Job summary
- Main area
- Parent Counsellor
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 6
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Part time
- Flexible working
- Job ref
- 196-LIS9584
- Employer
- Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Evelina London Children's Hospital
- Town
- London
- Salary
- £44,806 - £53,134 pro rata incl. HCA
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 22/06/2025 23:59
Employer heading
Parent Counsellor
NHS AfC: Band 6
Guy’s and St Thomas’ is among the UK’s busiest and most successful NHS foundation trusts. We provide a full range of hospital and community services for people in south London and as well as specialist care for patients from further afield including cancer, renal, orthopaedic, respiratory and cardiovascular services.
Guy’s is home to the largest dental school in Europe and a £160 million Cancer Centre opened in 2016. As part of our commitment to provide care closer to home, in 2017 we also opened a cancer centre and a kidney treatment centre at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup. St Thomas’ has one of the largest critical care units in the UK and one of the busiest emergency departments in London. It is also home to Evelina London Children’s Hospital.
Evelina London cares for local children in Lambeth and Southwark and provides specialist services across south east England including cardiac, renal and critical care services. We lead a number of specialist service networks aiming to ensure children are treated locally where possible, but have access to specialist expertise when they need it. Our community services include health visiting, school nursing and support for families of children with long-term conditions.
Our adult community services teams deliver care at the heart of the local communities we serve, working in partnership with GPs, local authorities and other healthcare and voluntary sector organisations. Working with our partners in Lambeth and Southwark, we are focusing on new ways of working to improve care for local patients.
In February 2021 the Royal Brompton and Harefield joined Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, bringing together world-leading expertise in the care and research of heart and lung disease. Our merger provides a once in a generation opportunity to build a lasting, world-renowned heart and lung centre, providing the highest quality care for patients and conducting world-leading research.
We have a reputation for clinical excellence and high quality teaching and research. We are part of King’s Health Partners, one of eight accredited UK academic health sciences centres. In partnership with King’s College London we have dedicated clinical research facilities including an MHRA accredited Phase I clinical trials unit.
Patients are at the heart of everything we do and we pride ourselves on ensuring the best possible patient experience as well as safe, high quality care. We are proud to have one of the lowest mortality rates in the NHS. Following a comprehensive Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection in 2019 we maintained our overall rating of ‘good’. Our adult community services achieved a rating of ‘outstanding’.
The commitment of our 23,500 staff is key to our success. We are one of the largest local employers and we aim to develop and support all our staff so they are able to deliver high quality, safe and efficient care. The 2019 NHS staff survey results show that we have one of the most engaged and motivated workforces in the NHS. We know this has a positive impact on the care provided to our patients.
We have one of the most ambitious capital investment programmes anywhere in the NHS.
Job overview
Applications are invited for a part-time 0.60 WTE (3 days per week) post as Counsellor within our Parent Counselling Service based at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital.
Our Parent Counselling Service is part of the Palliative Care team at Evelina London. We provide counselling to parents following bereavement, or for parents where their children are diagnosed with life-limiting conditions.
The post holder will have experience and knowledge of psychotherapeutic counselling with parents of chronically ill / palliative children and bereavement, which can will inform their multidisciplinary team working in the hospital. They will offer dynamic hybrid models of support, integrating a range of bereavement models alongside general psychotherapeutic counselling to meet the needs of our diverse communities across our region.
The post holder will be responsible for referral triages, assessments, and delivering direct clinical care with parents. They will also contribute to service development, working with both the Lead for Parent Counselling, Palliative Care multidisciplinary team and as part of the Psychological Professionals service.
Main duties of the job
The post holder will be on the BACP register of accredited members with designation MBACP, UKCP, ACAT register.
We are looking for a dynamic individual who will work with the service lead, and wider services in the hospital to:
- Work with the team to manage referrals to the service, deliver triages and assessments, and hold a clinical caseload with families. This will include contribution to multidisciplinary team work as appropriate, and work with individuals and couples.
- Practice in accordance with relevant professional and clinical governance guidance, including safeguarding, and record keeping
- Contribute towards the delivery of scheduled Remembrance Services [2 per year].
- Support the service lead to develop teaching sessions regarding Bereavement and Working with Parents.
Working for our organisation
Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust comprises five of the UK’s best known hospitals – Guy’s, St Thomas’, Evelina London Children’s Hospital, Royal Brompton and Harefield and employs around 22,700 staff with over 1 million patient contacts a year.
- The Parent Counselling Service comprises of 3 qualified and experienced counsellors / psychotherapists (1.7WTE), admin support located in our paediatric palliative care team. We are a team of practitioners that offer integrative approaches to supporting parents of life limited / threatened and palliative children, alongside bereavement through psychotherapeutic and psychosocial interventions.
- Our innovative and collaborative approach to decision-making and service delivery promotes spaces where we each contribute to the development of services based on service user feedback, reflective practice and models of best practice.
- We work closely with psychological professionals colleagues, Palliative Care team and across other disciplines to promote the welfare of parents. This includes working with external agencies and networks as appropriate.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
- Professional qualifications - Applicants should by on the BACP register of accredited members with designation MBACP, UKCP, ACAT register
- Clinical Experience – background in mental / physical health care setting with children and / or adults, hospice and / or hospital environments supported by substantial experience in delivering psychotherapeutic interventions.
- Clinical Skills - Ability to work as an effective member of a multidisciplinary team and to share and encourage good practice through an Integrative approach to psychotherapeutic and psychosocial interventions.
For further details please see formal job description
Person specification
Professional/Statutory Registration
Essential criteria
- On the BACP register of accredited members with designation MBACP, UKCP, ACAT register.
Qualifications/Education
Essential criteria
- A degree in Psychology or related subject like Nursing, Medicine or Social work
- Completed and approved postgraduate qualification / diploma in counselling or psychotherapy.
- Approximately 450 hours of supervised practice
- Extensive post-qualification experience of generic counselling
Experience
Essential criteria
- Assessed experience of working as qualified counsellor / psychotherapist with specialist post-qualification experiences in the NHS or similar setting, undertaking assessments and interventions with the bereaved
- Experience working with a wide variety of clients presenting with mild to moderate severity mental health illness
- Maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems
- Experiences of exercising clinical responsibility for patients emotional care and treatment including maintaining confidentiality
- Experience of providing both group and one-to-one based interventions
- Experience of the application of counselling/psychotherapy in different cultural contexts
- Experience of working in a multi-disciplinary team.
Desirable criteria
- Experience of working with parents of children with serious medical conditions
- Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for patients' care and management, both as a professionally qualified counsellor / psychotherapist and also within the context of a multi-disciplinary team.
- Experience in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups in the area of physical health.
- Working online in virtual setting
- Working with groups (therapeutic and/or psychoeducational)
- Experience of working with people from the Black African and Black Caribbean communities
Skills/Knowledge/ Ability
Essential criteria
- Competency in working within a recognised theoretical framework suited to parents experiencing loss.
- Skills in psychological assessment for counselling, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration.
- A strong ability to communicate at both a written and oral level, imparting complex, highly technical and clinically sensitive information to patients, their families, and carers and a wide range of lay and professional people within and outside the NHS. This may require negotiating, motivating, training, reassuring others and demonstrating empathy.
- Experience and ability to undertake risk assessment of client in relation to self and others, and refer on to appropriate services as necessary.
- Evidence of continuing professional development as recommended by the appropriate regulating body
- Awareness of racial, cultural and diversity differences/issues through attendance of relevant training.
- Ability to work independently as an autonomous practitioner with appropriate level of clinical and managerial supervision.
- Ability to take initiative and contribute to the development of the psychology component of busy and expanding service at a local and national level.
- Ability to work effectively within a multidisciplinary team and contribute to effective team functioning.
Desirable criteria
- Knowledge of more than one model of intervention and the ability to choose and apply different interventions.
- A commitment to the evaluation of services, enthusiasm for both multi-professional and uni-professional audit, and a wish to continue to develop expertise in the field.
- Knowledge of legislation and its implications for both clinical practice and professional management in relation to the client group.
Other
Essential criteria
- A commitment to promoting equality of opportunity through all aspects of working and professional practice with both colleagues and all client groups.
- Willingness to broaden range of skills and take initiative in both own professional development and the development of the service.
- Ability to contain and work with organisational stress and ability to ‘hold’ the stress of others.
- Commitment to continuing professional development, partnership working and to reflective clinical practise.
- Well developed IT skills including data entry and analysis of research data using Microsoft programmes and appropriate statistical packages such as SPSS.
Desirable criteria
- Experience of personal psychotherapy
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Applicant requirements
You must have appropriate UK professional registration.
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Dr Lisa Barkley
- Job title
- Consultant Clinical Psychologist in Paediatrics
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 020 7188 4640
List jobs with Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust in Allied Health Professions or all sectors