Job overview

Are you a dedicated, compassionate mental health professional committed to providing great care? Do you want the chance to help shape a new and genuinely innovative service for the women of Kent and Medway?

We're creating Kent and Medway’s first, and only, NHS Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) for women, and are seeking a talented Art Psychotherapist to help us deliver this vital service.

Please note that the start date for this post will be in March 2026, to allow for sufficient time for onboarding, induction, and training before the anticipated arrival of the first patient in April 2026.

As an Art Psychotherapist you will provide specialist art psychotherapy services to females with complex and longstanding mental health problems. You will undertake high quality direct and indirect specialist interventions and facilitate art and psychodynamic therapy groups as part of a treatment program which is flexible and sensitive to the needs of the client group, using a variety of art materials in a therapeutic and creative way.

If this sounds like the opportunity you have been waiting for, come and join our diverse and compassionate team committed to delivering excellent care and support for service users and their loved ones.

This role comes with a High Cost Area Supplement: 5% of basic salary, subject to a min. of £1303 per year and a max. of £2198 per year (divided into 12 equal amounts and paid monthly). The salary listed is inclusive of the High-Cost Area Allowance. 

Main duties of the job

• You will be offering art psychotherapy to patients on an individual and group basis to support the therapeutic environment on the ward and support patients to manage their distress and facilitate stabilisation.
• You will as hold a consultation and leadership role in the ward, developing skills in assessment and practice within a group context.
• You will have skills to intervene via a range of formats e.g. ward groups, staff consultation, families/carers and the MDT.

Working for our organisation

Working in a PICU is very rewarding but we want to be honest and share that it is demanding too. It is likely to be needed by people with severe and complex mental health conditions (e.g. Schizophrenia and  Bipolar Disorder and may be associated with Personality Disorder, Substance Misuse and PTSD). 

While emotionally challenging, the opportunity to support critically unwell women back to their communities, ensuring 'right care, in the right place, at the right time', is immense, and your skilled, multidisciplinary, team will be there to support you. 

You would be working as part of a team of mental health experts, dedicated to making sure the most unwell women in our communities have the same access to specialist care as men. 

We are recruiting now to make sure our new female PICU team is in place with enough time to train, form team bonds and prepare. So you can all make a profound difference to patient outcomes from day one.  

We also offer ongoing professional development to help you adapt and progress your career, including bespoke training and a comprehensive induction program.  

At KMPT, we are serious about diversity and inclusion, and we are working hard to build this into our DNA. We warmly welcome applications for any of our roles from people from diverse backgrounds, and we are proactively encouraging applications from under-represented communities for our more senior roles, like this one.