Staff Wellbeing Lead Psychological Therapist

South West London and St Georges Mental Health NHS Trust

Staff Wellbeing Lead Psychological Therapist

The closing date is 09 August 2026

We are looking for an experienced, motivated and forward-thinking Principal Psychological Therapist to lead a new staff wellbeing initiative focussing on staff affected by racially motivated abuse and violence.

The post is for a fixed term of 12 months. For applicants already working at South West London & St. George's NHS Mental Health Trust, they may wish to apply for this post as a secondment. We are happy to consider job share arrangements for this post.

We particularly welcome applications from candidates from Global Majority backgrounds, including those with lived experience of racialised behaviour, as this experience would bring valuable insight to the role.

The band 8B psychological therapist will lead this project with support from a project coordinator and an Assistant Psychologist, and the post holder will report directly to and be supported by the Trust Head of Psychology & Psychotherapies.

Main duties of the job

The lead psychological therapist will establish a trauma informed response pathway following incidents of racial abuse offering early intervention and flexible access including brief one to one trauma informed psychological support on wards and services, working with multidisciplinary teams to strengthen their ability to respond constructively to racially motivated incidents.

The lead psychological therapist will work closely with Evolve, the trust's Global Majority Staff Network and the trust's Health and Wellbeing Manager at all stages of the co design of the response pathway, the design of the support provided to staff and the evaluation framework for the project. This will be an essential part of the role.

In addition, the post holder will work closely with the Health and Wellbeing Manager and other Trust stakeholders to ensure this role complements and strengthens existing wellbeing support and violence reduction and prevention activity across the Trust. The project will build on the Trust's graduated staff wellbeing offer, including self help resources, Professional Nurse Advocates, chaplaincy, the Employee Assistance Programme and local talking therapies, recognising lower uptake of formal support among Global Majority staff.

Job responsibilities

• Provide highly specialist psychological therapy informed support to staff experiencing racially motivated abuse, aggression and violence.
• Design and establish a trauma informed pathway for staff experiencing racial abuse, aggression and violence that offers flexible early intervention, provides brief one to one trauma informed psychological support and drives help seeking behaviour.
• Establish reflective practice groups aimed at frontline multidisciplinary teams to develop team support for colleagues affected by racially motivated abuse, aggression and violence.
• Develop a community of practice in which learning from the project is shared across services to support teams to develop effective methods for addressing racial dynamics, moral distress and staff wellbeing.
• Create a network of culturally informed peer debriefers to deliver culturally sensitive, trauma informed peer support that includes leading reflective learning sessions, applying trauma informed principles during supervision and incident debriefs and championing inclusive and psychologically safe cultures in teams pathways.
• Develop communication and awareness tools including a short video, written guide and support materials and simple post incident tools that can be adopted across services.
• Lead on an evaluation of the wellbeing programme and share learning including working with an independent external evaluator to set clear outcome and success metrics, producing an end of programme report and creating brief advice and guidance to support other providers to develop similar interventions.
• Contribute to wider NHS learning, including sharing emerging insights and practical resources with NHS England, NHS Charities Together and other system partners.

Person Specification Training & Qualifications

• Recognised qualification and registration in one of the core mental health professions such as psychiatric nursing, psychology, medicine, social work and occupational psychology, or other significant relevant experience and demonstrable competence to work in the mental health field in the NHS.
• Recognised advanced and highly specialist post graduate training in psychotherapy at a clinical doctorate level accredited by and or leading to registration with either the Health & Care Professions Council, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, UKCP, British Psychoanalytic Council or British Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapy.
• Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the appropriate professional registration body.
• Pre qualification training and qualifications in staff training and or other fields of applied psychology.
• Post doctoral training in a formal psychological therapy.

Experience

• Assessed and extensive experience of working as a qualified psychological therapist, including substantial post qualification experience within the designated specialty where the post is located (this will be post holder's existing area of clinical work).
• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings.
• 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.
• Experience of contributing to pre qualification training and development of clinical psychology trainees.
• Experience of supervising and supporting the development of Assistant Psychologists.

Knowledge & Skills

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management, including evidence based treatments.
• Well developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information both within and outside the NHS.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non professional groups.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex, multivariate data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.
• Knowledge of change management techniques that support new service developments.
• Ability to manage complex projects.

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.

South West London and St Georges Mental Health NHS Trust

£75,328 to £86,114 a year pro rata per annum inclusive of inner London HCAS

Unless expressly stated in the job advert the 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.

Benefits

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.