High Intensity Counsellor

Hillingdon NHS Talking Therapies service is looking to attract experienced, accredited counsellors / psychotherapists who wish to work in the NHS, have or want to train in one of the brief relational modality therapies: Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy, Person Centred Experiential Counselling for Depression, Couple Therapy for Depression or Behavioural Couples Therapy and who may want to train further as modality supervisors. We are a supportive, friendly and experience group of clinicians with core training in psychodynamic or integrative counselling training, working within a busy and creative service.

As NHS workers, we value highly the opportunity to offer a range of free, short-term therapies to adults presenting with emotional and relational difficulties and to staff in the health and social care sectors living and working in our borough. Our staff also work in specialist perinatal and long-term conditions areas of the service.

Our counselling service works to a brief model, offering around 8 sessions of generic counselling or around 16 sessions for therapy within one of the specialist relational modalities. Clinicians offer 5 sessions within each working day of 7.5 hours, with adjustments to accommodate service meetings, paid CPD and training and generous paid holiday leave. Our post-holders work between 3 days (22.5hrs) and 5 days (37.5hrs) a week, one day of which must be a Tuesday. Individual supervision of provided fortnightly with additional supervision for modality clinical work.

Staff currently work to a mix of home
- and site-working in order to meet the demand for face to face work and for team cohesion and wellbeing. Clinicians currently offer a blend of telephone, video and face to face sessions, dependent on patient choice and clinical need. Service hours are between 8am and 6pm and clinicians are expected to provide some later working hours within their week. Our primary hub is at Beaufort House in central Uxbridge. CNWL offers flexible working to meet staff wellbeing for a health work-life balance.

You will join a friendly, highly experienced and diverse team of clinicians and have opportunities to work in innovative areas of the service including our perinatal and post-Covid provisions.

The Hillingdon Talking Therapies Service is an innovative and progressive Talking Therapies (formerly IAPT) service working with Healthcare and Perinatal services, as part of Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust. We work in close partnership with our local GP Confederation within North West London, with other mental health services, with CNWL Community physical healthcare teams and with voluntary sector and other specialist services delivering primary care support and treatment, including the primary care eating disorders team STRIDES, services for Young Adults, outreach initiatives supporting those suffering healthcare and economic inequalities and building relationships with community connectors.

Accredited Counsellors without modality training enter preceptorship positions at band 6 including outer London weighting, to undertake funded training for a further year in one of the relational modality trainings with advancement to band 7. Those qualified as practitioners in an IAPT modality join at band 7 with outer London weighting.

The successful applicant may have contact with patients or service users. As an NHS Trust we strongly encourage and support vaccination as this remains the best way to protect yourself, your family, your colleagues and of course patients and service users when working on our healthcare settings.