Avon & Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust

Band 8a Parent Infant Therapist - Chippenham

The closing date is 24 June 2025

Job summary

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced 0.8 wte parent infant therapist to be part of a specialist community perinatal mental health service. This post has been created to assist with our expansion to two years postnatal.

The specialist perinatal community mental health service provides advice, support and oversight of the BSW perinatal mental health pathway from preconception through to the infant's second birthday, working with and supporting health and social care professionals in primary care, maternity services, early years and adult mental health teams.

The team carries a caseload of women who are experiencing moderate to severe perinatal difficulties, where the level of these difficulties exceeds the expertise of primary care or general mental health services - and may include those who are currently well but at high risk of relapse.

The service operates Monday to Friday, 9-5.

This post is to cover the whole BSW area. The team hybrid work, with the main hub in Chippenham and spokes in Swindon, Bath and South Wiltshire for staff to work from, alongside working from home.

Access to your own transport for work use is essential as public transport is unreliable in parts of the BSW area.

Main duties of the job

This is a highly specialist clinical post that requires the capacity to work with serious adult psychopathology and infants who are often at risk of emotional abuse or neglect. In light of this the post holder/s will have trained in one of the following disciplines:

o Adult Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

o Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist

o Clinical Psychologist/Counselling Psychologist

o Family/Systemic Psychotherapist.

It is essential that the post holder has extensive knowledge about infant emotional and cognitive development within the perinatal period.

The post holder will have significant experience delivering specialist assessments and interventions with parents and infants, and will have had specialist training to accompany this, for example Video Interaction Guidance (VIG), Infant Mental Health Diploma/Masters, Newborn Behaviour Observation (NBO), or other relevant training etc.

A generic job description has been used so please review the Key Local Information attached for specialist skills, training and experience necessary for the role.

About us

We are AWP (Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust):a diverse organisation with over 5,000 dedicated staff providing inpatient and community-based mental health care.

We provide services from a range of locations to approximately 1.8 million people living in Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES), Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, across the county of Wiltshire and in parts of Dorset.

Our outstanding people promote mental health and wellbeing. The expertise and resources within AWP are dedicated to a person-centred approach for those who use our services and for all employees. We recognise that happy and fulfilled employees give better care.

AWP is committed to support and create a positive research and evidence-based environment and culture, which can have a beneficial impact on everyone who works for the organisation and the care we provide to those who use our services.

At AWP we actively encourage applicants from all backgrounds; we are particularly keen to encourage applications from people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, those with disabilities and from the LGBTQ+ community. We want people to bring their unique blend of experiences, backgrounds, perspectives and knowledge to AWP, as diversity makes us stronger.

Date posted

10 June 2025

Pay scheme

Agenda for change

Band

Band 8a

Salary

£53,755 to £60,504 a year pro rata

Contract

Permanent

Working pattern

Part-time

Reference number

342-SS081-0625

Job locations

Hathaway Medical Centre

Middlefield Road

Chippenham

SN14 6GT

Job description

Job responsibilities

For full details please see key local information as this is a specialist post.

Main Responsibilities:

To provide highly specialist psychological assessment and therapy to patients, infants and carers as appropriate to the service.

To provide highly specialist advice and consultation on clients formulation and psychological management to other non-psychologist colleagues.

To use highly specialist psychological knowledge and skills to contribute to the more effective management of patients by the various teams in the area and where appropriate outside of the area.

To clinically supervise trainee clinical psychologists, assistant psychologists, less experienced psychology staff, and other professionals.

To contribute to audit, research, policy and service development within the areas served by the Psychological Therapies Service.

To develop and deliver training in psychological therapies for multidisciplinary staff.

Job Description:

A. CLINICAL

1. To provide a high quality and largely autonomous and systematic therapy service.

2. To undertake highly specialist assessments, including risk assessment and assessment for suitability for specialist therapies with clients (as appropriate to the role).

3. To formulate and implement plans for the treatment and/or management of clients mental health problems, based upon an appropriate conceptual framework of the clients problems, and employing methods based upon evidence of efficacy, across the full range of care settings.

4. To be responsible for providing a range of psychological interventions for individuals, carers and groups, within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychological formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.

5. To provide at least one specialist evidence based psychological intervention as dictated by the needs of the service.

6. To provide highly specialist consultation to members of the various teams in the area and beyond regarding formulation and therapeutic management of clients of those teams.

7. To use highly specialist knowledge and skills to contribute to the more effective management of patients by teams.

8. To be involved in the development and delivery of training within the Trust.

9. To participate in clinical and caseload supervision arrangements provided by the Service.

10. To maintain accurate records and to monitor clinical workload using agreed systems.

11. To support the full implementation of CPA or equivalent including acting as care co-ordinator as appropriate to the needs of the service.

12. To enter data as requested by the Trust in a timely manner

B. MANAGEMENT

1. Delegated day to day operational management of more junior staff.

2. Delegated caseload supervision.

3. Represent the service at specialist meetings as requested.

4. The co-ordination of small scale projects as requested.

C. PROFESSIONAL

1. To fully adhere to the requirements of the appropriate professional body.

2. To be aware of, adhere to, and where appropriate, contribute to the formulation and review of Trust and Area, policies and procedures. Copies of Trust Policies can be accessed via the staff intranet or from your manager.

3. To participate in local and trust wide meetings, as appropriate.

4. To maintain and develop high standards of practice by engaging in continuing professional development and co-operative working/networking with other appropriate professionals.

5. To participate in an annual performance appraisal.

6. To participate in clinical supervision.

D. SERVICE GOVERNANCE

1. To participate in service governance processes in the profession and in the LDU to maintain a safe, effective service that responds to Service User feedback.

2. To support and participate in multidisciplinary clinical audit.

3. To liaise with other disciplines and agencies to ensure that best practice is shared.

4. To promote the use of effective interventions in the service.

E. TRAINING AND STAFF DEVELOPMENT

1. To provide supervision for trainees from regional training courses and elsewhere, as appropriate.

2. To provide training, supervision and consultation in therapeutic approaches to other

staff in multidisciplinary teams. This is to include joint assessment, formulation of psychological problems and planning of interventions to be implemented by other team members with service users.

3. To contribute to the development of a psychologically based framework of understanding and care across service settings through providing teaching, training, consultation and supervision.

4. To participate in peer supervision arrangements.

5. To collaborate with colleagues to develop and offer training courses, workshops and supervision groups to develop psychological skills for staff in the area.

6. To contribute to the teaching of students and trainees in psychology, medicine, nursing and other health care disciplines.

7. To agree a plan of personal development with the line manager and professional lead for the service.

F. SERVICE / POLICY DEVELOPMENT

1. To collaborate with specialist staff and other agencies in the LDU to extend the range of specialist perinatal and parent-infant interventions available across the area.

2. To propose changes to policies and procedures in multidisciplinary teams as appropriate.

3. To advise managers of service developments

G. RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

1. To engage in research relevant to service priorities as appropriate.

2. To participate in audit and service evaluation activities examining the effectiveness of current service delivery and informing the development of services relevant to client needs.

3. To provide advice, support and consultation to colleagues from other disciplines undertaking research in the area.