Senior Family and Systemic Psychotherapist - Preceptor opportunity

Senior Family and Systemic Psychotherapist - Preceptor opportunity

We are excited to be recruiting a Senior Family and Systemic Psychotherapist to join the Mood, Emotions and Relationships (MERs) Pathway within Children and Family Health Devon (CFHD). This 0.77 WTE (29 hours) post is based in North Devon and offers an excellent opportunity to contribute to a developing pathway supporting children and young people experiencing complex emotional and mental health challenges.

This role is available at Band 8a or as a preceptorship opportunity at Band 7, supporting newly qualified Family and Systemic Psychotherapists to progress to a senior role within a supportive and experienced team.

As a valued member of the multi-disciplinary team, you will deliver systemic family therapy as well as contribute to specialist assessments, care planning, consultation, supervision, and service development. You will join a growing and friendly network of systemic practitioners across CFHD, with regular supervision and access to development opportunities.

We offer:

• A structured preceptorship for early-career Family and Systemic Psychotherapists to progress to Band 8a
• Regular systemic supervision and access to a supportive peer network
• Opportunities for leadership, consultation, and supervision, depending on experience

Main duties of the job

• Provide specialist family and systemic assessments and interventions for children, young people, and their families in line with evidence-based practice and NICE guidelines
• Manage a caseload of children and young people with complex mental health presentations, ensuring care is timely, collaborative, and tailored to individual needs
• Contribute to multi-disciplinary team discussions and care planning, offering systemic consultation and reflective input
• Provide supervision and support to junior colleagues and systemic trainees as appropriate to your level of experience
• Offer training and consultation to internal colleagues and external partners to promote systemic thinking across services
• Actively contribute to service development and quality improvement, including participation in audits and feedback-led changes
• Maintain accurate and timely clinical records, and adhere to professional and organisational standards

This post is ideal for a qualified Family and Systemic Psychotherapist looking for either their first senior post under preceptorship, or for an experienced practitioner ready to take on a Band 8a role within a supportive and collaborative team.

About us

Successful applicants will be employed by Devon Partnership Trust.

Children and Family Health Devon (CFHD) comprises an Alliance of NHS organisations working together to improve health outcomes for children and young people in Devon.

CFHD provides integrated care and treatment for children and young people across physical and mental health. We are working closely with other organisations and providers to ensure we deliver locality and county-wide based integrated access to all of our services, based on the i-Thrive Framework, in response to consultation with our service users and communities.

CFHD works closely with our local universities of Plymouth, Exeter & the Peninsula Medical School where we support students in clinical training placements and in addition support our own staff to undertake post graduate training.

Our integrated care and treatment has been developed and refined in partnership with children, young people and their families/carers.

We would like the people who work for Children and Family Health Devon to be understanding, patient and respectful. They should be trustworthy and make us feel safe and comfortable. It is important that they use their skills and experience to listen carefully in a non-patronising and non-judgemental way. When staff are positive and friendly, they help to create an environment that is informal and without pressure.

Job responsibilities

Full Vacancy details can be found on the attached Job Description/Person Specification. Please refer to your suitability to the post in your supporting information from the role requirements or person specification.

Information regarding the Managing Mood, Emotions and Relationships Pathway:

In this pathway, you will join a strong multi-disciplinary team, providing assessments and therapy to children with severe, chronic and enduring mental health concerns such as depression, anxiety-based disorders and Trauma.

You would work with children, young people and families to understand their experiences and presenting concerns in order to provide an appropriate evidence-based intervention and work closely with other agencies to support the best outcomes.

The multi-disciplinary teams are diverse including; Clinical Psychology, Systemic Psychotherapists, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists, CBT Therapists, Psychiatrists, Speech and Language Therapists and Mental Health Practitioners from a range of backgrounds including Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Social Work and Creative Therapies. This offers the opportunity for rich and nourishing shared clinical thinking and support.

Person Specification

Experience

• Experience of working collaboratively with service users and their families/carers, including using goal-based care and routine outcome measures in practice.
• Experience of working collaboratively in a multi-disciplinary team and across agencies
• Experience of working systemically with a range of children and young people with complex needs, maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems and verbal abuse
• Experience in providing effective clinical supervision, teaching, training and assessing in clinical practice.
• Experience of safeguarding children and ensuring their safety in partnership with other agencies as appropriate.
• Experience that evidences an ability to attend to diversity and work in a way that promotes anti-discriminatory practice
• Experience of initiating, attending and contributing to multi-professional and inter-agency meetings.
• Experience of managing and processing emotionally distressing information, seeking support as required

Knowledge, skills and abilities

• Ability to travel across Devon and work in a variety of locations, e.g. clinic base, schools, home visits
• High level knowledge of mental health presentations in children and adolescents and the theory and practice of short term and long term, evidence-based, clinical interventions.

Qualifications

• Masters level qualification in Family and Systemic Psychotherapy
• Active registration with the UKCP as a Systemic and Family Therapist
• Post qualification specialist therapy / assessment training relevant to children and young people
• Post qualification training or proven equivalent experience in supervision

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.