Senior Psychologist

Permanent full time opportunity, Monday-Friday
Attractive salary & Serco benefits
Open to Registered Psychologists or Social Workers

About the Role

The programs department at Acacia prison delivers offence specific interventions that focus on targeting specific prisoner needs, including violence and addictions. Programs are co-facilitated for 10-12 participants under the supervision of a Senior Psychologist/Social Worker and Program Manager. This role is responsible for ensuring the integrity and quality of the suite of offending behaviour programs delivered. An integral part of this is the supervision and development of staff delivering these interventions.

Our programs encourage, challenge, and empower individuals to make positive and pro-social choices to benefit themselves, the prison and the wider community. The role of Senior Psychologist/Social Worker is to provide clinical supervision to staff delivering interventions in an attempt to challenge offending behaviours, whilst promoting and supporting positive behaviour change. The Senior Psychologist / Social Worker ensures the needs of individual prisoners are met; develops strategies to improve prisoner engagement and responsivity issues, including group participation and engaging prisoners who may present with barriers (including mental health and educational barriers). Support completion of, review and endorse progress and treatment reports.

About You

You will be a natural leader, ready to make your mark within an established, global business.

You have extensive experience facilitating programs in a similar environment, or in the community, and understand risk relating to offending behaviours. You have knowledge of cognitive behavioural approaches to facilitate change in offender behaviour and have knowledge of clinical disorders which are of significant prevalence within the prison population. You have knowledge of the "What Works" literature, the Risk Needs Responsivity model, and the Good Lives Model. You're a respectful and professional person who demonstrates exceptional moral values in everything that you do. You demonstrate and promote respect for dignity, culture, ethnicity, values and beliefs of prisoners and colleagues.

To be successful in this role, you will have:

The highest levels of personal integrity and ethical behaviour
Psychologist: Degree in Psychology AND eligible for full registration with the Australian Health Practitioners Registration Association (AHPRA) OR
Social Worker: Degree in Social Work; AND eligibility for registration with the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW)
Demonstrated experience working as part of a multidisciplinary team in the provision of psychological services and programs, preferably within a correctional or other institutional setting
Significant background in group facilitation, ideally dealing with complex mental health or behavioural concerns
Leadership/ supervisor experience (highly regarded)

This is a position of trust and responsibility and to support this we will conduct a thorough probity assessment, which includes national police check and Department of Justice Clearance as an essential selection component for this role.

Serco requires employees in this role to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our people. Please consider this requirement when submitting your application.

About Acacia Prison

Acacia Prison is a medium security prison facility which opened in May 2001. Located in Wooroloo, Western Australia approximately an hours' drive from Perth.

What We Offer

Free onsite Car Parking
Free Lunch time cooked meals provided on site
Flexible salary packaging options, including novated leasing for new and used vehicles
, which includes a great range of career support programs, wellbeing packages and financial benefits, available through us and our selected partners, including access to Fitness Passport
Generous employee referral program
The opportunity to broaden your experience and learn from expert colleagues whilst applying your skills in new way

Serco and Proud

At Serco, not only is the nature of the work we do important, but everyone also has an important role to play from caring for vulnerable people to managing complex public services. We are a team of 60,000+ globally and 16,000+ in Asia Pacific responsible for delivering essential public services in areas including defence, justice, immigration, healthcare, facilities management and citizen services.

To learn more please visit

Join Us

If you are inspired to make a positive different and would like to be considered for this opportunity, please apply now.

Serco's values of Trust, Care, Innovation and Pride underpin everything we do. We are curious, creative and collaborative. Our people matter and make a difference every day.

We seek and celebrate diversity and encourage applications from all backgrounds and cultures including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, LGTBQI+, veterans and people with disability. By joining Serco you will have access to Employee Networks led by colleagues who are passionate about diversity, inclusion and belonging.

New Zealand

Serco's values of Trust, Care, Innovation and Pride underpin everything we do. We are curious, creative and collaborative. Our people matter and make a difference every day.

We seek and celebrate diversity and encourage applications from all backgrounds and cultures including Māori and Pasifika, LGTBQI+, veterans and people with disability. By joining Serco you will have access to Employee Networks led by colleagues who are passionate about diversity, inclusion and belonging.

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