Location: Central London with substantial travel to UK Services.

 Part time 15 hours per week 

Salary of £15,000 - £16,000 Full time equivalent

 We have an opportunity for a qualified and experienced Psychological Therapist to join our team and help support reflective and therapeutically informed care in our Children’s Homes and supported accommodation services.

About Us

Our vision is for every child and young person to be safe, loved and happy, to achieve their potential and have a bright future.

St Christopher's is a leading charity for children and young people. We are proud of our history of providing fostering, children's homes and innovative leaving care services across the UK & Isle of Man.  We have a passionate commitment to our young people, placing them at the centre of everything we do.  We provide positive life experiences for young people who are unable to sustain a placement in their parental or foster home.

We are an equal-opportunity employer keen to develop an inclusive workforce where people feel they belong.  We hope to attract applications from under- represented groups, including people from different cultures, nationalities, socioeconomic backgrounds, ages, disabilities, religions, faith, sex, orientation, childcare responsibilities, and gender-diverse identities.

St Christopher’s Academy

When you join St Christopher’s, we will set you up in your career with a tailored development plan. Whether you want to move across to a different service, become a Manager or just explore further your current role, we will support you to map out your career trajectory and help you achieve your professional ambitions. If you want to learn more about St Christopher’s Academy, please click here

About The Role

The role is available part time (0.6fte), visiting our children’s homes and supported accommodation services supporting reflective practice groups, offering psychotherapeutically informed support to the residential teams. Providing consultation with managers and where possible providing clinical supervision to trainee placement students. We want to support our staff’s emotional wellbeing and psychological understanding so that they, in turn, can help develop the resilience, self-esteem and wellbeing of our young people.

Key aspects of the Role:

• To work with Home Managers and residential staff in the services to support the development of staff’s psychological understanding in their work with young people in our care.
• To support the implementation of the St Christopher’s Therapeutic Plan
• To provide Consultative support for residential staff to help develop their therapeutically informed practice.

The successful candidate will have:

• At least 3 years post-qualification experience of therapeutic practice with children and young people including groups and individuals.
• Training and experience in trauma-informed and attachment-based approaches to therapeutic practice.
• The ability to work integratively and flexibly with a range of client needs.
• Clinical accreditation with BACP/UKCP/HCPC or other professional body.
• An understanding of the support needs of residential workers.
• Experience of working as part of a multi-disciplinary team.
• Experience of delivering psycho-education to other professionals.

What you should expect from us

• Salary £15,000 - £16,000 per annum full time equivalent.
• A friendly working environment, a fun, open and honest culture.
• 25 days holiday rising to 27 days after 3 years’ service, plus Bank Holidays, pro-rata.
• Industry leading training programme including access to level 3 qualifications, children’s right and participation, CSE, empowerment, mental health and social pedagogy.
• Contributory pension scheme, enhanced maternity and company sick scheme.
• BUPA employee assistance programme, offering counselling, financial advice and legal support.
• Interest-free season ticket loan, cycle to work scheme.
• Discount shopping scheme at hundreds of retailers across the UK.
• Discretionary funded training programs.
• Employee awards based on performance and length of service.
• Fantastic opportunities to develop your career within our range of services.
• UK Life Assurance (Death in service) to the value of 3 times your annual salary.

 Recruitment Process

St Christopher’s is committed to the safeguarding of all children and young people in our care including the principals of Safer Recruitment. During the recruitment process you will be expected to complete an online application form to ensure we capture essential information to meet legislation, best practice and vetting requirements to assess your suitability to work with children and young people.

Applicants will ideally already be on the DBS Update Service; if this is not the case St Christopher's will carry out a DBS (police) check prior to your start date.

Your application must include a supporting statement addressing the criteria given in the Person Specification.

For the full Job Description for this role and more detail about what will be required, please click here.

Closing Date: 04/09/2024

We advise to apply as soon as possible as applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

St Christopher’s Fellowship has a minimum age requirement of 21 for roles working directly with children and young people in our residential and semi-independent Homes.