Systemic Family Psychotherapist Preceptorship Band 7-8a

Clinical: 1. To provide a specialist systemic assessment of referrals of a significant and complex nature to formulate and implement plans for the treatment and/or management of a childs or adolescents mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework and employing methods based upon evidence. To use routine outcome measures as laid down by the Trust. 2. To assess children, adolescents and their families as part of a risk assessment. 3. To consult to parents/carers (including foster parents) as part of a treatment plan. 4. To work in ways which are sensitive to and appropriate for the needs of families from a wide range of racial, cultural and religious backgrounds. This includes abilities to understand and offer therapeutic interventions to a variety of family forms including single parents, same sex couples and their wider family networks, accommodated children and their network of care, children with learning difficulties, and children who are on the Child
Protection Register, and parents with mental health difficulties. Competence is required in undertaking systemic therapy with families using an interpreter where English is not their first language. 5. To provide specialist systemic psychotherapy with clinical autonomy drawing on a range of models and wherever possible brief interventions. To practice in a way which is inclusive and considerate of the needs of each individual in the system including family members in their varying developmental stages and current emotional state. 6. To make highly skilled evaluations and decisions about treatment options considering highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the child, family or group, and their difficulties. 7. To be responsible for implementing a range of systemic psychotherapeutic interventions for children, adolescents, and their families, including couples and groups, drawing upon different explanatory models, and maintaining
several provisional hypotheses in reaching a formulation and treatment plan. Interventions may include family psychotherapy, individual work, chairing professionals, and network meetings, liaising with other agencies, observations of young people in different settings, and the use of a range of systemic models. 8. To exercise full autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment, and discharge of clients, and formulate effective care plans in collaboration with the client and family. To undertake risk assessment and risk management relevant to individual patients, including protective and risk factors present in the network of significant relationships, and to do this using the knowledge of the multi professional context that is a mental health service for the locality. 9. To work jointly and collaboratively with other team members to enhance and develop work with families by providing specialist knowledge and skills.