Overview of the Post
The full-time Systemic Psychotherapist will join a team which provides a well-established, highly specialist tier 3.5 service for young people in Bexley. You will work with adolescents up to 18 years and their families/carers, with significant and acute mental health difficulties who are at risk of requiring Tier 4 inpatient care. The service offers assertive and intensive multi-disciplinary interventions as a community alternative to inpatient care. The team uses a mentalization-based approach (AMBIT and MBT-A).
Main duties of the job
This post holder is situated within Bexley CAMH Service.
To provide the CAMHS team with a high-quality, evidence-based systemic psychotherapy service to children, their families, carers, and professional networks, in keeping with CYP-IAPT principles.
To provide specialist systemic assessment and therapy to families with children and adolescents who are referred to CAMHS.
To provide specialist advice and consultation regarding diagnoses and treatment to CAMHS colleagues and external agencies, working autonomously within professional guidelines and within a multi-disciplinary team, contributing to overall service delivery as required.
To contribute to the development, implementation, and audit of services for families with children presenting to the Service.
Job description
Job responsibilities
Clinical:
1. To provide a specialist systemic assessment of referrals of a significant and complex nature in order to formulate and implement plans for the treatment and/or management of a child's or adolescent's mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework and employing methods based upon evidence. To use routine outcome measures as laid down by the Trust.
2. To assess children, adolescents, and their families as part of a risk assessment.
3. To consult to parents/carers (including foster parents) as part of a treatment plan.
4. To work in ways which are sensitive to and appropriate for the needs of families from a wide range of racial, cultural, and religious backgrounds. This includes abilities to understand and offer therapeutic interventions to a variety of family forms including single parents, same-sex couples and their wider family networks, accommodated children and their network of care, children with learning difficulties, and children who are on the Child Protection Register, and parents with mental health difficulties. Competence is required in undertaking systemic therapy with families through the use of an interpreter where families do not yet have sufficient understanding of the English language.
5. To provide specialist systemic psychotherapy with clinical autonomy drawing on a range of models and wherever possible brief interventions. To practice in a way which is inclusive and considerate of the needs of each individual in the system including family members in their varying developmental stages and current emotional state.
6. To make highly skilled evaluations and decisions about treatment options taking into account highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the child, family, or group, and their difficulties.
7. To be responsible for implementing a range of systemic psychotherapeutic interventions for children, adolescents, and their families, including couples and groups, drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses in reaching a formulation and treatment plan. Interventions may include family therapy, individual work, chairing professionals and network meetings, liaising with other agencies, observations of patients in different settings, and the use of a range of systemic models.
8. To exercise full autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment, and discharge of clients, and formulate effective care plans in collaboration with the client and family. To undertake risk assessment and risk management relevant to individual patients, including protective and risk factors present in the network of significant relationships, and to do this using the knowledge of the multi-professional context that is a mental health service for the locality.
9. To work jointly and collaboratively with other team members in order to enhance and develop work with families by providing specialist knowledge and skills.
10. To provide specialist consultation, advice, and guidance to other professionals at all levels working with families both within the service and in partner agencies. This will include liaison and working with professional networks involved with highly complex, emotive, and often conflictual issues such as those involving child protection, deliberate self-harm, violence, trauma, suicide risk, criminal offending behavior, sexualized behavior, and mental health problems of parents.
11. To maintain current knowledge of the operation of video equipment and promote ethical and effective use in line with Directorate policy. To introduce this practice to families in a sensitive way, and to advise and instruct clinicians in other disciplines and systemic psychotherapy trainees on the fitting and appropriate use of this therapeutic tool. To use video tape review to enhance the skills of colleagues and to help parents understand their family's difficulties, dilemmas, and traumatic experiences.
12. To act as care coordinator, as required, taking responsibility for initiating, planning, and review of care plans and giving consideration to the views of patients, their family, carers, referring agents, and other professionals involved in the network of care. This includes organizing complex professional network meetings.
13. To work in accordance with CAMHS and team objectives by adhering to Trust and Directorate policies, including risk assessment in all work, ensuring care plans are in place, recording up to date, attending and contributing a systemic view in case discussion and team meetings.
14. To be an active member of the Family Therapy Clinic.
15. To contribute to overall service delivery and development as required.
16. To attend monthly professionals meetings and team meetings.
17. To supervise band 7 systemic psychotherapists and systemic psychotherapy trainees providing live supervision in family therapy clinics and retrospective supervision on an individual basis.
Person Specification
Experience
Essential
* Experience working as a FT for 2+ years
Qualification
Essential
* Family Therapist qualification
Relevant additional experience
Essential
* Other relevant experience (working with YP, risk, AMBIT)
Employer details
Employer name
Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust
Address
Bexley CAMHS
Park Crescent
Erith
DA8 3EE
Any attachments will be accessible after you click to apply.
277-6854499-CYP #J-18808-Ljbffr