Job summary
We are delighted to be recruiting to the post of Practitioner Psychologist in Paediatric Psychology at the Evelina London Children's Hospital, working as part of the Chronic pain & Rheumatology service (Band 7, 0.5 WTE, Permanent position). This is an exciting post providing a wide variety of experiences.
The post-holder will be based within the diverse and welcoming Paediatric Psychology service at Evelina London (Guy's and St. Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust).
We are looking for a motivated psychologist with an interest in working with children, young people and families with complex health conditions experiencing associated psychological distress or difficulties, as well as in working with professional colleagues in a collaborative manner to provide high quality holistic care.
We would be delighted to share more about the post. For further information please contact Dr Alex Burdass (Alexandra.Burdass3@nhs.net) or 020 7188 4640
Anticipated interview date: 18th March 2026
Main duties of the job
This role includes the opportunity to deliver a range of outpatient services. The Chronic Pan and Rheumatology service offers a multi-disciplinary integrated package of care for young people referred. The post holder will be required to work as a core team member, involved in clinics, group interventions and 1:1 psychology provision, as well as case consultation and liaison - taking a holistic, biopsychosocial approach to understanding patient's physical symptoms and experiences. There will be opportunity to work with inpatients as needed.
As well as being part of the Chronic Pain and Rheumatology services, the post holder will be part of our Paediatric Psychology team. Our service is highly valued by families and healthcare staff and the team is recognised as being dedicated and innovative in their approaches. You join a highly supportive team and have the opportunity to work in a dynamic environment within a large dedicated multi-disciplinary health care team. Our service offers good opportunities for collaborative working with other team members, audit & research, teaching and training. We meet regularly as a team to explore clinical dilemmas and share new learnings and developments across our diverse services.
Supervision will be provided by an experienced Psychologist within the team. Service relevant CPD is actively encouraged.
About us
Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust comprises five of the UK's best-known hospitals - Guy's, St Thomas', Evelina London Children's Hospital, Royal Brompton and Harefield - as well as community services in Lambeth and Southwark, all with a long history of high-quality care, clinical excellence, research and innovation.
We are among the UK's busiest, most successful foundation trusts. We provide specialist care for patients including heart and lung, cancer and renal services as well as a full range of local hospital and community services for people in Lambeth and Southwark.
We have a long tradition of clinical and scientific achievement and - as part of King's Health Partners - we are one of England's eight academic health sciences centres, bringing together world-class clinical services, teaching and research.
We have over 23,500 staff, making us one of the largest NHS Trusts in the country and one of the biggest employers locally. We aim to reflect the diversity of the communities we serve and continue to develop new and existing partnerships with local people, patients, neighbouring NHS organisations, local authorities and charitable bodies and GPs.
We strive to recruit and retain the best staff as the dedication and skills of our employees lie at the heart of our organisation and ensure that our services are of the highest quality, safe and focused on our patients.
Job description
Job responsibilities
Please see the attached job description and person specification document for full information and details regarding the current post.
Job description
Job responsibilities
Please see the attached job description and person specification document for full information and details regarding the current post.
Person Specification
Professional / Statutory Registration
Essential
- HCPC Registration as Practitioner Psychologist
Education/Qualifications
Essential
- Doctorate level qualification in clinical psychology, counselling psychology or health psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996 as accredited by the BPS)
- Good honours degree in Psychology
- Eligibility for Chartered status with the BPS.
Experience
Essential
- Experience of psychological assessment and treatment of patients with physical health problems.
- Experience of working psychologically with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems.
- Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
- Experience of working in a multi-disciplinary team.
- Experience of using evidence based psychological interventions (which may include systemic, cognitive behavioural, motivational interviewing and behaviour management approaches) for the assessment and treatment of a wide variety of psychological problems, working in multidisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary teams.
- Experience of providing both group based and individual psychological interventions.
- Experience of teaching and training other professionals in psychological concepts.
Desirable
- Experience in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups in the area of physical health.
- Experience in the psychological management of health conditions, including chronic pain and rheumatology.
- Experience of frequent management of 'behaviour that challenges' to a satisfactory and safe outcome.
- Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for patients' care and management, both as a professionally qualified psychologist and also within the context of a multi-disciplinary team and interdisciplinary teams
- Experience of supporting families through distressing experiences over time.
- Experience of working within a health care setting.
- Experience of supervision of trainee/assistant psychologists/students.
Skills
Essential
- Knowledge of psychological interventions, application and supervision of others particularly systemic and third wave cognitive behavioural approaches.
- Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological, neuropsychological and behavioural assessment and intervention, requiring sustained and intense concentration.
- A strong ability to communicate at both a written and oral level, imparting complex, highly technical and clinically sensitive information to patients, their families, and carers and a wide range of lay and professional people within and outside the NHS. This may require negotiating, motivating, training, reassuring others and demonstrating empathy.
- Experience and ability to undertake risk assessment of children and families in relation to self and others, and refer on to appropriate services as necessary.
- Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
- Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS and HCPC by completion of CPD log demonstrating a minimum of 40 hours per year.
- Awareness of racial, cultural and diversity differences/issues.
- Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
- Ability to work independently as an autonomous practitioner with appropriate level of clinical and managerial supervision.
- Knowledge of legislation and its implications for both clinical practice and professional management in relation to the client group.
- Ability to take initiative and contribute to the development of the psychology component of busy and expanding service at a local and national level.
- Ability to work effectively within a multidisciplinary team and contribute to effective team functioning.
- Ability to identify, provide and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and challenging interactions.
- Ability to undertake research according to needs of the service, bringing doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including multivariate data analysis, as appropriate for the field of clinical psychology.
Desirable
- Specialist knowledge of the theory of specialised psychological therapies in areas of physical health.
- A commitment to the evaluation of services, enthusiasm for both multi-professional and uni-professional audit, and a wish to continue to develop expertise in the field.
Physical Requirements
Essential
- Ability to maintain periods of prolonged concentration frequently throughout the day as required for complex methods of psychological assessment and delivery of interventions.
Additional Information
Essential
- Willingness to broaden range of skills and take initiative in both own professional development and the development of the service.
- Enthusiasm for a broad range of psychological phenomena, an interest in models of service delivery, and an ability to articulate the value added by clinical/health psychology services within the context of multi-disciplinary physical health care services setting.
- A commitment to promoting equality of opportunity through all aspects of working and professional practice with both colleagues and all client groups.
- Ability to contain and work with organisational stress and ability to 'hold' the stress of others.
- Commitment to continuing professional development, partnership working and to reflective clinical practise.
- Well-developed IT skills including data entry and analysis of research data using Microsoft programmes and appropriate statistical packages such as SPSS.
Desirable
- Experience of working within a multi-cultural environment.
Person Specification
Professional / Statutory Registration
Essential
- HCPC Registration as Practitioner Psychologist
Education/Qualifications
Essential
- Doctorate level qualification in clinical psychology, counselling psychology or health psychology (or its equivalent for those trained prior to 1996 as accredited by the BPS)
- Good honours degree in Psychology
- Eligibility for Chartered status with the BPS.
Experience
Essential
- Experience of psychological assessment and treatment of patients with physical health problems.
- Experience of working psychologically with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems.
- Experience of the application of psychology in different cultural contexts.
- Experience of working in a multi-disciplinary team.
- Experience of using evidence based psychological interventions (which may include systemic, cognitive behavioural, motivational interviewing and behaviour management approaches) for the assessment and treatment of a wide variety of psychological problems, working in multidisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary teams.
- Experience of providing both group based and individual psychological interventions.
- Experience of teaching and training other professionals in psychological concepts.
Desirable
- Experience in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups in the area of physical health.
- Experience in the psychological management of health conditions, including chronic pain and rheumatology.
- Experience of frequent management of 'behaviour that challenges' to a satisfactory and safe outcome.
- Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for patients' care and management, both as a professionally qualified psychologist and also within the context of a multi-disciplinary team and interdisciplinary teams
- Experience of supporting families through distressing experiences over time.
- Experience of working within a health care setting.
- Experience of supervision of trainee/assistant psychologists/students.
Skills
Essential
- Knowledge of psychological interventions, application and supervision of others particularly systemic and third wave cognitive behavioural approaches.
- Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological, neuropsychological and behavioural assessment and intervention, requiring sustained and intense concentration.
- A strong ability to communicate at both a written and oral level, imparting complex, highly technical and clinically sensitive information to patients, their families, and carers and a wide range of lay and professional people within and outside the NHS. This may require negotiating, motivating, training, reassuring others and demonstrating empathy.
- Experience and ability to undertake risk assessment of children and families in relation to self and others, and refer on to appropriate services as necessary.
- Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
- Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the BPS and HCPC by completion of CPD log demonstrating a minimum of 40 hours per year.
- Awareness of racial, cultural and diversity differences/issues.
- Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multi-media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
- Ability to work independently as an autonomous practitioner with appropriate level of clinical and managerial supervision.
- Knowledge of legislation and its implications for both clinical practice and professional management in relation to the client group.
- Ability to take initiative and contribute to the development of the psychology component of busy and expanding service at a local and national level.
- Ability to work effectively within a multidisciplinary team and contribute to effective team functioning.
- Ability to identify, provide and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and challenging interactions.
- Ability to undertake research according to needs of the service, bringing doctoral level knowledge of research design and methodology, including multivariate data analysis, as appropriate for the field of clinical psychology.
Desirable
- Specialist knowledge of the theory of specialised psychological therapies in areas of physical health.
- A commitment to the evaluation of services, enthusiasm for both multi-professional and uni-professional audit, and a wish to continue to develop expertise in the field.
Physical Requirements
Essential
- Ability to maintain periods of prolonged concentration frequently throughout the day as required for complex methods of psychological assessment and delivery of interventions.
Additional Information
Essential
- Willingness to broaden range of skills and take initiative in both own professional development and the development of the service.
- Enthusiasm for a broad range of psychological phenomena, an interest in models of service delivery, and an ability to articulate the value added by clinical/health psychology services within the context of multi-disciplinary physical health care services setting.
- A commitment to promoting equality of opportunity through all aspects of working and professional practice with both colleagues and all client groups.
- Ability to contain and work with organisational stress and ability to 'hold' the stress of others.
- Commitment to continuing professional development, partnership working and to reflective clinical practise.
- Well-developed IT skills including data entry and analysis of research data using Microsoft programmes and appropriate statistical packages such as SPSS.
Desirable
- Experience of working within a multi-cultural environment.
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.
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see
NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).
Additional information
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.
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see
NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).
