Job overview

Senior Creative Arts Therapist - 22.5 hours per week - Permanent 

Do you understand the clinical needs of young people with mental health problems?

Do you bring passion and commitment to delivering high quality care?

We are looking for an Senior Creative Arts Therapist to join our Tier 4 GAU unit in Stoke on Trent.

This role will provide an exciting career opportunity supporting the assessment and recovery of young people within a highly specialist inpatient CAMHS setting. You will be expected to have excellent team working and groupwork skills, and an ability to deliver individual and group interventions within an inpatient environment.

You will deliver high-quality, evidence-based assessment, formulation and intervention within the inpatient service. This will include the delivery of specialist individual, group and systemic intervention, as well as providing consultation, interventions and training for carers and staff.

In addition to shaping and delivering direct assessment, formulation and intervention, you will contribute to wider service development and pathways, including training, consultation, reflective practice and staff wellbeing.

We welcome applicants from all modalities of creative arts therapies, including art therapy, music therapy, drama therapy, and related disciplines.

Main duties of the job

As a senior member of the MDT, the post holder will play a key role in delivering psychotherapeutic interventions that support the psychosocial assessment, wellbeing and recovery of young people admitted to the Darwin Centre.

The Darwin Centres is a 14 bedded tier 4 General Adolescent Unit (GAU) service based in Stoke on Trent. The service provided inpatient assessment and treatment for children and young people up to the age of 18 who are experiencing acute distress or risk associated with a confirmed or suspected mental health disorder, eating disorder or disordered eating. The service also supports young people who have neurodiverse needs and mild learning disabilities.  

Post holder will be responsible for providing a Creative Arts Therapy service, structured in terms of referral, assessment, formulation of a psychotherapy intervention, treatment, review and discharge. (This may be art therapy, music therapy or other modality).

Deliver Creative Arts Therapy in a dynamic manner, being flexible dependent on the needs of services users, on both a one to one and group basis. There is also the potential to work with carers & families. 

Within the accountability above, the postholder is responsible for supporting and driving any Creative Art Therapy service developments and policies. 

Within the accountability above, the postholder may be given the responsibility for the clinical supervision of trainee creative psychotherapists or other junior members of the MDT.

Working for our organisation

As a Trust we remain bold and ambitious with plans for both service and system collaborative transformation over the coming years to improve the health and wellbeing of our local people through high quality care.

We pride ourselves on ensuring our team has their wellbeing put first and as such provide a range of wellness opportunities including flexible working. 

We are committed to the Greener NHS national ambition to becoming the world’s first ‘carbon net zero’ national health system by 2045 (Greener NHS (england.nhs.uk). As part of this, sustainability is embedded in our strategy as one of our four key enablers. In order to deliver on this commitment, we recognise that we need a workforce that is as passionate as we are about achieving these goals, for the benefit of our service users, workforce, local communities and the planet alike.  For 2024/2025, we have launched our “Proud to be Green” engagement campaign which is aligned to the targets set out in our Green Plan.  As a Trust, you can be assured that we will commit to supporting you in working towards our net zero ambitions, set out in our Green Plan, through our sustainability programme”. 

 The Trust is committed to ensuring that a diverse workforce is representative and inclusive at all levels. We would very much welcome applications from all under-represented groups including women, people with disabilities, people from global majority backgrounds, and those from the lesbian, gay, bi and trans communities.