Senior Therapy Lead

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Thank you for your interest in the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT). This is an exciting time to join us and be part of our journey to improve mental health care across North London and deliver excellent services to our local people. We will achieve this through the North London Way, as we:

• Collaborate at every level by living our values to create the right conditions for us all to work together.
• Develop our new Trust culture, to help make our new Trust a great place to work and to receive great care.
• Empower our teams to lead the planned improvements in our services, by skilling them and giving them the tools to make the changes.
• Focus on delivering excellence at every level to improve our performance and ensure consistently high-quality care across all our services.
• Ensure that research, quality improvement, and technology lead the way and are embedded in our services.
• Take a trauma informed approach to everything we do

We proactively welcome diversity in our workforce and pride ourselves on being an inclusive employer. We aim to recruit from our local communities and provide opportunities to all including apprenticeships, veterans, care leavers and more.

The North London Way to deliver: Better Mental Health, Better Lives, Better Communities.

Our trust website is: https://www.northlondonmentalhealth.nhs.uk/

Job overview

NCEL CAMHS Home Treatment Team (HTT) provides a community based intensive provision as an alternative to in-patient care for children and young people. HTT service operates within the NHS Long Term Plan and NCEL objectives, focusing on improving access, reducing hospital admissions, and ensuring timely, community-based support for mental health needs. This specification is aligned with the recommendations outlined in the NHS England Guidance (2024) "Urgent and Emergency Mental Health Care for Children and Young People: National Implementation Guidance."
HTT offers intensive, short-term interventions designed to stabilise the individual and their family environment, promoting recovery and preventing the need for inpatient care. The service ensures that care is delivered close to home, reducing unnecessary hospital admissions, and promoting recovery through tailored evidence-based interventions. The service operates under the governance of the NCEL Provider Collaborative.
Following the temporary closure of Simmons House CAMHS inpatient service, as part of interim plans, North Central London (NCL) CAMHS HTT will enhance its current service provision to support alternative treatment pathways for young people.

Main duties of the job

• Contribute to the strategic development, planning and organization of the Crisis Pathway as a member of the senior leadership team, in line with local strategies and national priorities, working in partnership with a range of agencies and other senior management.
• Provide clinical and professional supervision for psychological therapist within the service and oversee the leadership of psychological therapists within the pathway.
• To provide highly specialist psychological advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals.
• To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care as well as delivering direct therapeutic interventions to young people and their families.
• To lead and develop psychologically informed provision across the NCL HTT including reflective practice, group supervision, and other ways of working.
• To work collaboratively with staff and service users, including via co-production to support service development.
• To provide teaching, workshops and training internally as needed.
• To support with audit and quality improvement

Working for our organisation

• The partnership between Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust (BEH) and Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust (C&I) is going from strength to strength since it was originally established in 2021 forming the North London Mental Health Partnership.

  In order to meet the needs of the new Partnership services you may be required from time to time to work at different locations to your normal place of work. This may mean that you are required to work at any location that fall under Barnet, Enfield and Harringay Trust and Camden and Islington Trust. The Trust reserves the right to require staff to work at such other places or locations as it considers reasonable and necessary on a temporary or permanent basis.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

We are looking for a motivated practitioner psychologist or systemic psychotherapist to provide leadership to the psychological therapists on the pathway, and to work within the senior leadership team to influence the strategic direction of the pathway. This is to promote psychological and trauma informed thinking within the care provided by teams across the pathway.

Please see the person specification/job description document for a detailed description of main responsibilities. This is not exhaustive however and other responsibilities can be included across BEH CAMHS as required.

Please note that we reserve the right to close this application early if a sufficient number of applicants is reached - please apply early to avoid missing out.

Person specification

Qualifications and Registration

Essential criteria

• Doctorate / PhD / additional training in relevant profession (counselling, forensic, clinical or educational psychology) or An AFT recognised four year training leading to a qualification in Systemic Psychotherapy/Family Therapy.
• Professional healthcare registration, related to qualification above. (HCPC, UKCP)

Desirable criteria

• Post-qualification training to supervisor level in one or more additional specialised areas of therapeutic practice relevant to children and young people.
• Specialist training in supervision that has led to 'approved' clinical supervisor status
• Management or leadership training

Skills & Abilities

Essential criteria

• Well-developed clinical skills working with children, young people & families.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including communication sensitive information to young people, parents/carers and other professionals, and dealing with complaints.
• Skills in working effectively within and across organisational boundaries.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and nonprofessional groups. Skills in providing teaching/training and professional supervision
• Good computer skills,IT knowledge and knowledge of computer record systems
• A high degree of self-awareness and an ability to reflect on personal and professional attitudes and accept feedback.
• Awareness of current national guidelines and policies in the field of CAMHS and appropriate legislation

Desirable criteria

• Skills in facilitating reflective spaces or group supervision

Experience & Knowledge

Essential criteria

• A significant number of post qualification years of experience at Band 8a or higher in a children / young person's mental health setting.
• Experience of clinical audits and developing action plans for improvement.
• Experience of child safeguarding and risk procedures and how these apply in CAMHS.

Desirable criteria

• Experience of representing psychological professions at policy level
• Experience of implementing trauma informed practice across systems
• Experience of leadership

Personal Qualities

Essential criteria

• Proven qualities in sustaining the mental, emotional, and physical demands of specialized therapeutic work with distressed children, adolescents, and their families/carer networks

References will be required to cover your last 3 years of employment/training. One has to be from your current or most recent employer and the others from your previous employer. The references should be from persons with management responsibility or HR.

If you have been unemployed for a period of four years or more, please give the details of your last employer and one character referee of your choice (not members of your family). If more applicable, references will be requested from your teacher or head of faculty. Please ensure you provide full contact details.

Vacancies that are advertised as Fixed Term Contracts will also be available as secondment opportunities for substantive internal staff.

Please be aware that your documents eg. Passport/NI Card, will be electronically scanned using Home Office accredited Verification System.

Due to the high number of applications that are received for some posts, we will close vacancies before the stated closing date once the first 50 applications are received. Therefore, please apply as soon as possible.

All non-medical posts with the Trust are subject to a probationary period of six months, during which time you will be required to demonstrate to the Trust's satisfaction, your suitability for the position in which you will be employed.

Should you not hear from us within three working weeks of the closing date for this post, then regretfully in this instance, you have not been shortlisted.

By applying for this role, you accept in the event you are successful that your personal data may be transferred from the Trust to another NHS organisation where your employment transfers within the NHS. This is in accordance with the streamlining programme which is aimed at improving efficiencies within the NHS both to make costs savings for NHS organisations but also to save you time when your employment transfers.

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/SP (PDF, 528.3KB)
• JD/SP (PDF, 528.3KB)
• Functional Requirements (PDF, 258.2KB)
• A comprehensive guide for candidates (PDF, 875.7KB)