry or other acute physical healthcare settings.
• Desirable: Experience in working in acute and crisis mental health settings, such as Crisis Home Treatment Teams or acute psychiatric wards.
• Desirable: Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
• Desirable: Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Desirable: Experience of working within a multicultural framework.

Employer details
Employer name: South West London and St Georges Mental Health NHS Trust
Address: Kingston Hospital, Galsworthy Road, Kingston upon Thames, KT2 7QB, United Kingdom
Employer's website: https://www.swlstg.nhs.uk/

Contact
Consultant Clinical Psychologist James Friswell, James.Friswell@swlstg.nhs.uk, 07548800356

Details
Date posted: 19 October 2026
Pay scheme: Agenda for change
Band: Band 8a
Salary: £63,665 to £70,887 a year per annum inclusive of Outer London HCAs
Contract: Permanent
Working pattern: Part-time
Reference number: 294-AAUC-8373129-AZ

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. Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website.