Systemic & Therapy Psychotherapist

at  Birmingham Womens and Childrens NHS Foundation Trust

Are you interested in joining a dynamic team of clinical psychologists, Liaison psychiatry, psychological practitioners, assistant and trainee psychologists within a hospital setting?
We are offering an exciting opportunity to create and shape a family therapy service from our existing team of systemic psychotherapists. This role would include working with children, young people, adults and families who are affected by challenges of physical health and its treatment.
If you are enthusiastic, dynamic, creative and a great team member, with excellent verbal and written communication skills then we would love you to apply.
The postholder will be responsible for leading a pilot Family T herapy service , replacing the family systemic clinic offered by Health in Mind . They will cond uct audit s , routine outcome measures, surveys and /or eva luations of the Family Therapy service in order to develop the Family T h e rapy pathway , demonstrate the efficacy of the service in order to allow funding for a substantive service .
The postholder will be working with staff within the current Family Clinic and will also wor k autonomously with a caseload of patients and families , both inpatient and outpatient, liaising with MDT s and working across link specialities as needed .
The clinical practice of the post-holder will be supervised externally by a qualified family therapist who has completed the A dvanced D iploma in S ystemic supervision.
Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust is the first of its type in the UK. Our Trust was formed in February 2017 to drive forward our commitment to provide the highest quality, world-class physical and mental health care for our women, children and families. Uniting our hospitals means more seamless care; more investment to make greater advances in our specialist treatment and world-leading neo-natal and fetal work. Importantly, it also gives us a greater voice in shaping the future of family-centred care.
Birmingham Children’s Hospital is a UK leading specialist paediatric centre with an international reputation in several areas.
Birmingham Women’s Hospital is one of two dedicated women’s hospitals in the UK, with the busiest single site maternity unit, delivering more than 8,200 babies a year offering a full range of gynaecological, maternity and neonatal care.
Forward Thinking Birmingham (FTB) Mental Health Services are a unique, innovative community and inpatient mental health partnership. Alongside partners FTB offers care pathways of mental health assessment and treatment for young people aged 0-25 years old.
Our Trust is committed to creating the best place to work. We believe in promoting and enhancing inclusion, diversity and equality and encourage applications from all areas of the community, who meet the criteria for the role, regardless of age, gender identity, disability, race, religion or sexual orientation.

To lead and develop the family therapy team in Health in Mind, fostering an awareness and understanding of the systemic impacts of health on patients, families, staff and wider systems across BWC.

• To promote family therapy and the service across BWC
• To work autonomously and with HiM and hospital teams according to professional standards
• To represent systemic psychotherapy and attend relevant meetings and professional activities by agreement with manager.
• To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where systemic and/or organisational matters need addressing.
• To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit, in consultation with relevant others.
• To provide and maintain adequate statistics and records of work as required by the Trust.
• Exercises delegated responsibility for the safe, appropriate and legitimate use of systemic psychotherapy tools and other equipment deployed in post holder’s area of duty. Advise manager on equipment and resources needed to maintain work undertaken and any shortcomings with these.
• To provide specialist systemic assessments of clients referred to the team utilizing information from a range of systemic methodologies (identifying and prioritizing interactional patterns/ dynamics/context) and employing research based models in order to formulate and implement plans with patients, families and carers in the context of the professional and wider social systems.
• To plan and implement formal family therapy treatment and/or management of patient’s concerns in relation to their physical health and its management, employing methods of proven efficacy.
• To implement appropriate systemic interventions for individuals, carers, families and groups, adjusting and refining formulations, adjusting and refining formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.
• To evaluate and make decisions about intervention options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the patients, family or group.
• To be responsible and accountable for the assessment, treatment and discharge of patients and parents/cares and families whose problems are managed by family therapy based standard care plans.
• To provide specialist systemic advice, guidance and consultation to other professionals contributing directly to patient’s formulation, diagnosis and treatment plan, in the context of multidisciplinary team working.
• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for patients and to provide advice to other professionals on systemic aspects of risk assessment and risk management.
• To act as care co-ordinator where appropriate for a case load of patients and contribute to the care planning with different specialties across the hospital sites.
• To communicate highly complex information and give feedback in a skilled and sensitive manner, for example in organising and conducting meetings which can include patients, family members, multi agency representatives. These can generate a high level of emotion, and involve risk issues such as

self-harm and refusal of treatment

• To provide advice, guidance and consultation to peer and junior professionals within the service, individually and by attendance at team referral and review meetings.
• To take part in the inpatient and outpatient teams as required as agreed with the Clinical Lead
• To work with and offer systemic supervision to specialties and teams within both BC and BW hospitals as required.

Please refer the Job description for details