Featured job: Various roles, Elysium Healthcare

'I genuinely believe Elysium is a great place for psychologists to work', says Karen Howell, Clinical Director-Psychology Projects. 'It offers a huge range of jobs; its approach to CPD and career pathways is better than any other I've experienced; it's one of the few places where some clinical directors are psychologists. We have a new eco initiative and our values of kindness, integrity, teamwork, and excellence pretty well sum up the supportive culture.' 

Elysium is one of the biggest mental health providers in the UK. Its owner, Ramsay Health Care, is increasing access to mental health services globally which, in the UK, reflects the NHS's priorities. 'We're beginning to move towards parity between mental health and physical services. Elysium has existed for about seven years. It started with only 22 hospitals but has been developing ever since and continues to grow. We operate mostly in-patient, but also some community, services stretching right the way across England and Wales, from Cumbria to Devon and from Wales to East Anglia.'  

Elysium's growth is reflected in the jobs which are advertised – some in brand new sites, some in existing ones. 'We offer a huge range of services from the growing neuropsychological area to autism, learning disabilities, adult, older adults, children and eating disorders. We operate a growing number of secure sites. We presently have vacancies ranging from assistant to lead psychologists. From a career point of view, whatever your specialist interests or experience levels we can cater for them.'

Karen is building new retention and recruitment initiatives. 'For instance we focus on the front end of careers, funding our assistant psychologists to train in clinical and forensic psychology at the University of Birmingham. We are specifically recruiting graduates and have a one-year academy programme. In turn, some of the new roles in start-up services we're advertising involve setting up and creating a vision for a department and offer the opportunity to step up into a leadership role. A number of senior psychologists are well known for being actively involved in research and publishing; we offer a formalised programme of research and a number of assistant psychologists in training carry out Elysium-related research.'

Increasingly Elysium is strengthening its profile as an employer, Karen tells me, attending conferences and exhibitions to talk to and recruit psychologists. 'This ensures we keep up with potential candidates' interests, recruit talent and also look good on psychologists' CVs.'

Karen's final point: 'Given what I've described, you can see that we welcome speculative enquiries if Elysium sounds like somewhere you'd like to work.'

- Search the roles via our Jobs in Psychology website.