Child & Adolescent Psychotherapist

Main area: Psychotherapy

Grade: NHS AfC: Band 7

Contract: Permanent

Hours: Part time - 22.5 hours per week (6 sessions)

Site: Portman Clinic

Town: Swiss Cottage

Salary: £54,320 - £60,981 Per annum inclusive of Inner HCAS

Salary period: Yearly

Closing: 30/03/2025 23:59

It is a condition of this employment that you must live in and remain a resident of the United Kingdom during your employment with the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is a specialist mental health trust with a focus on training and education alongside a full range of mental health services and psychological therapies for children and their families, young people and adults. We are committed to improving mental health and emotional wellbeing, believing that high quality mental health services should be available for all who need them.

Job overview

The post-holder will be required to provide a specialised contribution to the clinical assessment and psychotherapeutic treatment of children, adolescents and their carers within the specialist field served by the Portman Clinic. The post-holder, with support from senior colleagues, will offer teaching and consultation to practitioners both within and outside the Trust and disseminate knowledge and expertise to professionals within those domains appropriate to the work of the Clinic.

Main duties of the job

• In collaboration with colleagues, the post-holder will provide specialised assessment of patients referred to the Portman Clinic, based on the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex information derived from a variety of sources including interviews with patients, and reports from other professionals involved in the care, treatment and/or supervision of patients.
• The post-holder will be responsible for implementing a range of psychotherapeutic interventions for individuals, families and groups as appropriate.
• The post-holder will act as parent worker or the member of staff who liaises with the professional network and/or as Case Manager for patients treated by other child psychotherapy colleagues.
• The post-holder will undertake risk assessment of all patients during assessment and treatment.

Working for our organisation

The Portman Clinic was founded in 1933 for the specific purpose of studying and treating delinquency. Since 1948 the Portman Clinic has been an NHS outpatient clinic which offers assessment, treatment and management for children, adolescents and adults, male and female, who engage in delinquent, criminal or violent behaviour or who consider themselves to be suffering through compulsive sexual impulses which compel them to act in a way which may cause distress or harm to self or others.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see the attached Job Description and Person Specification for more information on the role requirements and duties.

Person specification

• Eligibility for membership of the ACP (for Child Psychotherapists) – Doctoral level qualification or equivalent in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy or Psychoanalysis

• Experience in a CAMHS setting or equivalent and considerable experience working in forensic or social services settings
• Experience with difficult, disturbed or challenging patient populations requiring skilled and complex psychotherapeutic interventions
• Experience of working in the role of child psychotherapist with children and adolescents with complex difficulties and special needs, and parents with mental health difficulties including the ability to work autonomously
• Experience of communicating about complex clinical matters verbally and in writing with other agencies or referrers within and outside the NHS
• Experience in a multi-professional network and awareness of issues for such networks and teams
• Experience of undertaking outcome monitoring measures for clinical services
• Capacity to communicate clearly with analytic and non-analytic colleagues
• Highly developed capacity of organisational skills
• Experience of providing long-term psychotherapy to patients that harm others
• Experience of working with high-risk patients

• A highly developed ability to communicate effectively both orally and in writing to convey highly complex and clinically sensitive information to family members of all ages, students and to a wide range of professional people within and outside the NHS
• An awareness of relevant legislation and its implications for clinical practice
• Highly developed knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychotherapeutic assessment and intervention
• An awareness of current issues in service delivery within CAMHS and other settings and an ability to contribute to service development
• Ability to work as a member of a multi-disciplinary / multi-agency team.
• IT skills as required for research activity
• An awareness of qualitative and quantitative research methodology and clinical audit.
• Awareness of appropriate clinical governance mechanisms for the support and maintenance of high-quality clinical practice
• Teaching skills

• Evidence of personal resilience and aptitude for dealing with potentially distressing and highly emotional clinical work
• A flexible personality and a proven ability to work in a complex multidisciplinary context
• Some experience of providing teaching and consultation regarding complex clinical matters in a multidisciplinary context

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is committed to equality, diversity and inclusion. We are particularly keen to attract candidates from underrepresented backgrounds to better meet the needs of the service users and students that we serve.