Systemic Family Therapist, Behaviour and Conduct Pathway Lead

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 have an exciting opportunity in Barking and Dagenham Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) as we are looking for an experienced Systemic family therapist, behaviour and conduct pathway lead to join our vibrant multidisciplinary team. The team is passionate about the care that we provide to young people and their families/carers. We are based in Barking Child and Family Centre.

Barking & Dagenham CAMHS was ranked 5th on highest performance service nationally by the Children's Commissioner Report January 2021. There are good connections to a number of major transport links (District Line, Overground and bus routes) within 5 minutes walking distance.

The post-holder will be a post-graduate qualified systemic family therapist fully registered with the appropriate professional or regulatory body ( UKCP).

NELFT support and encourage staff to develop professionally. In B&D CAMHS, we have a well established, rolling multidisciplinary in-house training programme. This ensures staffs are adequately supported in acquiring the appropriate skills required to deliver high quality evidence-based care and support to children, young persons and their families. We also encourage and support external personal, professional development. 

Main duties of the job

As a family therapy lead you will take the lead in offering systemic interventions in accordance with care pathways and according to NICE guidance. You will provide 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 or adolescent's mental health problems. This includes specialist assessment, facilitating multi-family groups and systemic family therapy clinics. You will provide a variety of evidence-based interventions, drawing upon your own professional skills and values as a family therapist, for children and young people presenting to the service with a range of mental health difficulties. In addition to this you will develop and deliver consultation, training and supervision to other professionals working with children and young people in other settings.

As an organisation NELFT strives to deliver services within a recovery-focused and socially inclusive approach. You will ensure that a high quality, timely, accessible, and evidence-based service is available to all service users who need it throughout the team. You will work within a diverse community, developing quality services to improve the lives of local people.

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 in engagement, health and wellbeing and key processes. The induction will be held at our head office in Rainham, Essex.

COVID-19 Vaccination
We continue to encourage all staff to ensure that they have been double vaccinated and received their booster. We recognise that taking the vaccine provides the best defence against COVID 19 for our patients, our staff and their families.

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).

High Cost Area Supplement – London
This post also attracts payment for High Cost Area Supplement of 15% of the basic salary (minimum payment of £4,313 and a maximum payment of £5,436 per annum pro rata).

Please see the attached job description and person specification for further details on this vacancy.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The successful candidate will use their evidence based clinical skills to support young children and adolescent with mental illness. You will work within an experienced and established integrated team, delivering meaningful outcomes for our young children, adolescent and families /carers.

NELFT is constantly looking at ways to improve and innovate our CAMHS services and is committed to providing all staff with dedicated time to participate and/or lead in  service development initiatives  through the Trust  Quality Improvement  (Qi) framework. 

1. Working with the MDT to provide assessments and interventions for children, young people and their families.

2. Develop high quality specialist family therapy assessment and interventions with the MDT.

3. To undertake a range of highly specialist clinical work, urgent assessment work, parenting support and specialist cases.

4. To hold a lead role in providing family therapy advice, training, consultation, and supervision to colleagues, as appropriate.

5. To be responsible for organizing and prioritizing own and others workload in the day-to- day allocation of work and support with duty cover from the long-term pathways.

6. To have organisational knowledge relating to Trust protocols and procedures and adhere to them, particularly administration of medicine and moving and handling.

7. To be responsible for providing accurate records of information required by the Trust for audit purposes.

8. To ensure effective risk management at team level by accident/incident reporting, assessing, and controlling risk and ensuring residual risks are added to the Trust register.

9. To ensure accurate record keeping, care plan, risk assessment and management plan for all children and young people referred into the service.

10. Lead the family therapy team in providing the treatment plans.

Please see the attached job description and person specification for further details on this vacancy. 

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

Qualified Systemic Family Psychotherapist registered with the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) via the College of Family Couple and Systemic Therapy, and post-graduate qualification in relevant mental health/social welfare profession with demonstrable practice over a minimum of four years.

Desirable criteria

Further training in an additional evidence - based psychological therapy Further training in the supervision of an additional psychotherapeutic modality Leadership Training

Experience

Essential criteria

Consolidated experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care, and in - patient settings.

Desirable criteria

Experience of teaching and training Experience of leading workshops/group Experience of service development or of a leadership role. Experience of conducting research

Knowledge

Essential criteria

Knowledge of UK legislation in relation to the health and welfare services to children and adolescents and mental health.

Desirable criteria

Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups ( personality disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities, children with complex

Skills

Essential criteria

Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management.

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.

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