Senior Family and Systemic Psychotherapist (Perinatal)

Thank you for your interest in the North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT). This is an exciting time to join us and be part of our journey to improve mental health care across North London and deliver excellent services to our local people. We will achieve this through the North London Way, as we:

• Collaborate at every level by living our values to create the right conditions for us all to work together.
• Develop our new Trust culture, to help make our new Trust a great place to work and to receive great care.
• Empower our teams to lead the planned improvements in our services, by skilling them and giving them the tools to make the changes.
• Focus on delivering excellence at every level to improve our performance and ensure consistently high-quality care across all our services.
• Ensure that research, quality improvement, and technology lead the way and are embedded in our services.
• Take a trauma informed approach to everything we do.

We proactively welcome diversity in our workforce and pride ourselves on being an inclusive employer. We aim to recruit from our local communities and provide opportunities to all including apprenticeships, veterans, care leavers and more.

The North London Way to deliver: Better Mental Health, Better Lives, Better Communities.

As a values‑driven Trust, we recruit through our values. Our selection processes focus on behaviours, attitudes, and examples that reflect our organisational values and commitment to compassionate, high‑quality care.

Job overview: As a Senior Family and Systemic Psychotherapist, you will play a pivotal role in the SPMHS and Maple Service, providing highly specialised systemic psychotherapy to mothers, birthing people, babies, and families. You will lead on systemic practice, supervision, and service development, ensuring that care is evidence-based, culturally competent, and responsive to the needs of diverse communities. You will work collaboratively across the service, supporting co-production, and championing equality, diversity, and inclusion.

Main duties of the job: Services offered by the post-holder will include providing psychological assessments and interventions to service users in line with the evidence base and NICE guidelines. They will also offer advice and consultation based on psychological formulation to referrers, staff of the North London Foundation Trust Specialist Perinatal Mental Health Service and other professional and non-professional groups.

The post holder will actively contribute to the planning, development and evaluation of the systemic provision of perinatal mental health services (including Maple service), using advanced clinical leadership skills and knowledge to provide training and consultancy in clinical psychology within the specialty area of perinatal mental health. The post holders will be responsible for assessing and treating service users in up to three boroughs and will be expected to oversee the systemic and couples therapy provision across the service. 20% of their workload is expected to be management & leadership and 80% will be clinical interventions. They are expected to hold a highly complex caseload. The post holder will oversee the systemic and couples caseload of their sub-team and of the service.

Working for our organisation: North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT) is committed to improving mental health care across North London to deliver excellent services to our local people. We will provide consistently high-quality care closer to home. With our partners in North London and each borough we will ensure equity of outcome for all. We will offer great places to work, providing staff with supportive environment to deliver outstanding care.

Why NLFT? We develop and retain our staff through leadership behaviours and managers programme and many more opportunities. We promote flexible working and support staff with a range of health and wellbeing initiatives. NHS Discounts, generous annual leave and NHS pension scheme. Excellent internal staff network.

In order to meet the needs of the Trust you may be required from time to time to work at different locations to your normal place of work. This may mean that you are required to work at any location that fall under Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey or Islington. The Trust reserves the right to require staff to work at such other places or locations as it considers reasonable and necessary on a temporary or permanent basis.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities:

• Hold a caseload of highly complex systemic assessment, treatment, and consultation work, drawing on a range of systemic models and research-based evidence.
• Provide highly specialist systemic psychotherapy interventions for mothers, birthing people, babies, partners, and families, including couples and groups.
• Work inclusively with families from diverse racial, cultural, and family backgrounds, including single parents, same-sex couples, extended families, and those involved with social care.
• Evaluate and make decisions about treatment options, considering complex and sometimes conflicting factors within family and professional networks.
• Engage with routine outcome measures and contribute to service-user participation agendas.
• To work with service users with complex perinatal mental health needs; to identify their goals using specialist assessment and interventions tools.
• To work in a variety of settings e.g., home, clinics and within the local community.
• To liaise with the wider multi-disciplinary team when there are concerns regarding the well-being of the parent and the child. To follow trust Adult & Child Protection process and strategies.
• To work with families who have children under Children’s Social Care; contributing to care plans and working within trust guidelines.
• To ensure accurate and concise record keeping for service users and interaction with their babies.
• To communicate effectively using a variety of communication skills: verbal and non-verbal, written, and electronic, with a range of individuals and organisations within and external to the organisation.
• To establish and maintain effective working relationships with members of the MDT using excellent interpersonal skills.
• To update clinical skills regularly to ensure the highest delivery of care whilst recognising own limitations.
• To recognise and promote all aspects of cultural diversity and respond positively to ethnic awareness / sensitivity when planning care plans within supervisory framework.
• To attend clinical meetings including perinatal birth planning meetings, child in need meetings and child protection meetings when required.
• To provide professional and clinical supervision of trainee clinical and counselling psychologists, and, where required, of assistant psychologists or other staff providing low intensity interventions.
• Provide highly specialised professional supervision (including live supervision) to systemic psychotherapists, systemic practitioners, and other professionals within the service and partner agencies.
• Deliver training placements and assess competencies for a range of professional disciplines.
• Develop and implement systemic training opportunities and bespoke training plans for staff, based on best practice and evidence.

Person specification:

• Core professional/graduate qualification in a relevant mental health or social welfare field (e.g., nursing, social work, psychology) with at least four years’ practice or equivalent experience.
• Masters (minimum) or equivalent level qualification as a Systemic and Family Psychotherapist.
• Current UKCP/HCPC registration.
• Advanced skills in systemic assessment, intervention, and management for complex presentations in perinatal and adult mental health.
• Training in systemic supervision.
• Well-developed skills in providing consultation, teaching, and training.
• Knowledge of adult mental health, women’s health, and parent-child bonding.
• Post qualification training in another specialised area of psychological practice (e.g. CFT, DBT, EMDR).
• AFT Approved Clinical Supervisor status.

Clinical Knowledge of adult mental health, women’s health, and parent-child bonding. Experience of working with PTSD/c-PTSD/Perinatal OCD.

Personal Qualities: Demonstrates excellent communication and interpersonal skills with women, their families, colleagues, and other teams. Flexible, adaptable, and able to work under pressure.

Due to the high number of applications that are received for some posts, we reserve the right to close any vacancies before the stated closing date. Therefore, please ensure you apply without delay if you wish to be considered for this role.

In line with NHS protocols, only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview. We regret that it is not possible to contact all applicants for every vacancy. If you have not been contacted within 4 weeks of the closing date, please assume you have not been shortlisted for the next stage.

Applications from job seekers who require sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome. Please ensure you hold the correct right to work in the UK at the time of your application. Some roles may not be eligible for sponsorship, and we want to make sure you have all the information you need before applying.

To avoid disappointment please check that you are eligible under the UKVI guidelines: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/uk-visas-and-immigration

References will be required to cover your last 3 years of employment/training. One has to be from your current or most recent employer and the others from your previous employer. The references should be from persons with management responsibility or HR.

Please note, in order to progress your application your data will be processed by our 3rd party recruitment providers – North London Partners Shared Service, who conduct recruitment activities on behalf of North London NHS Foundation Trust. As part of pre-employment checks your identity and right to work documentation will be verified remotely (in most circumstances), using a certified identity verification service provider TrustID. You will be asked to capture an image of the relevant documents as well as a “selfie” using your smartphone/tablet (if available) for facial matching. TrustID will also perform a digital address check using Trunarrative and Equifax, which is a soft check and does not leave a footprint on your credit rating. For more information, visit www.trustid.co.uk

The Trust uses electronic new starter forms on Trac to collect personal details. Information collected is securely stored and used to set up the employee record on the ESR HR system.

We are an equal opportunities employer and are committed to creating an inclusive, fair, and supportive workplace for all. We actively welcome applications from individuals who are under‑represented within our workforce and are dedicated to eliminating discrimination in all its forms.

As a Disability Confident (Two Ticks) employer, we guarantee an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role and are committed to making reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process.

By applying for this role, you accept in the event you are successful that your personal data may be transferred from the Trust to another NHS organisation where your employment transfers within the NHS. This is in accordance with the streamlining programme which is aimed at improving efficiencies within the NHS both to make costs savings for NHS organisations but also to save you time when your employment transfers.