Specialist Family Therapist

Job content

Job Overview

We have an exciting opportunity for a Specialist Family Therapist to join our Child and Adolescent Inpatient Service at Mill Lodge, York. Mill Lodge is a Tier 4 General Adolescent Unit for children and young people aged 13-18 years old presenting with complexity including mental health difficulties, exploitation, eating difficulties and systemic difficulties. We are a new, developing and dynamic psychological therapies team that are passionate about inclusion, co-production and innovation. The service takes a trauma-informed, attachment and systemic approach to understanding the presentations and needs of young people and their families. Our work is underpinned and informed by a range of evidence based psychological models, including systemic family therapy. This role will also involve supporting and contributing to the development of our new alternative to hospital admission service for children, young people and families presenting with complexity around eating. This is a unique and innovative role for a specialist family therapist to contribute to service development and systems change.

We are committed to supporting continued professional development, with a number of our team accessing further accredited training in specialist therapy modalities.

Informal enquiries and visits are encouraged. Please contact Dr Romana Farooq (Consultant Clinical Psychologist) on Romana.Farooq1@nhs.net if you are interested in finding out more.

Main duties of the job

You will provide a highly specialist, evidence-based, systemic psychotherapy service to clients and families.

You will be responsible for developing the systemic family therapy practice, and develop and maintain liaison with external mental health teams, working autonomously within professional guidelines and within the overall framework of the Leeds and York Partnership Foundation Trust.

You will also provide highly specialist advice and consultation regarding systemic formulations and treatment to CYPMHS colleagues, external agencies, working autonomously within professional guidelines. This will be combined with providing support, consultation and advice to the multi-disciplinary in-patient team, young people and families.

Working for our organisation

The Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LYPFT) is the main provider of Mental Health and Learning Disability services in Leeds. We also provide specialist inpatient services in York and some highly specialised services across the country. As a teaching trust with strong links to local universities, we are a centre of excellence for teaching, research and development.

There are many benefits of working for LYPFT including fantastic employee wellbeing support, 27 - 33 days annual leave, flexible working and remote working arrangements, the NHS Pension Scheme (LYPFT pays 20.6% into your scheme each year), coaching, support and opportunities for career development and training and education support alongside a range of exclusive discounts and payment schemes including for cars, extra leave days and more organisations such as Blue Light Card, Health Service Discounts and NHS Discount Offers.

We also have an incredible bank department, offering variety of roles in nursing, allied health professions, healthcare support worker and administration clerical. Permanent employees are automatically added to bank. Bank-only workers can choose the hours they want to work and will have the opportunity to gain additional experience, keep skills up to date, develop new ones and earn extra money without having to commit to a permanent role. For an informal discussion or more information please contact the team bankstaffingdepartment.lypft@nhs.net

Detailed Job Description And Main Responsibilities

You will have great interpersonal and communication skills, and be able to establish a professional working relationship with the MDT and clinical support teams, and to build and maintain close links with other key services and agencies. You will be calm and confident around people in distress, and have a reflective and considered approach to problem solving.

You will have outstanding skills in assessing complex client systems, appropriate systemic formulation of presenting problems, the engagement of family members in therapeutic work and the conception of interventions to facilitate change in such systems.

Your values are essential to this role; we are looking for someone who genuinely wants to make a lasting impact on young people, who insists on doing things with care and diligence and is able to think on their feet.

The CYPMHS inpatient unit structure has been newly designed, specifically to enable and encourage progression; your development is vital to the service.

We’re looking to attract an experienced Family Therapist. You will be a post graduate in family/systemic therapy with training to MSc or Doctoral level or equivalent as accredited by the Association of Family Therapy. You will also have significant experience of practice following qualification in relevant first profession. Masters level qualification in family systemic psychotherapy or equivalent, and hold a current UKCP registration

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Qualification in core mental health or social welfare profession (e.g; social work, mental health nursing, psychology, occupational therapy). Post-graduate family/systemic therapy training to MSc or Doctoral level or equivalent as accredited by the Association of Family Therapy. UKCP registration as systemic psychotherapist/family therapist
  
  

Experience

Essential criteria

• Significant experience of practice following qualification in relevant profession. Experience of working with children and young people as a qualified systemic psychotherapist/family therapist
• Experience of specialist assessment and treatment of children and young people and their families with a range of psychological/psychiatric needs and presenting with the full range of clinical severity. Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients’ psychological care and treatment, individually and within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan.
  
  

Skills

Essential criteria

• Skills in the use of specialist systemic family psychotherapy assessment, intervention and management.