Family Therapist

Job overview

We are specialist child and adolescent mental health that who support children and young people up to the age of 18 years old experiencing moderate to severe eating disorders.

Our team includes consultant psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, nurses and social workers, family therapists, dietitians and administrators. The service has focused on delivering timely access to assessment and evidence-based treatment for children and young people with anorexia nervosa and moderate to severe bulimia and binge eating disorder.

We offer specialist, family based approaches, such as cognitive behavioural therapy, cognitive analytical therapy, motivational interviewing and guided self-help. In addition, we are expanding to include an intensive home meal support provision to allow children and young people to remain in the community for treatment and avoid or delay admission to specialist units and acute hospitals.

Treatment involves specialist eating disorder assessment and participation in planned treatment programmes, including individual work, family work, family meals and support around managing difficulties linked with eating linked to specialist dietetic input.

Main duties of the job

To provide a qualified highly specialist systemic family therapy service to clients of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CAMHS across all sectors of care. This post provides a systemic overview of the family approach to the treatment of complex mental health disorders, specialising in eating disorders. The post-holder will be responsible for co-ordinating, developing and delivering a variety of family and systemic interventions. These interventions are highly specialised, reflecting an expectation that the service will continue to develop innovative practices that are based on collaboration between clinicians, service users and carers, and commissioners of the service.  The post holder will be responsible for this process by researching new practices, understanding and applying evidence-based approaches both in relation to family treatments and in the involvement of service users and carers.

The post-holder will be expected to offer advice and consultation on clients’ care to all colleagues and to other, non-professional carers, working autonomously within professional guidelines and the overall framework of the team’s policies and procedures. The post does not have any budgetary responsibilities.

The post holder will also be accountable for their own professional actions and will need to interpret broad occupational policies (i.e. commitment to a family approach to treatment, involving service users and carers at all levels of treatment and service development).

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details of responsibilities

• The post holder will undertake specialist systemic family assessment and care planned interventions of young people and families referred to the CAMHS Eating Disorder Service.
• Responsible for the delivery of a full range of family treatments to all patients.  These treatments may include the following systemic psychotherapy interventions;•    Conjoint family therapy (all family members present in the room at the same time, plus patient and other members of multi-disciplinary team).   •    Separated family therapy (i.e. parental counselling and individual systemic counselling running in parallel).•    Multi-family group therapy
• The post holder is expected to participate in assessments of patients referred for treatment and to consult to multi-disciplinary and multi-agency colleagues regarding the family treatment component of each patient’s care.  Assessment of family interactions and formulating how these are connected to diagnostic factors will be a key component of the post, influencing the direction of treatment and recommendations for appropriate family interventions.
• To communicate in a highly skilled and sensitive manner to clients, family carers and others as appropriate, information that may be contentious or highly distressing concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care.
• To monitor and evaluate progress during the course of both uni- and multi-disciplinary care, and to provide appropriate reports on this.
• To produce reports on clients, in a timely manner, that convey the key findings of systemic assessment and formulation and treatment outcome, in a way that does justice to the complexity of the problems described, but that are understandable to the recipients of the reports, including clients and referrers.
• To assist in the management of the team caseload.
• To work in partnership with other disciplines and to maintain links with statutory and non-statutory and primary care agencies as appropriate.
• To provide appropriate care for clients not engaged in treatment including: psycho-education, liaising with other professionals, engaging in treatment including using structured approaches such as motivational interviewing, risk assessment, health promotion and crisis intervention.
• To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and to provide advice to other professions on aspects of risk assessment and risk management in line with Trust and inter-agency policies and procedures.