8a Perinatal Parent Infant Psychotherapist 0.5WTE

We are seeking an experienced parent-infant psychotherapist with a passion for perinatal care to join our specialist multidisciplinary community perinatal mental health service. The post holder will offer specialist psychodynamically informed assessment and treatment to parents and infants who are experiencing complex emotionally difficulties. They will join a supportive group of psychological therapists dedicated to high quality, effective evidence-based practice and will be supported with specialist clinical and professional supervision. They will offer supervision to more junior psychotherapists within the service. Opportunities for training and development will be made available.

The postholder will enhance the work of the multi-disciplinary team by providing specialist advice, consultation, training and supervision on service users' psychological care. The emphasis of our service is that of close liaison with midwifery and obstetric teams during the antenatal period and with General Practitioners, Health Visitors and community agencies during the postnatal period.

The postholder will take a flexible approach utilising a range of applied psychotherapeutic techniques, given the variety and time specific nature of treatment during the perinatal period. An ability to assess and manage risk in adult mental health and the impact on the infant is crucial.

The postholder will also utilise research skills for audit, policy and service development.

Main duties of the job
To act as an autonomous, registered practitioner who is legally and professionally accountable for their own unsupervised actions guided by their professional code of conduct and Trust guidelines and protocols.
To deliver, or support the delivery of, highly specialist evidence-based psychological assessment, care planning and treatment for service users seeking help within the perinatal period.
To work collaboratively and flexibly as a member of the multi-disciplinary team and contribute to a psychologically informed framework of working across the service.
To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for managing an identified caseload of parents with complex psychological problems, including assessment of risk and safeguarding adults and babies.
To actively contribute to perinatal care plans, providing a psychological perspective, which may require attendance at pre-birth and post-birth planning meetings.
To provide supervision to more junior staff and consultation and supervision where appropriate to other members of the MDT. To ensure effective use of their own supervision to maintain high standards of care.
To be mindful of the needs of women, babies, children, young people, families and individuals from a wide range of racial, cultural, sexual, religious and social backgrounds and to develop sensitive and innovative ways of meeting these needs, ensuring the team operates from an anti-racist and anti-discriminatory perspective at all times.

Please contact Melanie Royal-Lawson should you have any questions or would like to discuss this role.