Job responsibilities
At ABL Health, we believe that care should be human, holistic, and rooted in understanding. Our Intensive Personalised Support (IPS) service was created to provide early, targeted, and impactful interventions for individuals, mainly children and young people who are at risk of entering care or facing residential placement breakdowns.
This is a hybrid role covering two services. The Intensive Personalised Support (IPS) service and our new Be U Wirrals Children Looked After (CLA) service at ABL Health offers a truly distinctive opportunity for professionals who are passionate about working both preventatively and responsively with individuals facing complex life challenges.
Our approach starts by meeting people where they are. We build trust and gather rich information to co-develop psychologically informed, behaviourally grounded support. Whether the focus is autism, learning disability, mental health, family trauma, or safeguarding, we dont rely on labels we tailor every plan to the person.
IPS provides intensive, high-impact support typically delivered over several months, with multiple sessions per week lasting around 34 hours each. These sessions are facilitated by a dedicated team of support workers, assistant psychologists, and PBS practitioners, all working under the guidance of our experienced clinical team. Each support package is tailored to build trusting relationships, address individual goals and challenges, strengthen families and support systems, and promote long-term, sustainable change enabling us to step back once consistent progress is achieved. When required, qualified psychologists or members of our operational leadership team provide additional input through more complex assessments or interventions. Safeguarding is a fundamental part of our practice, supported by access to designated senior safeguarding officers.
Be U Wirral provide therapeutic support to CLA and their carers. The overall purpose of the Service is to provide a team of mental health professionals with oversight from a psychologist to support children and young people in care with their mental health and wellbeing. The service will receive referrals, assess the emotional wellbeing needs of individual CLA and develop and monitor individual tailored therapeutic programmes. The focus of the team will be working with key professionals (including social workers, foster carers, and residential workers) to deliver therapeutic programmes, directly and indirectly and enhance the skills of the support network around the CLA including advice and training. Direct therapeutic work with children and young people will also be required.
Our IPS model follows four key stages: Assessment & Relationship Building, where we co-produce outcomes with clients and commissioners and develop informed intervention plans; Active Intervention, where support is delivered and continuously refined through clinical review; Maintenance, which ensures that positive change remains stable and consistent; and Positive Endings & Transitions, focused on concluding support in a planned and supportive way, recognising the impact endings may have on individuals with previous difficult experiences. This process is dynamic and flexible, reinforced by regular multidisciplinary team meetings that include both internal staff and external professionals, as well as active participation from clients themselves.
As a Clinical, Counselling, or Forensic Psychologist, you will provide clinical leadership and oversight across the IPS and Be U Wirral services. You will work as part of a dynamic, supportive management team to shape a service that is truly life-changing for those it supports.
This role is ideal for someone who thrives in complexity, enjoys developing others, and wants to work beyond traditional clinical environments. You will be involved from initial referral discussions to the evaluation of long-term outcomes, combining direct client input with strategic and supervisory responsibilities.
As the Clinical/Forensic/Counselling Psychologist within the IPS and Be U Wirral leadership teams, you will play a vital role in safeguarding client wellbeing, driving service quality, and embedding clinical best practices throughout our operations. This is a varied and rewarding role with a strong focus on clinical leadership, collaboration, and service development. Your core responsibilities will include:
1. Referral Oversight: Collaborate with the Service Lead to clinically review incoming referrals, assessing their suitability and identifying key risk factors or missing information early in the process.
2. Case Load: To manage own caseload delivering a high quality targeted emotional support service to children looked after. Ensure assessment is provided in a range of settings suitable to meet the needs of the clients
3. Clinical Leadership: Assign a clinician to each accepted IPS case, maintaining overall clinical responsibility. Youll oversee and guide assistant psychologists and PBS practitioners, ensuring safe, effective, and person-centred intervention. Support the process of staff participation in the formulation of new ideas/suggestions to improve client care and service delivery. For Be U Wirral, you will clinically oversee all cases through supervision and discussions with the clinical team.
4. Clinical Reporting: Provide supervision and quality assurance for any clinical reports, ensuring robust reporting systems and high-quality care records.
5. Assessment, formulation & Intervention Planning: Supervise the development of tailored assessment, formulation and intervention plans, including both client-specific and service-wide outcome measures. When necessary, carry out complex assessments or interventions directly.
6. Clinical Supervision: Deliver robust clinical supervision, encompassing both written work and direct practice, to the clinical teams across both services.
7. Training & Development: Identify training needs and deliver bespoke clinical training to both teams and wider service. Work alongside operational leadership to maintain and evolve the services training matrix.
8. MDT Leadership: Chair internal multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings and support clinicians in setting them up. Contribute actively to divisional MDTs, ensuring collaborative, multi-agency working.
9. Clinician Development: Promote CPD and skills growth among your supervisees, recommending internal or external training opportunities as appropriate.
10. Integrated Working: Liaise with internal and external stakeholders to coordinate assessments and interventions. Prioritise clear, ethical communication while navigating consent, capacity, and safeguarding frameworks.
11. Consent & Capacity: Champion high standards around consent and capacity practices, supporting both policy development and case-level application.
12. Outcome Measurement: Oversee the consistent collection, analysis, and reporting of routine outcome measures, ensuring our interventions are both impactful and measurable.
13. Collaborative Culture: Work with operational managers to integrate therapeutic thinking into daily practice, blending clinical insight with service delivery expertise. Undertake delegated responsibilities as agreed with the Service Lead/Head of service.
14. Risk Management: Contribute to the creation and ongoing refinement of clinical risk assessments, ensuring a proactive approach to client safety.
15. Complex Case Guidance: Provide high-level clinical input to teams supporting clients with complex behavioural and psychological needs.
16. Innovation & Service Improvement: Stay abreast of emerging models and innovations in complex case management, championing their integration into both services.
17. Effective Communication: Maintain clear, respectful, and timely communication with clients, colleagues, and partner agencies. Proactively manage follow-up actions.
18. Service Evaluation: Lead or support service improvement initiatives, with a focus on systems and approaches that drive better outcomes.
19. Legislative Knowledge: Maintain a strong understanding of relevant legislation and its implications for practice and client rights.
20. Governance Engagement: Contribute to Progress Review Boards, Restraint Reduction reviews, and other divisional forums where clinical insight shapes safer service delivery.
21. Model Development: Support the evolution of clinical models and processes, helping embed consistent, effective practice across ABL.
Throughout all activities, you will work within ABLs robust governance systems applying key principles around safeguarding, data protection, incident reporting (Radar), and risk management to protect clients and staff alike.
Who Were Looking For:
HCPC-registered Clinical, Counselling or Forensic Psychologist
Demonstrable experience in supervising assistant psychologists and/or PBS practitioners
Experience working with children, young people, or adults with complex behavioural, emotional or psychological needs
Understanding of Positive Behaviour Support (PBS), formulation-led practice, and trauma-informed approaches
Skilled in multi-agency work with families, education, social care, and health systems
Ability to contribute to organisational development and service improvement
Please note that we are not able to offer sponsorship for this role
