The Oxleas Community Perinatal Service are excited to recruit into a brand new role to develop a care pathway and embed Art Therapy into the service! The team works alongside service users (and their support networks) who experience severe and complex mental health challenges, during pregnancy and the post-partum period. We are looking for an experienced, enthusiastic, Art Psychotherapist Principal pioneer to lead on both clinical practice and a research project, trialling and evaluating the efficacy of art therapy with service users in the perinatal period.
• To establish an Art therapy provision in Perinatal services across Bexley, Bromley and Greenwich.
• To develop and lead on a research project into the effectiveness of Art therapy with Perinatal clients reporting to the Perinatal service Manager and Head art therapist
• To work autonomously within a multi-disciplinary team; providing specialist assessment, advice, individual and group therapy for a wide range of clients and their presenting problems.
• To provide assessments and advice to colleagues on issues relating to Art therapy
1.To work with a wide range of clients, many of whom will have complex needs, and some will have severe and enduring mental health problems within the Perinatal service.
2.To use a therapeutic approach that is effective in working with the particular needs and difficulties of individual clients and groups.
3.To provide specialist Art therapy assessments of referred clients, which may incorporate information obtained from clients, relatives, other professionals and case notes.
4.To make formulations, develop and implement treatment plans based on an appropriate theoretical framework of clients and their problems. This requires making sense of and interpreting complex information to make decisions about specific interventions and the overall course of treatment.
5.To contribute to the multidisciplinary team in planning, implementing and evaluating treatment. To attend the triage and other Multi professional meetings as required
6.To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients; managing waiting list and own caseload.
Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children’s centres, schools and people’s homes.
We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.
Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:
• We’re Kind
• We’re Fair
• We Listen
• We Care
• As part of the MDT Perinatal team, to discuss and allocate referrals with regard to suitability, type of therapy and approach.
• To be able to retain and process complex information during assessment and therapy sessions, which includes the intense transferred feelings from clients. To be able to work therapeutically with clients who frequently present in highly distressed and emotional states.
• To be responsible for managing own clinical caseload and workload.
• To be alert to risk factors; making use of risk assessment tools when necessary and using clinical judgement to decide when a referral to Accident & Emergency, the Home Treatment Team, or Social Services (where children are involved), might be needed.
• To monitor, review and evaluate clients’ progress.
• Using high level of interpersonal skills, analytical judgement and empathy to manage and contain difficult interactions with clients which may include managing hostility, threats of self harm, risk, and talking through highly traumatic experiences.
• The post holder will be able to work closely, in a sensitive and thoughtful way with disturbing and traumatic emotional material on a continuing daily basis with clients with acute and enduring mental health issues. This requires understanding but also a high degree of professionalism to avoid secondary trauma. Clients may be distressed and angry and the work may involve working therapeutically with people with complex histories ad traumatic experiences from childhood who may have limited insight and be resistive to change.
• To be highly empathic and containing while working with clients in states of emotional disturbance with complex histories and provide effective flexible, treatment plans and interventions.
• To monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of Art therapy in Perinatal services, and contribute to evaluation and policy for the Art therapy service as a whole.
• To take a lead for Art Therapy within Perinatal services and ensure its integration with other specialisms in this service. To engage with the MDT and promote Art Therapy within the service and with external partners as required
• To develop and lead on a research project into the effectiveness of art psychotherapy, utilising appropriate outcomes measures, with Perinatal clients reporting to the Perinatal service Manager and Head art therapist.
This advert closes on Tuesday 23 Jan 2024
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