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Child & Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist Posts
Band 8A | 0.5WTE, 0.6 WTE and 0.8 WTE posts
We are pleased to offer three Band 8A opportunities for Child & Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists within a supportive and reflective psychotherapy team in Forward Thinking Birmingham, an NHS multidisciplinary community mental health service for children, young people and families aged 0–25.
While these are Band 8A posts, we also warmly welcome applications from experienced Band 7 Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists seeking an opportunity to develop their careers through a structured development programme.
The mental health service is based in Birmingham, a vibrant city with diverse communities, lively cultural life and beautiful nearby countryside. There are good transport links, canals and many green spaces in the city.
Our psychotherapy team plays a valued role within the wider service, contributing specialist assessment, therapeutic work, consultation and reflective thinking within multidisciplinary teams.
These Band 8A posts offer an exciting opportunity for ACP-registered psychotherapists to consolidate and extend their clinical practice in a service where psychoanalytic thinking is valued and actively contributes to the wider multidisciplinary work across the 0-25 age range.
There are opportunities for development, research and clinical innovation within the team. We have close links with our local training school, BTPP.
Main duties of the job
Successful candidates will be required to :
- Have a valid professional registration with the Association of Child Psychotherapists (ACP)
- Have a minimum of one year of clinical experience at Band 7
- Provide specialist psychoanalytic psychotherapy assessment, treatment and formulation for children, adolescents and young adults with severe, complex and persistent mental health problems, and their carers and families, including therapeutic parent and family work in a multi-disciplinary community out-patient mental health setting.
- Contribute to the core work of the multi-disciplinary team, including psychotherapy Choice appointments ( initial assessments) and co-working with MDT colleagues on complex cases.
- Work autonomously as a senior clinician in line with professional guidelines and to Trust policies and procedures, with strong supervisory and team support.
- Contribute to leadership of the psychotherapy team and wider MDT.
- Contribute to service development aligned to Divisional and Trust priorities and values.
- Support the delivery of services which are culturally sensitive, equitable, and accessible.
- Provide expertise as an independent practitioner in at least one highly specialised clinical field involving complex clinical judgement.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
For further information about the main responsibilities please view the attached job description and person specification.
We highly recommend you submit your application as soon as possible, this post may close earlier than the indicated closing date if a sufficient number of applications are received.
Person specification
Skills and experience
Essential
- Evidence of highly developed communication skills with children, young people and families in distressed, angry or hostile states
- Evidence of highly effective written communication skills
- Ability to convey psychoanalytic concepts in everyday language and offer informed advice, guidance and consultation to families, colleagues and other professional groups and networks
- Good computer skills, including use of the internet and electronic clinical systems
- Ability to frequently sustain considerable highly concentrated physical, mental and emotional effort under highly stressful and complex situations, in physically constrained positions for lengthy periods of time ( at least one hour at a time)
- Appropriate clinical judgement involving highly complex facts and situations requiring analysis, interpretation and comparison of a range of options
- Demonstrating clinical leadership including service development and through commitment to contributing to the continuous learning culture of the MDT by sharing training and learning
Desirable
- Experience of delivering specialist psychotherapy treatment and assessments with the 18-25 age group and knowledge of the legislation framework for this work.
- Experience of delivering training, teaching, consultations or clinical supervisions, either to MDT colleagues or to external professionals
Qualifications, skills and experience
Essential
- Evidence of valid professional registration with Association of Child Psychotherapists
- Evidence of minimum of one year's experience in clinical post at Band 7
- Qualification as a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist (clinical doctoral level)
- Honours degree or equivalent
- Postgraduate Diploma or Masters’ Level Degree
- A minimum of one year of clinical experience of working at Band 7 post-qualification, as a member of a multidisciplinary team with a wide variety of service users presenting with mental health difficulties across the full range of clinical severity and of delivering specialist short-term and long-term individual psychotherapy with children and young people, and highly specialist assessments to inform care planning and formulations.
- Experience of exercising full clinical responsibility for the care and treatment of children and adolescents with mental health problems both as a qualified care co-ordinator and in the context of a multidisciplinary care plan.
- Experience of psychotherapeutically informed work with parents and carers both short-term and long-term.
- Experience of working with and managing high levels of risk, including suicidality safely and appropriately in consultation with MDT colleagues.
- Experience of delivering assessments and psychotherapy treatment with children and young people with complex needs likely to affect their mental health such as neurodiversity, neurological conditions, physical health issues and disabilities, gender dysphoria, those who identify as Trans or who are in the care of the local authority
- Knowledge of mental health legislation for children and adults
- Well-developed knowledge of research methodologies appropriate to the evaluation of child psychotherapy. Knowledge of the evidence base for the clinical effectiveness of child psychotherapy and the contribution of child psychotherapy to understanding both normal and pathological development.
- Thorough knowledge of evidence-based intervention, NICE and other guidelines and application to inform good practice and care planning in the context of a community mental health service for CAYP.
- Knowledge of health inequalities and barriers to accessing services, including poverty, disability, lived experience, racism and differences of culture and how these can be addresses to improve access
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Applying for this NHS job
This advert is for Band 7/8a Senior Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist with Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust in Birmingham, Midlands, England. It is listed as a Psychologist role. The advertised salary is £49,387 - £64,750 per annum, pro rata. The contract type is Permanent. The application deadline is 16 Aug 2026.
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