JOB TITLE: Children’s Psychotherapist

TEAM:Children’s Section

GROUP:Operations

LOCATION:London

REPORTS TO:Children’s Services Manager and

Therapeutic Services Manager

GRADE: 5

HOURS:28 hours per week

Context and Purpose of the Job

The Children’s Section is responsible for delivering services to separated children seeking asylum and refugee children. The Section also leads on raising the profile of our clients and advocates on their behalf. Supporting this work, the Section also promotes good practice to statutory and voluntary agencies and seeks to influence government at national level.

The Refugee Council supports separated children across the country from our offices in Kent, London, Birmingham, Luton and Leeds. The post is based in Croydon and will involve regular travel across the south east.

The Therapeutic Services team provides one to one therapeutic intervention and group therapy through a team of psychotherapists and caseworkers to individual asylum seekers and refugees with mental well being needs. The team has adapted the Therapeutic Services model of working in addressing the identified needs of clients within a holistic approach.

The purpose of this post is to provide therapeutic intervention to separated children who have often been through traumatic experiences including being trafficked, witnessing horrific events, and as a result of upheaval in their country of origin and along their journey to survival.

Many have experienced sudden loss and separation from family and loved ones resulting in mental health issues; others display symptoms of PTSD and may become isolated and anxious. This can lead to related behavioural issues, and disruption in school when their mental health needs are not met.

The therapist will engage separated children to access specialist services through working within a multidisciplinary approach and within the context of the separated child's life, for example, the foster family or school. They may see a child individually or in a group with other separated children, using skills to respond to what they might be communicating through their verbal or behavioural issues.

This post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. Therefore, all convictions, cautions and bind-overs, including those regarded as ‘spent’, must be declared at the application stage. An offer of employment is subject to a satisfactory enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service check. Repeat checks are initiated every two years.

Main Duties and Responsibilities

Key Relationships:

  • Children’sServices Manager, TherapeuticServices Manager and staff, Executive Services Director and other Refugee Counciloperations frontline staff and managers.
  • Social workers, foster parents, and others involved in the lives of children including educational staff at schools and colleges and other support providers including keyworkers.
  • TheDepartment forEducation.

Purpose of the Job:

  • Toprovide holistic assessment and casework intervention to prevent mental illness through both one to one therapy and psycho-educational groups for separated children.
  • To provide early identification of mental illness through notification and training of stakeholders who work with separated children.
  • To establish referral pathways and to secure access to specialist interventions for mental illness through direct referrals of separated children to external agencies.

Main Responsibilities:

  1. To work in the best interests of the child.
  2. To offer holistic assessment and treatment of separated children and adolescents as individuals or in a group.
  3. To manage a client caseload of short-term interventions with separated children from one to twelve sessions for individual and group therapy using the therapeutic casework model of intervention (practical, emotional and symbolic).
  4. To work alongside other professionals in planning how best to support a separated child for example in schools, hospitals, children's services and child protection agencies.
  5. To work within a multidisciplinary approach alongside teams comprising social workers, health service, legal services, department of education and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).
  6. To work effectively with volunteers.
  7. To work effectively with interpreters.
  8. To write clear counselling reports and letters and other documentation to the standard required by the Refugee Council.
  9. To maintain professional ethical boundaries, impartiality and confidentiality at all times.
  10. To assist separated children access and establish appropriate support networks to enhance their psychosocial wellbeing and create a ‘transitional space’ for those moving from adolescence to adulthood.
  11. To maintain accurate and timely record keeping, case notes, evaluation forms and to update any work undertaken using JCDB, our client database.
  12. To manage your own administration, for example in booking interpreters, organising travel, liaising with stakeholders and managing your expenses.
  13. To follow good practice guidelines and procedures including the attendance of and participation in intake/referral meetings, team meetings, regular supervision and clinical supervision sessions.
  14. To understand and implement the project objectives and outcomes, ensure regular project monitoring and collating client feedback on a timely way.
  15. To deliver training, skills sharing and workshops to other professionals who work with separated children in the community, for example to health visitors, social workers or educational professionals.
  16. To carry out all work with regard to the Refugee Council’sorganisational policies and procedures.
  17. To keep abreast of developments in theory and research and to undertake continuing professional development (CPD).

Additional Information

Working hours

The post holder will be working directly with young people, many of whom are in school or college. In light of this you will be required to work late on some evening to accommodate this and flexi-time will be given. The office is open from Monday to Friday.

Health & Safety

The post holder is responsible for:

  • Cooperating with the Refugee Council in delivering all legal responsibilities in respect of your own and your colleagues, volunteers, clients and others health and safety whilst at work.
  • Becoming familiar with the Refugee Council’s Health & Safety Policy and procedures including evacuation procedures at your workplace.
  • Carrying out risk assessments of your own work and especially of your own workstation to ensure that you do not expose yourself or others to unnecessary risk.

Flexibility

In order to deliver services effectively, a degree of flexibility is needed and the post-holder may be required to perform work not specifically referred to above. Such duties will, however, fall within the scope of the job, at the appropriate grade. The job description will be subject to periodic review with the post-holder to ensure it accurately reflects the duties of the job.

This job cannot be carried out working from home.

Equal Opportunities Statement

As part of its recruitment policy, the Refugee Council intends to ensure that no prospective or actual employee is discriminated against on the basis of race, gender nationality, marital status, sexual orientation, employment status, class, disability, age, religious belief or political persuasion, or is disadvantaged by any condition or requirement which is not demonstrably justifiable.

Working at the Refugee Council

A commitment to the work of the Refugee Council.

Personal Effectiveness

With the support of their manager the post-holder will need to effectively manage their own workload and medium and long term plans and objectives.

JOB TITLE: Child Psychotherapist (Children’sSection)

Qualifications

Essential

  1. Qualification in counselling, clinical psychology or psychotherapy and a member of a professional ethical framework body. E.g. BACP/UKPC
  2. Employment is subject to a satisfactory DBS check.

Experience

Essential

  1. An awareness of the psychological issues related to child development and the transition from adolescence to adulthood.
  2. Experience of offering over 200 clinical supervised client hours on mental health support.
  3. Understanding of the needs of asylum seekers and refugees.

Knowledge, skills and abilities

Essential

  1. Ability and psychological resilience to work with people in crisis and acute states of distress or disturbance and maintain a sensitive and professional attitude.
  2. Knowledge of a range of psychotherapeutic approaches and theories, including integrative, psychodynamic / psychoanalytic, humanistic and systemic and how these can be applied to work with separated children.
  3. Knowledge and understanding of issues faced by separated young people and the challenges faced in their developmental stages from childhood to adulthood.
  4. Ability to carry out holistic psychological and social assessments of separated children sufficient to gain an understanding of their complex needs for assistance in these areas and make secure access to specialist interventions through direct referrals to external agencies.
  5. Sensitivity to working in a multi cultural environment and an understanding of the ways in which views about health, including mental health, are culturally specific.
  6. Therapeutic skills in working and building trusting relationship with separated children experiencing a range of psychological issues including:PTSD, loss, guilt, shame, depression, pain and displacement.
  7. Ability to employ a range of clinical approaches to groups and individual separated children to provide early identification and prevent mental illness through therapy and psycho-educational groups.
  8. Good organisational skills and caseload management, record keeping and the ability to act on own initiative when appropriate.
  9. Report writing sufficient to be able to write counselling / therapy reports to the standard required bythe Refugee Council and other professionals.
  10. Ability to work in a multi-disciplinary system with colleagues from a range of clinical and other professional backgrounds, including social workers, foster parents, lawyers and other stakeholders.
  11. Ability to assess and work with the full range of risk affecting a separated child in the UK, including suicide / self-harm, and behavioural issues.
  12. Ability to deliver training on issues around mental health in relation to child development and cultural perspectives to stakeholders for example CAMHS, social services, the NHS andfoster carers.
  13. Knowledge of the asylum process for separated children in the UK sufficient to be able to follow a separated child’s progress through these systems and to seek specialist help when needed.
  14. Knowledge of the duties of local authority social services to children in need sufficient to be able to understand a separated child’s care and to seek specialist help when needed.
  15. Ability to work effectively with interpreters.
  16. Ability to work under pressure and prioritise work effectively.
  17. Ability to train and offer peer support to other clinicians and volunteers with the organisation.
  18. Strong personal commitment to equal opportunities both in terms of policy and practical application.

Desirable

  1. Knowledge and understanding of at least one of a range of evidence based approaches to trauma therapy such as Trauma-based CBT, EMDR orNarrative Exposure Therapysufficient to be able to deploy this model clinically under supervision.
  2. Spoken competence in one or more priority refugee language.

March 2015

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You can apply for this job at

Registered address: British Refugee Council, P O Box 68614 , London, E15 9DQ
Registered charity no. 1014576 Registered company no. 2727514