Job summary
- Main area
- Perinatal Community Team
- Grade
- NHS AfC: Band 7
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Part time - 18.75 hours per week
- Job ref
- 294-AAUC-7259984-FZ
- Employer
- South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Springfield University Hospital
- Town
- London
- Salary
- £54,320 - £60,981 Pro rota per annum Inclusive of Inner London HCAs
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 19/06/2025 23:59
Employer heading
Perinatal and Parent-Infant Outreach Psychotherapist
NHS AfC: Band 7
South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust has a rich history, well-established community links and an international reputation. We provide a full range of local mental health services to the Kingston, Merton, Richmond, Sutton and Wandsworth London boroughs, as well as specialist forensic mental health services, including specialised services such as national deaf adults and CAMHS inpatients and OCD.
We are committed to providing high quality integrated health and social care for local people with mental health problems in South West London and more specialist mental health services for people throughout the UK. The Care Quality Commission already rates our services as ‘good’ however we aim to be ‘outstanding’.
Our Values
We take pride in providing specialist care to our service users where our Trust values; being consistent, compassionate, collaborative, respectful and open is at the heart of everything we do. Our mission is "making life better together".
When you join us, you’ll be part of something special – an innovative and rapidly growing organisation that is helping to redefine the Mental Health, education and social care landscape in the UK.
As a Trust, we are happy to talk flexible working.
Job overview
We are seeking an enthusiastic Perinatal Parent Infant Therapist/Adult Psychotherapist/Child & Adolescent Psychotherapist with a passion for perinatal care and infant mental health to join our specialist community perinatal mental health service and support our parent – infant pathway. We are dedicated to high quality, evidence-based practice. We welcome applications from all psychotherapy and psychological professions and those newly qualified with the necessary perinatal/parent-infant experience.
The post holder will have a proven interest in working with parents and infants and knowledge of infant and adult mental health. Training as a parent – infant therapist (including extended parent – infant observation) is desirable but not essential. Appropriate specialist clinical and professional supervision and opportunities for training and development will be made available.
Main duties of the job
Main duties of the role:
- To provide specialist psychotherapeutic assessments and interventions to service users and their infants of the Perinatal mental health service.
- To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for managing an identified caseload of parents and infants with complex psychological problems, including assessment of risk and safeguarding adults and babies
- To enable staff and service users from all backgrounds to flourish by working together to create a psychologically safe and responsive environment, ensuring the team operates from an anti-racist and anti-discriminatory perspective at all times
- To provide consultation as appropriate to other members of the MDT and wider professional networks involved in a family’s care.
- To undertake service evaluation, research and policy development
- To work collaboratively and flexibly as a member of the multi-disciplinary team and contribute to a psychologically informed framework of working across the service.
- To actively contribute to perinatal care plans, providing a psychological perspective, which may require attendance at pre-birth and post-birth planning meetings
Working for our organisation
We are Proud to Belong at South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust.
We have expert services, a rich history and a clear commitment to providing the best quality care for those with mental ill-health. The Care Quality Commission already rates our services as ‘good’ - we aspire to be ‘outstanding’.
This is a great time to join us. We are transforming the way we care for our communities to support our mission of Making Life Better Together. We have built two brand new mental health facilities at Springfield University Hospital, which are amongst the best in the world. More developments are planned across our sites and services.
We are inclusive and diverse and strive to be actively anti racist. We want to attract people from all backgrounds and experiences to enrich the work we do together. We are proud to co-produce and involve our local communities in all that we do.
We offer flexible working, career development and a variety of benefits to enable a positive, welcoming environment in which our people and their careers can thrive.
About our locations:
Springfield University Hospital, Tooting
Our largest, 19-ward site is in Springfield Village, created following our £150m investment into two new world class mental health facilities. A 32-acre public park, shops and cafes are coming soon. Close to shops, cafes and Tooting Bec on the Northern Line plus Earlsfield and Tooting rail stations and bus routes.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
- To support the provision of highly specialist psychological assessments and interventions for service users and their infants under the care of the Perinatal Mental Health Service.
- Where appropriate to supervise and support the psychological assessment and therapy provided by trainee and assistant psychological therapists and other clinical members of the team or allied health professionals who provide psychologically based care and treatment to parents and infants.
- To work autonomously within professional guidelines.
- To contribute to the on-going development and evaluation of the service.
- To contribute to teaching and training on aspects of adult and infant mental health in a perinatal context.
- To contribute to the development, evaluation and monitoring of the team’s performance (against defined key performance indicators), operational policies and services, through the deployment of professional skills in research, service evaluation and audit.
- To advise both service and professional management on those aspects of the service where psychological and/or organisational matters need addressing.
Person specification
Training and Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Full/Completed training in Adult Psychodynamic or Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy or Child Psychotherapy or Systemic Family Therapy OR
- Doctoral level training or equivalent in Clinical or Counselling Psychology
- Professional registration with -HCPC (Clinical or Counselling Psychologist) or - UKCP (under the Council for Psychoanalysis and Jungian Analysis section) or - BPC (Jungian Analyst; Psychoanalyst; Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist) or - ACP (Child Psychotherapist) - UKCP (Systemic Family Therapist via the College of Family & Systemic Psychotherapists)
- Experience of parent-infant observation as part of training and / or clinical work to date
Desirable criteria
- Further training / qualifications in Perinatal Mental Health
- Successful completion of Parent- Infant Psychotherapy Training (including completion of an infant observation and personal psychotherapy / psychoanalysis)
- Post qualification training in applied research methods, staff training & other methods of applied psychotherapeutic work
- Full accreditation in video interventions such as VIG and VIPP
- Training in Circle of Security Parenting and / or other group protocols focused on supporting parent-infant attachment
EXPERIENCE
Essential criteria
- • Experience of formulating difficulties within the parent-infant relationship across a variety of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and in-patient settings.
- • Experience of drawing upon attachment models and parent-infant relational models
- • Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of parent infant dyads with severe and complex relational difficulties
- • Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course with presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity 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 working with people in the perinatal period who experience severe, complex and long-term mental health problems
Desirable criteria
- Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision
- Experience of working in different cultural contexts
- Experience of working as part of a multidisciplinary team
- Experience of working within a multicultural framework
- Evidence of teaching about parent-infant theory and psychopathology
- Experience of raising and managing safeguarding concerns
- Experience of supervising clinical work within the multidisciplinary team
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
- Melanie Royal-Lawson
- Job title
- Psychological Therapist Lead
- Email address
- [email protected]
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