Job Description

Family & Systemic Psychotherapist preceptorship role



In a preceptorship role, it is expected that you will progress within 18-24 months post-qualification to band 8a.



Overview of the Post



Bexley CAMHS provides specialist mental health care for children and young people from birth to 18 years with their parents/families/carers. We provide specialist assessment and treatment for children and young people with severe and enduring emotional, behavioural and mental health difficulties. The service provides a responsive, timely and accessible service, targeted at those children, young people and their families who are most in need of specialist mental health services.



This post is in Maple Team which works with those young people at risk of an inpatient admission. The team provides a rapid response service to adolescents with severe and complex mental health problems who are at risk of inpatient admission. The team provides outreach and intensive multi-disciplinary interventions as a community alternative to inpatient care. Team members also provide consultation, advice and support to professionals and carers involved with the young people. The team uses mentalization based approaches (AMBIT, MBT-A, MBT-F).



This post holder is situated within Bexley CAMH Service.



To provide the CAMHS team with a high quality, evidence based systemic psychotherapy service to children, their families, carers and professional networks, in keeping with CYP-IAPT principles. To provide specialist systemic assessment and therapy to families with children and adolescents who are referred to CAMHS. To provide specialist advice and consultation regarding diagnoses and treatment to CAMHS colleagues, external agencies, working autonomously within professional guidelines and within a multi-disciplinary team, contributing to overall service delivery as required. To contribute to the development, implementation and audit of services for families with children presenting to the Service.

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children's centres, schools and people's homes.



We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.



Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:



We're Kind



We're Fair



We Listen



We Care

Clinical:

To provide a 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's or adolescent's mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework and employing methods based upon evidence. To use routine outcome measures as laid down by the Trust.



To assess children, adolescents and their families as part of a risk assessment.



To consult to parents/carers (including foster parents) as part of a treatment plan.



To work in ways which are sensitive to and appropriate for the needs of families from a wide range of racial, cultural and religious backgrounds. This includes abilities to understand and offer therapeutic interventions to a variety of family forms including single parents, same sex couples and their wider family networks, accommodated children and their network of care, children with learning difficulties, and children who are on the 'Child Protection Register', and parents with mental health difficulties. Competence is required in undertaking systemic therapy with families using an interpreter where English is not their first language.



To provide specialist systemic psychotherapy with clinical autonomy drawing on a range of models and wherever possible brief interventions. To practice in a way which is inclusive and considerate of the needs of each individual in the system including family members in their varying developmental stages and current emotional state.



To make highly skilled evaluations and decisions about treatment options taking into account highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the child, family or group, and their difficulties.



To be responsible for implementing a range of systemic psychotherapeutic interventions for children, adolescents and their families, including couples and groups, drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses in reaching a formulation and treatment plan. Interventions may include family therapy, individual work, chairing professionals and network meetings, liaising with other agencies, observations of patients in different settings, and the use of a range of systemic models.



To exercise full autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients, and formulate effective care plans in collaboration with the client and family. To undertake risk assessment and risk management relevant to individual patients, including protective and risk factors present in the network of significant relationships, and to do this using the knowledge of the multi professional context that is a mental health service for the locality.



To work jointly and collaboratively with other team members in order to enhance and develop work with families by providing specialist knowledge and skills.



To provide specialist consultation, advice and guidance to other professionals at all levels working with families both within the service and in partner agencies. This will include liaison and working with professional networks involved with highly complex, emotive and often conflictual issues such as those involving child protection, deliberate self harm, violence, trauma, suicide risk, criminal offending behaviour, sexualised behaviour, and mental health problems of parents.



To maintain current knowledge of the operation of video equipment and promote ethical and effective use in line with Directorate policy. To introduce this practice to families in a sensitive way, and to advise and instruct clinicians in other disciplines and systemic psychotherapy trainees on the fitting and appropriate use of this therapeutic tool. To use video tape review to enhance the skills of colleagues and to help parents understand their family's difficulties, dilemmas, and traumatic experiences.



To act as care coordinator, as required, taking responsibility for initiating, planning and review of care plans and giving consideration to the views of patients, their family, carers, referring agents and other professionals involved in the network of care. This includes organising complex professional network meetings.



To work in accordance with CAMHS and team objectives by adhering to Trust and Directorate policies, including risk assessment in all work, ensuring care plans are in place, recording up to date, attending and contributing a systemic view in case discussion and team meetings.



To be an active member of the Family Therapy Clinic.



To contribute to overall service delivery and development as required.



To attend monthly professional's meetings and team meetings.



To participate in duty and triage rota



Management responsibilities (Contribution)



To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the team's operational policies and services, through the development of systemic professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.



To advise both service and professional management on all aspects of the service where systemic and/or organisational matters need addressing.



To lead on an agreed area of service development



Leadership

Directly responsible to:

a) operationally:

Bexley CAMHS Team Manager

b) professionally:

Lead Family Therapist (CAMHS), via Principle Systemic Psychotherapist.



Accountable to the Clinical Director (CAMHS), via Head of Discipline



To maintain and develop skills in the area of professional post-graduate teaching, training and supervision and to provide structured in-house consultation and training to the multi-disciplinary team.



To act as a specialist systemic psychotherapy resource by provision of systemic consultation and training to the multi-disciplinary team and other health and social care agencies.



R esearch



To use theory, evidence-based literature and research to inform evidence based practice in work with individuals, families and their networks in line with current and best practice.



To undertake or participate in relevant clinical research, service evaluation and audit.



To provide research advice to other staff undertaking research within the team.



To initiate and implement project management, including complex audit and service evaluation, with colleagues within the services to help develop and improve service provision to clients, their families and their wider network.



Communication



Key working relationships are with other multi-disciplinary team members in CAMHS; all members of the CAMHS Team; NHS professionals in primary, secondary and tertiary services (GPs, hospital clinicians, health visitors, community paediatricians, A&E Depts. and specialist clinics); colleagues working within the Trust; external agencies, including those in neighbouring Trusts responsible for a patient's care; colleagues from the education system (educational psychologists, education welfare officers, school heads, inclusion officers, special education needs co-ordinators, behaviour support teams and school nurses), social workers, and children services (Child Protection Services); the Head of Systemic Psychotherapy, and the Systemic Psychotherapy Service in the Trust.



T o communicate effectively verbally and in writing; to provide reports including for Child Protection Conferences concerning highly complex circumstances.



Be prepared to attend Court hearings as requested.



To communicate complex clinical information in a skilled and sensitive manner information including assessment, formulation and treatment plans of patients and to monitor progress during the course of uni- and multi-disciplinary treatment.



T o maintain the highest standards of clinical record keeping, including electronic data entry and recording, report writing through the exercise of professional ethical standards and a continuing adherence to the professional codes of practice of the AFT and UKCP.



T o maintain up to date knowledge of legislation, national and local policies and issues in relation to both the specific client group and mental health.