Senior Systemic & Family Psychotherapist

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Joining #TeamNELFT means you'll become part of a welcoming and supportive working environment. We're CQC rated Good, and we want you to join us on the journey towards an Outstanding rating. NELFT has sites across North East London, Essex, Kent and Medway. We provide community and mental healthcare services to adults and children within these areas.

The Trust has award winning equality and diversity initiatives and staff health and wellbeing activities. We invest heavily in your development, because when you are valued and supported, we provide the best care to our patients. We are a Level 3 Disability Confident Leader, have been featured in the Working Families Top 10 Employers benchmark for three consecutive years, and we have achieved a Carers UK Level 1 Accreditation. Along with our staff networks and training opportunities, we work hard to embed a just and compassionate culture here at NELFT.

Find out more about NELFT careers and what makes our Trust a great place to work, in this video

Job overview

We are seeking a Band 8a Senior Family Therapist to join our busy and dynamic outpatient Children and Young People's Mental Health Service in Maidstone, Kent on a permanent contract. We are a growing and supportive multi-disciplinary team, and we are looking for a Family therapist who is genuine and passionate about young people's mental health and well-being to join us in the delivery of high quality and effective CYPMHS interventions.

This role requires a post-graduate qualified Family Therapist registered with the appropriate professional and regulatory bodies (AFT and UKCP) and have at least two years' experience in delivering family therapy in a CAMHS (or similar child and adolescent mental health) setting.

This post involves assessing and treating children and young people who present with a moderate to severe mental health difficulties in a community CAMHS setting. The successful candidate will work across the Emotional/ Neurodevelopmental, and behaviour pathways, leading and supervising the family therapy team and other multi-disciplinary team (MDT) members in the management of these cases.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will:

• coordinate family therapy interventions and formal systemic consultations, as well as supporting MDT and multi-agency colleagues with systemic formulations to support their clinical practice.
• receive regular clinical supervision and will be expected to attend and participate in MDT team meetings as well as network meetings of cases on their caseload. They will have a commitment to collaborative working and actively supporting and liaising with other health and social care professionals and partnership agencies as we promote a trauma informed model of practice within the service. CPD opportunities will be available.
• be part of the CYPMHS senior team; working with other senior clinicians in the team to develop the service and meet the changing needs of a diverse population.

Working for our organisation

Starting with NELFT

NELFT place a great deal of importance on new starters being properly welcomed and inducted into the Trust. All new starters will join the Trust on the first Monday of each month and will undertake a comprehensive induction of up to two weeks which will include mandatory training, systems training and the allocation of equipment. As part of the process new starters will have the opportunity to also meet the executive team, senior managers and attend a number of drop-in sessions focusing on engagement, health and wellbeing and key processes. The induction will be held at our head office in Rainham, Essex.

Probationary Period

This post will be subject to a probationary period. Internal applicants are exempt from the probationary period (unless you are an internal applicant currently part way through a probationary period or currently a bank member of staff).

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see the attached job description and person specification for more information about this role and working at North East London NHS Foundation Trust. We encourage you to refer closely to this when completing your application.

We welcome your application even if you do not meet all the criteria listed in the person specification. Any development needs to help you succeed in the role, can be discussed at the interview stage.

Person specification

Demostration of Trust values

Essential criteria

• Putting people First, prioritising quality, being progressive, innovative, and continually improving. Being professional and honest, promoting what is possible, independence, opportunity and choice.

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• NVQ level 2 or equivalent standard of literacy and numeracy
• Successful completion of a post-graduate training in psychological practice (e.g. psychologist, family therapist, child and adolescent psychotherapist
• To be eligible for registration as a full member of the appropriate professional body (e.g. HCPC, BACP, UKCP, AFT, ACP)

Experience

Essential criteria

• Extensive experience of working with difficult, disturbed or challenging children/young people requiring skilled and complex interventions
• working therapeutically with parents/carers/families of children and young people with complex mental health problems
• Experience of using observation (eg. In school contexts) to contribute to assessments of children
• Experience of carrying out generic assessment with other colleagues in the multi- disciplinary team
• Experience of specialist assessment carried out autonomously in order to determine the most appropriate treatment plan from a range of options for the child/young person

Knowledge

Essential criteria

• An awareness of NHS Plan, NSF and clinical governance priorities
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to children and adolescents and safeguarding procedures and policies
• Knowledge of NHS, Social Care and Education structures, national policies and frameworks, evidence based practice including NICE guidelines
• Knowledge of risk management and ability to monitor and assess risk and act accordingly to ensure safety

Skills

Essential criteria

• Ability to communicate clearly and effectively highly complex and sensitive matters to patients, which give rise to psychological distress
• Highly developed ability to integrate complex clinical information into a coherent formulation
• Specialist skill in the ability to communicate effectively, verbally and in writing complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside CAMHS/EWMHS
• Capacity to work alone, involving colleagues and manger as relevant
• Ability to use outcome monitoring across all clinical work

Benefits

We believe in bringing your authentic and best self to work, in order to deliver the best care to our patients. We are committed to supporting our employees holistically. Here is a snapshot of what is on offer at NELFT:

• A long-standing and award-winning approach to equality and diversity with supportive networks for ethnic minority staff, staff with disabilities or long term/chronic conditions and LGBT staff.
• A commitment to supporting colleagues to achieve a work life balance, through flexible working opportunities and our effortsto support our working parents and carers. This has resulted in us being recognised as a 'Top 10 Family Friendly Employer' from the Working Families Charity.
• Proactive health and wellbeing support, including access to our employee assistance programme, staff psychological support, individual wellbeing conversations and a network of health and wellbeing ambassadors.
• Detailed information about our wellbeing and benefits offer can be found in this link.

As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that's a job share, part time hours or another flexible pattern.

Supporting our Armed Forces

We recognise the valuable contribution that the Armed Forces community make to our organisation. We have signed the Armed Forces Covenant and achieved Gold Award under the Armed Forces Employer Recognition Scheme. We have supportive policies, guaranteed interview schemes for veterans. reservists and military spouses and give additional leave to our Reservists so that they can attend their annual camp.

Equal opportunities employer

We are committed to equal opportunities and diversity and positively encourage applications from all sections of the community regardless of any protected characteristic.

We are a Disability Confident employer and have made the pledge to commit to employing more people with disabilities. If you require this application in another format i.e. Braille or audio tape please contact the recruitment team on 0300 300 1530 or email recruitment@nelft.nhs.uk.

Correspondence with us

You are advised to regularly check your emails (including any junk mail/spam folders) for correspondence related to this post.

In the event of a high number of responses to any advert, NELFT reserves the right to close the vacancy early. If you do not hear from us within three weeks of the closing date then please assume you have not been successful on this occasion.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Documents to download

• JD and Person Spec (PDF, 467.5KB)
• NELFT Application - Hints and Tips (PDF, 38.4KB)