Lead Principal Psychologist (Parent-Infant Mental Health)

A 12-month, half-time fixed-term post for a lead principal psychologist, sitting within Warrington BABS Parent Infant Mental Health Service and the new Child Protection Multi-Agency Team with Warrington Children’s Services. The work centres on direct therapeutic support for vulnerable parents and babies in the community, alongside joint working with children’s services through assessment, supervision, consultation and training. It is part of Warrington’s Pathfinder reform programme, which aims to keep families together and prevent children entering care. Applicants need HCPC-registered clinical psychology training and specialist perinatal experience.

What the job involves

• Deliver direct therapeutic parent-infant mental health interventions to vulnerable parents and babies in the community
• Work systemically with Children’s Services through a model of joint working
• Carry out assessments as part of joint working with Children’s Services
• Provide supervision, consultation and reflective practice to build workforce capacity
• Provide training to build workforce capacity
• Act as a key MDT member in BABS, the Child Protection MDT Team and the Multi Agency Hub
• Help vulnerable parents and babies build secure bonds and break negative life cycles, with integrated support
• Safeguard parent-infant relationships, mental health and risk within the integrated partnership

What’s required

Qualifications

• Doctoral level or equivalent training

Registration & licences

• HCPC registration as a Practitioner Psychologist and Clinical Psychologist

Experience

• Highly specialist practitioner psychologist experience in parent-infant mental health, including perinatal
• Wide range of client groups across the life course, full clinical severity and all care settings
• Full clinical responsibility for psychological care, as care coordinator and within multidisciplinary plans
• Teaching, training and/or clinical supervision experience
• Representing psychology within multidisciplinary care

Skills & knowledge

• Complex psychological assessment, intervention and management with analytical and judgemental skills
• Clear oral and written communication of technical, sensitive information, plus consultation with professional and non-professional groups
• Knowledge of legislation for the client group and mental health
• Doctoral-level research design and methodology, including complex multivariate data analysis
• Maintaining professionalism and supporting carers and staff in emotive, distressing work, using clinical governance

Other

• Continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS
• Commitment to respecting and displaying Trust Values
• IT literacy
• Willingness and means to travel for duties

Nice to have

• Post-doctoral training in one or more additional specialised areas of psychological practice
• Post-qualification training in psychotherapeutic approaches such as video-interaction guidance, Circle of Security, cognitive analytic psychotherapy or dialectical behaviour therapy
• Post-qualification leadership programme
• Experience of applying psychology in different cultural contexts and within a multicultural framework
• Experience of coproduction approaches to service development and evaluation
• Ability to demonstrate clinical leadership within a service sector
• Ability to contain and work within organisational stress
• Knowledge of specialised therapies for difficult-to-treat groups and of infant mental health

What’s offered

• Flexible working requests considered for all roles

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