NHSCloses in 13 days

Perinatal and Parent-Infant Outreach Psychotherapist

South West London and St Georges Mental Health NHS Trust

London, SW17 7DJView on map(opens Google Maps in a new tab)

Salary

£58,133 to £65,261

Contract

Permanent

Hours

Not specified

Closing date

3 November 2026

13 days left

Job description

We are seeking an enthusiastic Perinatal Parent Infant Therapist/Adult Psychotherapist/Child & Adolescent Psychotherapist with a passion for perinatal...

  • To provide specialist psychotherapeutic assessments and interventions to service users and their infants of the Perinatal mental health service.
  • To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for managing an identified caseload of parents and infants with complex psychological problems, including assessment of risk and safeguarding adults and babies
  • To enable staff and service users from all backgrounds to flourish by working together to create a psychologically safe and responsive environment, ensuring the team operates from an anti-racist and anti-discriminatory perspective at all times
  • To provide consultation as appropriate to other members of the MDT and wider professional networks involved in a family's care.
  • To undertake service evaluation, research and policy development
  • 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 actively contribute to perinatal care plans, providing a psychological perspective, which may require attendance at pre-birth and post-birth planning meetings

To provide specialist psychotherapeutic assessments of parent infant dyads in the perinatal mental health service based upon the appropriate use, interpretation and integration of complex data from a variety of sources including psychological tests, self-report measures, rating scales, direct and indirect structured observations and semi-structured interviews with clients, family members and others involved in the clients care.

To formulate and implement plans for the formal psychotherapeutic treatment and/or management of difficulties within the parent-infant relationship, 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.

To be responsible for implementing a range of psychotherapeutic interventions for parent infant relationship difficulties within and across teams employed individually and in synthesis, adjusting and refining psychotherapeutic formulations drawing upon different explanatory models and maintaining a number of provisional hypotheses.

To evaluate and make decisions about treatment options taking into account both theoretical and therapeutic models and highly complex factors concerning historical and developmental processes that have shaped the individual, family or group.

To exercise autonomous professional responsibility for the assessment, treatment and discharge of clients whose problems are managed by psychotherapeutic care plans.

To provide specialist psychotherapeutic advice, guidance, consultation and training to other professionals contributing directly to the formulation and treatment plan for difficulties in the parent infant relationship.

To contribute directly and indirectly to a psychologically based framework of understanding and care to the benefit of all service users under the care of the team.

To undertake risk assessment and risk management for individual clients and their babies and to provide advice to other professions on psychotherapeutic aspects of risk assessment and risk management. To utilise specific experience of assessing risk to the unborn child as well as to the infant and to make decisions based on care needs which are most supportive of mother and child.

To communicate in a skilled and sensitive manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans of clients under their care and to monitor progress during both uni and multi-disciplinary care, integrating the contribution of other professionals on the basis of client need.

To work jointly with psychologists & psychotherapists based in community teams, to plan and hand over the psychotherapy assessment and treatment of patients that may continue after discharge from the Perinatal Team.

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We are Proud to Belong at South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust.

We have expert services, a rich history and a clear commitment to providing the best quality care for those with mental ill-health. The Care Quality Commission already rates our services as 'good' - we aspire to be 'outstanding'.

This is a great time to join us. We are transforming the way we care for our communities to support our mission of Making Life Better Together. We have built two brand new mental health facilities at Springfield University Hospital, which are amongst the best in the world. More developments are planned across our sites and services.

We are inclusive and diverse and strive to be actively anti racist. We want to attract people from all backgrounds and experiences to enrich the work we do together. We are proud to co-produce and involve our local communities in all that we do.

We offer flexible working, career development and a variety ofbenefits to enable a positive, welcoming environment in which our people and their careers can thrive.

Springfield University Hospital, Tooting

Unless expressly stated in the job advert the role is not subject to sponsorship, please be advised that all offers of employment are subject to evidence of right to work in the UK.

Training and Qualifications

Essential

  • Full/Completed training in Adult Psychodynamic or Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy or Child Psychotherapy or Systemic Family Therapy OR
  • Doctoral level training or equivalent in Clinical or Counselling Psychology
  • Professional registration with -HCPC (Clinical or Counselling Psychologist) or -UKCP (under the Council for Psychoanalysis and Jungian Analysis section) or -BPC (Jungian Analyst; Psychoanalyst; Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist) or -ACP (Child Psychotherapist) -UKCP (Systemic Family Therapist via the College of Family & Systemic Psychotherapists)
  • Experience of parent-infant observation as part of training and / or clinical work to date

Desirable

  • Further training / qualifications in Perinatal Mental Health
  • Successful completion of Parent- Infant Psychotherapy Training (including completion of an infant observation and personal psychotherapy / psychoanalysis)
  • Post qualification training in applied research methods, staff training & other methods of applied psychotherapeutic work
  • Full accreditation in video interventions such as VIG and VIPP
  • Training in Circle of Security Parenting and / or other group protocols focused on supporting parent-infant attachment

Experience

Essential

  • Experience of formulating difficulties within the parent-infant relationship across a variety of care settings, including outpatient, community, primary care and in-patient settings.
  • Experience of drawing upon attachment models and parent-infant relational models
  • Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of parent infant dyads with severe and complex relational difficulties
  • Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course with presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity including maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the threat of physical abuse
  • Experience of working with people in the perinatal period who experience severe, complex and long-term mental health problems

Desirable

  • Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision
  • Experience of working in different cultural contexts
  • Experience of working as part of a multidisciplinary team
  • Experience of working within a multicultural framework
  • Evidence of teaching about parent-infant theory and psychopathology
  • Experience of raising and managing safeguarding concerns
  • Experience of supervising clinical work within the multidisciplinary team

Knowledge & Skills

Essential

  • Skills in the use of complex methods of parent -infant assessment, intervention and management frequently requiring sustained and intense concentration
  • Knowledge of NICE guidelines related to infant mental health and evidence of working in line with NICE recommendations
  • Well-developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinically sensitive information to clients, their families, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS

Desirable

  • Knowledge of the theory and practice of specialised psychological therapies in specific difficult to treat groups (e.g. dual diagnosis, people experiencing psychosis, with personality disorder, substance misuse, learning disability, neurological dysfunction and additional disabilities)

How to apply

Applications are handled entirely by the employer on the original advert. We do not collect CVs, supporting statements or application data.

Provenance

Source

NHS Jobs

First seen

21 October 2026

Last checked

21 October 2026

Salary, closing date and description are taken from the employer's advert. The original advert always takes precedence.

About the employer

SWL
South West London and St Georges Mental Health NHS Trust

NHS organisation

This listing was structured from NHS Jobs. Vacancy details and the application process remain the responsibility of the original source.

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