Highly Specialist Perinatal Psychologist/Psychological Therapist

This role is offered on a permanent basis . The hours are part-time, 22.5 hours per week.

Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust is seeking an experienced and motivated Highly Specialist Practitioner Psychologist or Psychological Therapist to join our well-established, multi-disciplinary team within the Perinatal Mental Health Service (PMHS).

This post offers an exciting opportunity to contribute to the development of psychologically informed systems of care for women, infants, and families during the perinatal period.

The PMHS provides evidence-based, specialist mental health care to women experiencing moderate to severe mental health difficulties during pregnancy and up to one year postpartum.

In line with the NHS Long Term Plan, the service works in close collaboration with adult mental health services, maternity care, primary care, and social services to ensure integrated, trauma-informed support across the care pathway.

This post places a strong emphasis on systemic leadership, psychological consultation and service development. The successful candidate will play a key role in embedding psychological principles across services, supporting the development of reflective, compassionate, and psychologically safe environments for both service users and professionals.

Key responsibilities include:

Delivering specialist psychological assessments and interventions to individuals, dyads (parent-infant), and families presenting with complex mental health needs.

Providing specialist consultation, supervision, support and training to professionals across the perinatal and wider mental health system.

Leading initiatives to promote psychologically informed practice and service development across multi-agency teams.

Contributing to strategic planning and quality improvement within the PMHS and the broader care system.

We are seeking applicants who demonstrate:

Significant experience in systemic working across health and social care settings.

Confidence and willingness to work alongside a range of other professionals to provide psychological advice, supervision, formulation and consultation.

A commitment to collaborative, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive practice.

Confidence in facilitating specialist training, reflective practice, and professional development activities.

Willingness and ability to travel across Gloucestershire as required.

We have a skilled and dedicated workforce of over 5000 colleagues working in a diverse range of services over 55 sites and within people's homes. We strive to enable a welcoming workplace culture that builds and celebrates civility, inclusivity and diversity, while providing a sense of belonging and trust.

Annual staff surveys, regular Pulse surveys and other engagement opportunities provide our people with lots of opportunity to tell us about their experiences of working with us. In the latest staff survey, 61% of colleagues gave us their views. It was great to hear that:

72% of colleagues would recommend the Trust as a place to work, ranking us 1st for Provider Trusts in the South West region on this question.

76% would recommend the standard of care provided in our services if a friend or relative needed treatment, also ranking us 1st in the South West region.

81% said that care of patients and service users is the Trust's priority, compared with an average in comparable NHS Trusts in England of 64%.

This high-level overview shows we are in a healthy position, with higher scores than average for comparable organisations, alongside a great response rate, indicating good staff engagement. However, we also know we have plenty of room for improvement in many areas. To that end, we continue to prioritise and invest in our commitment to genuinely becoming a Great Place to Work with consistent top-quartile performance in the annual staff survey and Pulse surveys.

We welcome applications from candidates with a strong interest in perinatal mental health, including those who have not previously worked in this specialty but possess relevant transferable skills.

A Band 7 preceptorship may be offered to a suitable candidate who is developing towards Band 8a competencies.

This is a unique opportunity to influence service delivery at a systemic level, contribute to innovative practice, and support the wellbeing of families during a critical life stage.

The qualification, training & experience requirements for the role are underlined in the Job Description/Person Specification.

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