Systemic Family Psychotherapist, CAMHS Eating Disorders: Sponsorship Available

Job summary

The Royal Free CAMHS Eating Disorder Service is looking for a B8a Systemic Family Therapist to join their extensive multi-disciplinary team. We are a large eating disorders service, covering 5 boroughs in North Central London. The service is fortunate in its ability to provide specialist treatment for young people diagnosed with a variety of Eating Disorders, with varying severity, via community outpatient, intensive day patient, and short-term medical inpatient admission treatment. Our family-based treatment ethos places systemic working at the heart of eating disorder treatment for young people, and the successful candidate will join an already well-established team of Systemic Family Therapists. They will also benefit from close working relationships with other core disciplines such as Specialist Nursing, Dietetics, Psychiatry, Psychology and Psychotherapy, and may also work across fellow community services. This makes for a uniquely rich and diverse clinical experience, with extensive opportunity for growth and development.

We are committed to our professional development and have regular CPD sessions with our Systemic Family Therapy colleagues in the Royal Free CAMHS neuro-developmental team. The post holder will also have the opportunity to support our Family Therapy clinic, provide Systemic Supervision to colleagues, and deliver a psycho-education programme for parents. They will receive regular group and individual supervision.

Main duties of the job

Role requirements:

• Conducting Eating Disorder assessments and adopting a caseload delivering systemically informed evidence-based treatments, including FT AN, FT BN and FBT ARFID, which will involve working creatively with young people and their families.
• Delivering Systemic Family Therapy where necessary to enhance treatment outcomes.
• Partaking in MDT (multi-disciplinary team) discussions with systemic perspectives, via our MDT meetings, supervision groups and systemic consultations to help the development of systemically informed formulations.
• Care coordinating and supporting treatment requirements for patients throughout their recovery journey. This role offers the opportunity to work with systems in crisis, potentially via our Intensive Service or our Paediatric ward, through to stability and recovery as a community outpatient.
• Coordinating, developing and delivering our regular psycho-education workshop to parents (The Family Support Package).
• The post holder will also be required to take on the role of Duty Clinician, for a minimum of once a month for triaging new referrals and coordinating responses to matters of clinical urgency. Full training will be given.

Prior experience in eating disorders is highly desirable, but additional training will be given for the right candidate.

Person Specification

Royal Free World Class Values

Essential

• Demonstrable ability to meet the Trust Values

Education & professional Qualifications

Essential

• Post-graduate training in Systemic and Family Psychotherapy as accredited by the Association of Family Therapy (AFT).
• UKCP registration
• Minimum 3 years post qualified experience
• Relevant core profession within Health and Social Care and education profession

Desirable

• AFT Approved Systemic Supervisor

Experience

Essential

• Experience of working with a wide variety of children, adolescents and their parents across a whole age range of presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity
• Ability to work as a member of a multidisciplinary team located in the community or health care setting
• Experience of the application of therapy in different cultural contexts
• Experienced in oral presentations, working with people in groups
• Experience of eating disorders specialist systemic assessment and treatment for referred clients and their families
• Experience of specialist assessment and treatment for referred clients and their families, for a variety of eating disorders, including anorexia, and bulimia as a minimum

Desirable

• Substantial post-qualification supervised systemic clinical experience
• Skills in the use of complex methods of systemic assessment, intervention and management
• High level knowledge of the theory and practice of short and long term therapeutic interventions with individuals and families and its application to Eating Disorders
• Experience and skill in working with neuro-diversity, adapting practice and formulation to meet identified needs.

Skills and aptitudes

Essential

• Knowledge of legislation in relation to children and adolescents including Safeguarding Children and Vulnerable Adults Policies and Procedures
• Knowledge of NHS, Social Care and Education Structures, National policies and procedures
• Well developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to patients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS. This would involve using easy to understand language to convey systemic ideas and assumptions
• Evidence of continuing professional development
• Awareness of the implications of working within a managed system
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non -professional groups
• Ability to take a trauma-informed and person centered approach to working with YP and their families.

Desirable

• Knowledge of regulatory frameworks in relation to the patient group

Others

Essential

• Enthusiastic about family therapy in Eating Disorder and CAMHS settings
• Ability to tolerate anxiety without recourse to premature action whist appreciating the role of the supervisor
• Ability to be reflective about own practice and style
• Ability to form good working relationships with others in a multidisciplinary setting, with evidence of ability to communicate in a way that is understood by professionals without any psychological training
• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of multi -media materials suitable for presentations within public, professional and academic settings
• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate, to support and maintain clinical practice
• Interest in and ability to contribute to service development

Closing Date: 16 August 2026