Job Overview
The Essex Maternal Mental Health Service ( MMHS), By your side launched in October 2023 aims to integrate maternity, reproductive health and psychological therapy for women and birthing parents experiencing mental health difficulties arising from, or directly related to, the maternity experience.
A fully therapeutic service is offered since June 2024 for women and birthing parents accessing the 5 maternity units across Essex.
This service has been providing targeted care and support to those women and birthing parents whose needs are not currently being met in other services, including those who have experienced trauma and loss in the perinatal period and who are not eligible for specialist perinatal mental health services.
By Your Side Provides Therapeutic Service For Accessing The 5 Maternity Units Across Essex To Women And/or Birthing Parents Who Has a Moderate To Severe Mental Health Response After Suffering a Perinatal Loss, This Includes
- Miscarriage (including recurrent/multiple miscarriages)
- Still birth
- Termination
- Neonatal death (in the UK this is the death of a live-born baby that occurs within 28 days of birth)
The By Your Side clinical team includes clinical psychologists, psychological therapists and specialist maternal mental health midwives. The ability to work flexibly and positively in multidisciplinary teams is therefore essential.
Main duties of the job
We are looking for Psychological therapist (Clinical/Counselling Psychologist/CBT Therapist) at 0.6 WTE on a permanent basis.
Bases are across Colchester and Costal Towns (Tendering, Clacton on Sea, Manningtree, Frinton-on-Sea) for this post, but you may be required to work across services within the geographical area in which the Trust operates. Hybrid working of both face to face and online working is encouraged as well as home visiting when indicated.
They will provide psychological assessment and evidence based psychological therapy to women who experience moderate to severe mental health difficulties following birth trauma, perinatal loss (including early miscarriage, recurrent miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal death).
You will work collaboratively with the multi-disciplinary team of specialist maternal mental health midwives to provide a specialist, trauma-informed psychological service.
We are looking to recruit an experienced psychological therapist who has experience of working with people with trauma and/or loss to join our supportive and passionate team.
There will be regular clinical supervision from the Clinical Lead/Principal Practitioner Psychologist.
Working for our organisation
EPUT are looking for motivated staff who shares our Trust values of Care, Learn and Empower. In return, EPUT can offer you a range of benefits and development including;
- Season Ticket Loans
- NHS discounts for staff
- Excellent Training facilities and opportunities
- Buying and Selling annual leave scheme
- The opportunity to work bank shifts and expand knowledge and experience in other areas
- Salary Sacrifice schemes including lease cars and Cycle to Work
- Day One Flexible Employer
The Trust supports and actively encourages flexible working for all employees. We offer many options and you are encouraged to ask the recruiting manager what is possible for this role. If appointed, you will have the opportunity to apply for a flexible working request from the first day of your employment
Join our Staff bank
What is Staff Bank?
Our EPUT NHS staff bank is an entity managed by the trust that hires clinical and non-clinical healthcare professionals to take on shifts at our trust hospitals and community settings. Here at EPUT we maintain our own bank of specialist staff to ensure that we are able offer safe and effective care at all times.
All our permanent staff are automatically enrolled onto the staff bank however this does not mean you have to work any additional shifts, but the option is there for you if you wish.
If you are joining our Trust in a fixed term role, please indicate on your New Starter Paperwork that you wish to join our staff bank
Please note - staff who are formally at risk within the organisation will be given priority in securing alternative employment. Should it come to light that a post being advertised by the Trust is considered ‘suitable alternative employment’ to an individual who is at risk, the recruiting manager will be advised and the post will be withdrawn from NHS Jobs.
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Applications for this role should be written by the applicant. If artificial intelligence (AI) programmes are used then the application may be rejected due to this document being an important part of the assessment process. This does not prevent applicants seeking appropriate support with applications should they need to for the purposes of any declared disability.
Important Professional References
Make sure that as a part of your application you have professional references with business contract information covering your last three year employment history. We are unable to accept personal or character references.
As a newly appointed employee you are responsible for incurring the cost of your initial DBS check relevant to your post, the amount will be deducted from your first salary with the Trust.
Applications for Job Share are positively welcomed.
Equal Opportunities Employer
Our Trust is an Equal Opportunities Employer. We particularly welcome applications from people with experience of using mental health services. We also hold the Disability two tick symbol and have made the pledge to commit to employing more people with learning disabilities, we encourage people with a disability to apply. If you require this application form in another format i.e. Braille or audio tape etc, please contact the Recruitment Department on 01375 364513 or email
[email protected] and we can arrange for this to be dispatched to you.
The Trust has the right to expire vacancies prior to the closing date if they so wish. The Trust makes every attempt to contact all applicants and we strongly advise that you check the email account which is registered with NHS Jobs regularly, we would advise however due to the high number of applications we receive that if you have not heard from us within three weeks of the closing date your application has been unsuccessful on this occasion.
We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults, and expect all staff to undertake this commitment. Applicants will be subject to robust safer recruitment processes.
Covid Vaccination
Although Covid vaccinations are no longer a mandatory requirement within the NHS we continue to encourage and support the vaccination uptake as this remains the best line of defence against Covid19. The safety of our staff and patients is a top priority for us at EPUT.
If you would like to book a Covid vaccination or would like more information please contact us by emailing
[email protected] .
