Systemic Family Therapist

The full time Systemic Psychotherapist will join a team which provides a well‑established, highly specialist service for young people in Greenwich. You will work with young people up to 18 years and their families/carers, with significant and acute mental health difficulties.

• 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.
• Provide specialist systemic assessment and therapy to families with children and adolescents who are referred to CAMHS.
• 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.
• Contribute to the development, implementation, and audit of services for families with children presenting to the Service.

• Provide a specialist systemic assessment of referrals of a significant and complex nature 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. Use routine outcome measures as laid down by the Trust.
• Assess children, adolescents, and their families as part of a risk assessment.
• Consult to parents/carers (including foster parents) as part of a treatment plan.
• Work in ways which are sensitive to and appropriate for the needs of families from a wide range of racial, cultural and religious backgrounds, including single parents, same‑sex couples and wider family networks, accommodated children and their networks of care, children with learning difficulties, children 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.
• Provide specialist systemic psychotherapy with clinical autonomy drawing on a range of models and wherever possible brief interventions. Practice in a way which is inclusive and considerate of the needs of everyone in the system including family members in their varying developmental stages and current emotional state.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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. Undertake risk assessment and risk management relevant to individual patients, including protective and risk factors present in the network of significant relationships, and do this using the knowledge of the multi professional context that is a mental health service for the locality.
• Work jointly and collaboratively with other team members in order to enhance and develop work with families by providing specialist knowledge and skills.
• 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…