Principle Clinical/Counselling Psychologist

A Vacancy at South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust.

We are excited to offer this new post which is part of recent additional investments to our Adult Inpatient Psychology Service. The post is primarily a clinical role, providing psychology input to our Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), with additional leadership responsibilities.

Our PICU ward is a 13-bed male ward based at Springfield Hospital. The ward has been undergoing a significant improvement programme over the past year. The post holder will provide psychology input via direct assessment and interventions with service users, as well as indirect input, via professional meetings, staff support and training.

The leadership component will involve deputizing for the lead psychologist for Acute and Urgent Care. This will include line management and supervision responsibilities for other psychologist in the team, as well as involvement in service development projects and contributions to other leadership activities.

The successful candidate will have experience of working with people with acute mental health difficulties, preferably in an inpatient setting. Additionally, experience of working along side different professional groups to embed psychological thinking to overall service as well as individual care planning will be essential.

To act as Deputy for the Clinical Lead, and in their absence, to exercise delegated responsibility as Clinical Lead for the service.

To provide a highly specialist clinical / counselling psychology service to clients on our Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). To include direct work with clients and indirect work with other professionals, and other people in the support network.

To have a lead role for information management. This includes managing service performance, and CQUIN data, and maintaining RiO data quality. In addition, to establish and maintain a database to measure clinical outcomes within the service, and to analyse and disseminate this data.

To supervise and support the psychological assessment and therapy provided by other qualified and trainee psychologists and other clinical members of the team who provide psychologically-based care and treatment.

To utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development and research. To propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the Adult Inpatient service.

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.

About our location:

This post will be based at Springfield Hospital

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.

Clinical Duties:Providing consistent psychology input to ward one (PICU) MDT to include:

· Regular contribution to daily MDT meetings to plan patient care

· Joining MDT for individual patient reviews to ensure that psychological aspects of their difficulties and care planning are considered

· Direct sessions on the ward including individual patient assessment, formulation and treatment, as well as group and family sessions.

· Indirect input to MDT to support staff in day-to-day management of patients.

· Focus on patient who require one-to-one observations or seclusion to identify a pathway to reduce need for restriction.

· Provision of regular reflective practice.

Other duties:

· Regular contribution to various aspects of service improvement for ward one.

· Provision of supervision to other qualified psychology staff working on acute wards.

· Contribution to wider service planning and improvement for the adult inpatient services.

This advert closes on Monday 1 Jun 2026