Principal Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

NHS; London; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job description

Principal Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

To lead on the provision of child psychotherapy services within City and Hackney Specialist CAMHS and to provide child and adolescent psychoanalytical psychotherapy alongside generic work within the service to young people and their families.

The post holder will take a senior role in line managing and supervising the psychotherapy team and other disciplines and will possibly contribute to reestablishing our psychotherapy trainee programme. This is a community-based post, located within the Emotional and Behavioural Pathway (E&B) offering flexible, evidence-based episodes of care, specialist CAPT assessments and treatments including STPP and brief psychotherapy work, including group-work and possibly being the City and Hackney Sp CAMHS group offer lead.

The post holder will directly contribute to the positive working environment within the multi-disciplinary team. The post holder will require a high degree of professional autonomy and self-management, and will be required to account for their professional practice through appraisal and audit. The postholder will be in the E&B Team 3 days a week. The post holder will play a direct role in Quality Improvement (QI) and audit projects as necessary.

Main duties of the job

1. Will provide a senior highly specialist child psychotherapy service to clients of the City and Hackney CAMHS, providing specialist child psychotherapy assessment and treatment including STPP and offering advice and consultation to non-psychotherapist colleagues and to other non-professional carers from a variety of psychoanalytic, childhood psychosocial developmental and mental health perspectives.
2. Will offer supervision to both child and adolescent psychotherapists and other disciplines/therapists who require psychodynamic supervision.
3. Will provide line management to other disciplines.
4. Will contribute to the development of the psychotherapy trainee programme within the service.
5. Will work autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the service's policies and procedures.
6. Will participate in research and audit, and contribute to policy and service development and research.

About us

Our mission is to make a positive difference to people's lives by improving the quality of life for all we serve. Our values are: We Care, We Respect, We are Inclusive - so we are looking for people who live and breathe these qualities when supporting service users and carers, and in their relationships with colleagues in the Trust and our partner organisations.

Job responsibilities

• To work within your professional Code of Conduct.
• To continually deliver and maintain high standards of service provision that is evidence based and in line with recognized best practice.
• To ensure equality and diversity values underpin your clinical practice.
• To respond positively to service user and carer feedback about the service.

Clinical

To provide senior highly specialist psychoanalytic psychotherapy assessment and treatment for children and adolescents with severe, highly complex and persistent mental health problems and make decisions about treatment options taking into account relevant evidence based research, theory, practice and highly complex factors concerning historical and development processes which have shaped the child/adolescent, their parents/carers and family.

To provide generic EBT pathway assessments and short-term psychotherapeutic treatments where appropriate.

To provide psychoanalytically informed clinical supervision, consultation and teaching to Child Psychotherapists, as well as relevant colleagues within the EBT pathway and within the wider CAMHS. To carry out clinical supervision for team members and colleagues and undergo clinical supervision in line with the Trusts Clinical Supervision Policy.

To develop the trainee psychotherapy programme where possible.

To undertake risk assessment and risk management and to provide advice to other professionals including social workers. To be responsible for continually monitoring and evaluating risk to/from young people on own caseload and during supervision/consultation discussions.

To undertake urgent mental health assessment as required, including being part of a rota within the service to provide highly specialist psychotherapeutic mental health and risk assessment to young people admitted to A&E who have self-harmed/attempted suicide.

To be regularly on the relevant duty rota, to accept referrals, provide consultation and be available to carry out emergency and urgent assessments.

To provide highly specialist assessment and treatment reports for other agencies as required.

To manage a clinical caseload of complex cases (often with child safeguarding concerns).

To provide short term, medium term and long-term psychotherapeutic interventions as necessary.

To provide highly specialist advice, guidance and consultation to professional colleagues within related external agencies who work with children and adolescents with severe and complex mental health problems (e.g. joint consultation to Education, Social Care, Mentors, health visitors, Youth Workers).

To participate in regular review and ongoing discussion of cases in treatment with other members of the multi-disciplinary team and where appropriate, co-ordinate and organise network meetings with professional members of other agencies, including serving as care co-ordinator under the new CPA arrangements.

Management

• To work in collaboration with the lead, manager and others in service development and business planning.
• All staff to have annual appraisals.
• All staff to have regular management and clinical supervision as appropriate to the role, and to ensure it incorporates effective performance management for all staff.
• To regularly promote and monitor use of routine outcome measures in the team.

Human Resources

To maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping including electronic data entry and recording, report writing and the responsible exercise of professional self-governance in accordance with professional codes of practice of the Association of Child Psychotherapy and Trust policies and procedures.

To comply with the Trusts policies, procedures and guidelines, including those related to Equal Opportunities, Health & Safety, Confidentiality of Information, Safe Guarding, Record Keeping, Restriction of Liberty (Control & Restraint) and Diversity.

• To engage children, young people, carers and families in service feedback.

Performance & Quality

• To maintain records of clinical activity in accordance with Trust policies and procedures and to provide statistical returns and reports as required.
• To participate in Routine Outcomes Measurement, IAPT initiatives, and clinical audit projects in order to monitor, report on and improve the service.
• To adhere to clinical policies in line with Trust and professional guidelines.
• To maintain confidentiality on all matters relating to the private affairs and treatment of clients, except in cases where the child's safety and well-being would necessitate the sharing of information.
• To adhere to legal requirements, relevant legislation and local and Trust policy i.e. Patients Charter, Health of the Nation, Children's Act, Mental Health Act and Health & Safety at Work Act etc.
• To deliver effective and safe services which support the key elements of clinical governance.

Financial and Physical Resources

• To ensure caseloads are efficiently managed to provide best value for money for commissioners.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• A professional qualification in Child & Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy recognized by the Association of Child Psychotherapy and with current registration.
• Masters or doctoral level training in Child Psychotherapy including the completion of a 2 year PGDip in Observational Studies.

Experience

• Significant post qualification experience of working as a child psychotherapist with children and young people with complex mental health problems in CAMHS.
• Experience in working with children and young people who have experienced significant trauma.

Knowledge

• Demonstrable knowledge and understanding of equality and diversity issues and the ability to integrate into employment policies and practices.
• Understanding of current NHS/Social Care policies/practices relating to Mental Health and Services and understands the Child Protection Policy.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.