Systemic Family Psychotherapist, CAMHS Eating Disorders

Job overview

The Royal Free CAMHS Eating Disorder Service is looking for a B8a Systemic Family Therapist to join their extensive multi-disciplinary team. We are a large eating disorders service, covering 5 boroughs in North Central London. The service is fortunate in its ability to provide specialist treatment for young people diagnosed with a variety of Eating Disorders, with varying severity, via community outpatient, intensive day patient, and short-term medical inpatient admission treatment. Our family-based treatment ethos places systemic working at the heart of eating disorder treatment for young people, and the successful candidate will join an already well-established team of Systemic Family Therapists. They will also benefit from close working relationships with other core disciplines such as Specialist Nursing, Dietetics, Psychiatry, Psychology and Psychotherapy, and may also work across fellow community services. This makes for a uniquely rich and diverse clinical experience, with extensive opportunity for growth and development.

We are committed to our professional development and have regular CPD sessions with our Systemic Family Therapy colleagues in the Royal Free CAMHS neuro-developmental team. The post holder will also have the opportunity to support our Family Therapy clinic, provide Systemic Supervision to colleagues, and deliver a psycho-education programme for parents. They will receive regular group and individual supervision.

Main duties of the job

Role requirements:

• Conducting Eating Disorder assessments and adopting a caseload delivering systemically informed evidence-based treatments, including FT AN, FT BN and FBT ARFID, which will involve working creatively with young people and their families.
• Delivering Systemic Family Therapy where necessary to enhance treatment outcomes.
• Partaking in MDT (multi-disciplinary team) discussions with systemic perspectives, via our MDT meetings, supervision groups and systemic consultations to help the development of systemically informed formulations.
• Care coordinating and supporting treatment requirements for patients throughout their recovery journey. This role offers the opportunity to work with systems in crisis, potentially via our Intensive Service or our Paediatric ward, through to stability and recovery as a community outpatient.
• Coordinating, developing and delivering our regular psycho-education workshop to parents (The Family Support Package).
• The post holder will also be required to take on the role of Duty Clinician, for a minimum of once a month for triaging new referrals and coordinating responses to matters of clinical urgency. Full training will be given.

Prior experience in eating disorders is highly desirable, but additional training will be given for the right candidate.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• In conjunction with the specialist multidisciplinary team assess the suitability of a systemic intervention including the capacity of the individual and family to engage in the treatment offered.
• The post-holder will be responsible for carrying out systemic family therapy assessments, bearing in mind highly complex factors concerning family history, the physical and developmental needs, devising a detailed care plan and providing specialised family therapy interventions using a range of therapeutic skills and knowledge involving observation and systemic techniques.
• To communicate with the family, referrer, other professionals and the specialist multidisciplinary team in a sensitive and skilled manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans, and co-ordinate a care package appropriate for the client’s needs.
• The post-holder will be a key clinician within the Eating Disorders Assessment clinic for new referrals, and will be responsible for delivering the relevant treatment model (FT AN, FT BN, FBT Arfid) with efficacy to patients and their parents in a timely, efficient and sensitive manner, working alongside professional colleagues.
• To assume responsibility for managing and care coordinating their own caseload, following the trust and service protocols. This will include reviewing and assessing the young person’s level of risk on a regular basis, changing the care plan accordingly and liaising with the young person’s consultant.
• With reference to own professional limitations ensure excellent communication with and inform/seek support from the Child & Adolescent Eating Disorders Service/generic mental health CAMHS team when dealing with complex mental health risk assessments for eating disorder clients and where required ensure safe transfer of care.
• Demonstrate expertise in analysing and reflecting upon own clinical practice and those of others in the team.  Use constructive means to enhance team building in the light of the emotional/psychological impact for staff working within the complex field of eating disorders.
• As care coordinator, or as an allocated Systemic professional to a case, if required and as agreed take the lead in communicating relevant information with the referring agent on a regular basis and act as an advocate for the Service user/team at multi-professional/health, education, social and voluntary agency meetings.