Consultant Family Therapist & Locality Lead

Are you an experienced & innovative Family Therapist?

We are in need of an experienced and innovative Family Therapist to join our service at Consultant level. This pivotal role will contribute to the ongoing development of psychological therapies within the integrated Adult Mental Health Teams (AMHTs) in Oxfordshire.

As a Consultant Family Therapist, you will play a crucial role in helping to shape the future of adult mental health services in Oxfordshire, demonstrating leadership in clinical practice, service development, supervision, training, and management. Your expertise will be instrumental in enhancing the quality and reach of our services, ensuring that we provide the best possible care to our patients and their families.

Main duties of the job

We are looking for an enthusiastic individual with extensive clinical experience, providing clinical leadership, service development, supervision, training and management.

You will be working closely with other senior Psychological Therapists and Adult Mental Health Team colleagues, together with the Clinical and Professional Lead, to develop and deliver the clinical service model, with a particular focus on the ongoing development of our family therapy clinic, which takes referrals for adults across Oxfordshire. The clinic also offers opportunities to trainee clinical psychologists and trainee doctors as well as other health care professionals.

One day a week will be working with the South Oxfordshire locality, the remaining days will have a focus on the delivery of the family clinic.

You will engage in multidisciplinary team meetings, triage case consultations, and joint initiatives, fostering an environment where diverse perspectives are respected and integrated into our service delivery.

Working for our organisation

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust provides physical, mental health and social care for people of all ages across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Swindon, Wiltshire, Bath and North East Somerset.

Our services are delivered at community bases, hospitals, clinics and people’s homes, delivering care as close to home as possible.

Our vision is that no matter who you are or where you are, you will tell us that you receive: “Outstanding care delivered by an outstanding team.”

We offer great CPD and training opportunities and have excellent links with the Oxford Centre for Psychological Health and Oxford Institute for Clinical Psychology Training, which is hosted by the Trust. We actively encourage innovation and research with opportunities for collaborations with the University of Oxford Department of Psychiatry. We also collaborate with Oxford Brookes University, Buckinghamshire New University, and the University of Bath.

We provide excellent opportunities for professional development to help you consolidate your therapy skills in a focused and supported way, monthly opportunities to meet psychological therapy colleagues from across the county for reflective practice groups and clinical updates.

Training & Qualifications

Essential criteria

• Professional postgraduate qualification in a mental health or social welfare discipline or agreed Association for Family Therapy (AFT) equivalent.
• Postgraduate qualification in family/systemic psychotherapy.
• Maintenance of UKCP registration.
• Registration as Clinical Supervisor by the Association for Family Therapy (AFT).

Desirable criteria

• Couples Therapy qualification.

Experience

Essential criteria

• Extensive experience of working as a qualified family and systemic psychotherapist with post qualification experience at a highly specialist level.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course and presenting with the full range of clinical severity across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care, in-patient and residential care settings including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse.
• Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients’ psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified family and systemic psychotherapist and also within the context of a multi-disciplinary care plan.
• Experience of teaching, training and supervision of professional and clinical staff.

Desirable criteria

• Experience of professional management of qualified and pre-qualified Family and systemic psychotherapists and/or other psychological therapies staff.
• Experience of multi-professional management of teams or services within the designated specialty.
• Experience of the application of family and systemic psychotherapy in different cultural contexts.
• Experience of collaborating with service users and carers in the development or review of service provision.

Personal

Essential criteria

• Enthusiasm for a broad range of psychological phenomena, an interest in models of service delivery, and an ability to articulate the value added by clinical/counselling psychological therapy within the context of multi-disciplinary mental health services.
• Ability to contain and work with organisational stress and ability to ‘hold’ the stress of others.
• Ability to demonstrate leadership and management skills.

Desirable criteria

• A commitment to the evaluation of services, enthusiasm for both multi-professional and uni-professional audit, and a wish to continue to develop expertise in the service area.

Knowledge & Skills

Essential criteria

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
• Advanced knowledge and skills in using a wide variety of systemic theories and interventions and the ability to use these appropriately in relation to client need, developmental stage of the client and work setting.
• A high level ability to communicate effectively at both a written and oral level complex, highly technical and clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and a wide range of lay and professional persons within and outside the NHS.
• Analytic and judgment skills in processing complex information arising from systemic understandings and ability to prioritise from a range of options while maintaining collaborative alliance with family members and fellow professionals.
• Advanced skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.
• Masters or doctoral level knowledge of research methodology consistent with systemic practice.
• Knowledge of legislation and NHS policy and its implications for both clinical practice, professional management and service development in relation to the client group and mental health.
• Advanced skills in professional supervision to meet UKCP requirements.
• Ability to work with a racially and culturally diverse community in a wide range of contexts including highly specialist skills for working therapeutically in family homes.

Desirable criteria

• Highly developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. personality Disorder, dual diagnoses, people with additional disabilities and severely challenging behaviours etc.).
• Highly developed knowledge of the theory and practice of highly specialised systemic psychotherapies.

Other

Essential criteria

• Ability to identify, provide and promote appropriate means of support to carers and staff exposed to highly distressing situations and severely challenging behaviours.
• Ability to identify, and employ, as appropriate, clinical governance mechanisms for the support and maintenance of clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive material and challenging behaviour.
• Ability to develop and use complex multi-media materials for presentations in public, professional and academic settings.
• Ability to articulate and interpret clearly the role of the profession of clinical/counselling psychology based upon a good understanding of the framework of government and national professional policy.

Desirable criteria

• Experience of working within a multicultural framework.
• Record of having published in either peer reviewed or academic or professional journals and/or books.