Parent Infant Psychotherapist

Job overview

Perinatal Mental Health Teams (PMHTs) are secondary care mental health teams that specialise in supporting women and birthing people in the perinatal period (pregnancy through until 12 months postnatal) who have severe and complex mental health difficulties. We assess and treat a range of difficulties including mood disorders, anxiety disorders, psychosis, personality disorders and eating disorders.

Some of these difficulties may be longstanding or emerge in the context of pregnancy or birth. The service is designed to provide timely input to parents and families to mitigate the impact of mental health disorder on the child. We are a multi-disciplinary team including psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy, nursing, occupational therapy, and nursery nursing. The service works closely with maternity/obstetric services as well as other agencies (e.g., health visiting and social services).

We have close links with the Mother-Baby Unit (MBU) inpatient unit at the Bethlem Royal Hospital. The service has a growing team of perinatal psychological therapists who are committed to providing evidence-based interventions to women and their families that are accessible and acceptable to the diverse population that we serve in South London.

Main duties of the job

There has been a long-standing SLaM Perinatal Psychotherapy Service and as part of this a highly specialised Parent-Infant Mental Health provision has also been developed.   We have expanded our psychological workforce to include greater access to parent infant interventions including Parent Infant Psychotherapy, Video Interaction Guidance and Circle of Security Parenting groups.

This post-holder will be responsible for the delivery of parent infant clinical interventions using a psycho-dynamically informed parent infant psychotherapy model. Working with Parent-Infant Lead they will enable provision and supervision of parent-infant psychotherapy.  The post holder may also be involved in the delivery of Circle of Security parenting groups and other psycho-educational groups and interventions for parents as needed, delivered by community practitioners.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To provide a highly specialist parent-infant psychotherapy service to the Perinatal Community Mental Health Service including specialist assessment, treatment, planning, implementation and monitoring of outcomes.
• To be responsible for the integration of parent-infant interventions across modalities and across the service as part of the overall Care Plan.
• To contribute to enabling other staff, service users and carers from diverse backgrounds to flourish by working to create a psychologically safe environment.
• To provide clinical supervision and consultation as appropriate, functioning as a lead specialist in the Perinatal Community Mental Health Service.
• To undertake service evaluation, audit and research.
• To work as an autonomous professional within HCPC/ BPC/ UKCP/ ACP guidelines and codes of conduct and be guided by principles and policies or procedures of the service, taking responsibility for interpreting policies within defined parameters.
• To agree outcomes/results with clinical/professional lead and to decide how they are best achieved.

For further information please see the full job description.