Lead Psychotherapist

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Lead Psychotherapist to join our team at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust. The successful candidate will be responsible for leading the development and delivery of our Parent-Infant Mental Health Service, working closely with our Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist and other multidisciplinary team members.

• Lead the systematic provision of a high-quality, highly specialist parent-infant psychotherapy service to clients of the CNWL PIMH service, across all sectors of care.
• Provide specialist, Parent-Infant interventions, including developing group work within the community, and/or virtually, and will contribute to implementing care plans for families with a range of mental health and social and emotional difficulties.
• Provide clinical supervision to parent-infant psychotherapists.
• Undertake and supervise highly specialist parent-infant psychotherapy assessment and treatments to service users, and support and signposting to families.
• Conduct, promote and facilitate audit and research within the perinatal field.
• Act as a specialist resource to the wider Trust and across the National professional community.
• Propose and implement policy changes within the area served by the team/service.

• Masters level preclinical training at an Association of Child Psychotherapists recognised training school; post graduate doctoral level training in clinical child psychotherapy at a training school accredited by the Association of Child Psychotherapy or Association of Child Psychotherapists Statement of Equivalence AND/OR Training in Parent-Infant Psychotherapy accredited by the BPC/UKCP
• Pre-qualification training and qualifications in relevant fields in health, social care or education settings
• Able to demonstrate considerable experience of post-qualification experience
• Assessed experience of working as a qualified Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist for a significant time with an equally significant time at as a Grade 8a or equivalent
• Extensive experience of specialist psychotherapeutic assessment and treatment of children, adolescents and their parents as a full member of a multidisciplinary team located in community, primary care, outpatient or inpatient setting
• Experience of working with a wide variety of infants (age 0-2) and their parents, and presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity and complexity
• Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care coordinator and also within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan
• Experience of raising and managing safeguarding concerns
• Experience of working in different CAMHS Tiers
• Experience of working with parent-infant psychotherapy
• Experience of the application of child psychotherapy in different cultural contexts
• Evidence of managing supervisory responsibilities, evidence of teaching about parent-infant theory and psychopathology
• Experience of supervising clinical work within the multidisciplinary team within a Clinical and Performance Management context
• Research interest in any topic relevant to PIMHS
• Experience of working within a multi-cultural framework

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychotherapeutic assessment, intervention and management
• Ability to demonstrate leadership
• Knowledge of infant mental health
• High level of knowledge of the theory and practice of short and long-term intervention and its application to a specialist area
• Ability to carry out audit and research in the area of perinatal and infant mental health
• Advanced specialist Knowledge of newborns, early infancy and child development and of theories of infant and child mental health
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to children and adolescents including child protection procedures and policies
• Ability to tolerate anxiety without recourse to premature action whilst appreciating the role of the supervisor
• Awareness of the implications of working within a managed system
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups
• Ability to monitor and assess risk and act accordingly
• Ability to create a therapeutic milieu for parents and infants together
• Ability to carry out audit and research
• Knowledge of NHS, Social Care and Education Structures, National policies and frameworks
• Knowledge of research methodology and outcome research design and ability to critically interpret research findings
• Awareness and understanding of basic research procedures and capacity to conduct simple audits of clinical work carried out by self and others