Highly Specialist Child & Adolescent Psychotherapist

Job responsibilities

The post would be suited to someone who is passionate about providing a high quality, effective, comprehensive and highly specialist child and adolescent psychoanalytical psychotherapy service for children with severe and complex mental health problems, their carers/parents and families. The role involves offering specialist psychoanalytic psychotherapy assessments, state of mind assessments, and short, medium and long term specialist psychoanalytic psychotherapy treatment, alongside more generic and other specialist (e.g. neurodevelopmental) assessments and clinical work. Furthermore, we are looking for someone with an interest in supervision, and working with multidisciplinary and multi-agency colleagues on some of the challenges facing mental health services for children and young people.

The needs of young children and families will be at the centre of thinking about the service, and you will work together with service users and colleagues to ensure that the service best meets the needs of its population. West London is a culturally diverse borough and you will be involved in ensuring that the service is accessible and effective.

Qualifications

Essential

• Good relevant honours degree, or a recognised equivalent
• Other related professional qualification or equivalent
• Postgraduate accredited training in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy
• Eligibility for full membership of Association of Child Psychotherapists (ACP)

Desirable

• Keyboard skills (physical skills)
• Other related academic qualification to Masters or Doctorate level

Experience

Essential

• Pre -qualification professional experience with children, adolescents and families (e.g. clinical/educational psychology, teaching, social work)
• Substantial experience of work with complex family situations where there is a threat of abuse and breakdown
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups with presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity and across the age range of 0 - 18, 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 assessment and intervention with individuals with neurodevelopmental difficulties
• Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for clients' psychological care and treatment, both as a professionally qualified care coordinator and also within the context of a multidisciplinary care plan
• Substantial experience in working in multi -disciplinary, multi -agency, multi - cultural context.

Desirable

• Substantial experience of professional teaching and training
• Substantial experience of work with therapeutic groups of children
• Substantial experience of work with families where the parents are mentally ill

Knowledge

Essential

• Good knowledge of relevant theories, practices and research in the field of child and adolescent development and psychotherapy and ability to apply them to relevant work situations
• Knowledge of adult mental health problems
• Evidence of continuous professional development as recommended by the ACP
• Specialist areas of knowledge based on further training and experience

Desirable

• Knowledge of research methodology

Skills

Essential

• Ability to communicate clearly and effectively with patients, staff, administrators and managers about highly complex and sensitive matters in situation of potential conflict or psychological/emotional pain, and where mental health problems affect relationships
• Capacity to listen to other points of view effectively about highly complex issues through reports, publication or public presentation
• Good level of analytic skills and understanding of unconscious processes and their impact on the ? AF / I 17 individual, group and institutional processes
• Ability to remain still and maintain intense concentration in clinical settings with children, adolescents, parents/carers and families where there may be high level of distress, verbal and physical aggression or chaotic activity
• Ability to integrate available highly complex clinical information into a coherent formulation and to apply it in treatment and clinical management
• Ability to monitor and assess risk and act accordingly
• Writes clear records and observes policies, procedures and guidelines
• Ability to plan and organise own workload and time
• Ability to plan, co-ordinate and organise aspects of service activities
• IT and internet research skills
• Ability to conduct audit and research
• Ability to work collaboratively with colleagues to plan, evaluate, monitor and develop services

Other Requirements

Essential

• Must be able to contain anxiety without recourse to premature action
• Personal experience of Psychoanalysis
• Has a good judgement about when to act to ensure safety
• Works independently but can involve colleagues appropriately
• Continues to think clearly in situations of high level of emotion and stress
• Can process own emotional reactions as possible information about the patient's or family's emotional state
• Contains and works with organisational stress and ability to 'hold' the stress of others
• Familiar with and works within ACP's Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics
• Work autonomously within overall framework of policies and procedures

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.

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).