Art Psychotherapist- HMP Downview OPD Service
| Posting date: | 17 December 2025 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £53,751.00 to £60,651.00 per year |
| Additional salary information: | £53751.00 - £60651.00 a year |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 04 January 2026 |
| Location: | Sutton, Surrey, SM2 5PD |
| Company: | NHS Jobs |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | C9333-25-1581 |
Summary
Please see job description and personal specification for full list of responsibilities: 1. To deliver Modified Forensic Dialectic Behavioural Therapy to women screened into the OPD pathway, this will include individual and group based treatment. To attend and take part in weekly DBT consultation meetings and adhere to DBT principles. 2. To support and deliver in the development of therapy within the Options service and co-facilitate social creative sessions, gender specific specialist arts psychotherapies service for adults, adapting your approach to ensure inclusion of those who are hard to engage owing to complex needs such as current risk or self harm and/or violence, cognitive difficulties, emotional withdrawal and psychological disturbance. 3. To asses each patients suitability for arts psychotherapy and to ascertain from the ongoing evaluation / review their ego strength and tolerance of self and others, while working towards the agreed aims of therapy. 4. To assess risk, manage and adopt appropriate measures to maintain a safe and therapeutically sensitive environment for all when faced with challenging behaviour, for example verbal abuse, deliberate self-harm, violence, aggression or threatening behaviour. To contribute to the overall team risk assessment. 5. To provide a service to the women within the OPD service to help them adapt to their environment and minimise distress, deterioration and actual and / or perceived threat they pose to themselves and others around them. 6. To contribute specialist knowledge from arts psychotherapy assessment and treatment to the overall formulation and care plans for each patient through contribution to formulation meetings, reviews, clinical meetings and by providing written summaries. 7. To develop and facilitate a range of individual sessions and therapeutic groups within the Options treatment and outreach model. 8. To work with patients to understand the content and context of their communication using the arts as a focus. 9. To contribute to training and support for custodial colleagues. 10. To support and participate fully in the work of the multidisciplinary team, including attending team meetings and reflective practice. 11. To maintain accurate patient records on SystmOne including clinical record keeping, specialist reports, data-collection and CPA in accordance with relevant national and trust policies. 12. To undertake ongoing evaluation of patients progress and to manage therapy endings and follow up. 13. To contribute to joint assessments and clinical reviews on patients with members of the multidisciplinary team. To write reports and contribute to the writing of reports as required by MDT processes, including as required reviews, Safeguarding meetings and Public Protection meetings. 14. To actively contribute to a culture of reflective practice within the team and beyond, taking a lead in modelling self-reflection and self-awareness in emotionally challenging situations. This could be through co-facilitation of groups or in staff development forums. 15. To support team members from other disciplines in processing the emotional impact of the work through applying skills and knowledge from own personal psychotherapy and drawing on clinical experience and theoretical knowledge to highlight and not collude with potentially destructive mechanisms of defence. 16. To maintain a high degree of professionalism at all times particularly as the clinical work will frequently involve working alone with service users for substantial periods in intimate and emotionally intense therapy sessions, where behaviour might be uninhibited and self care poor. 17. To use sound judgement and interpretative skills to work with the client to understand the content of their engagement and communications and to assess risk. 18. To respond appropriately to situations when there is a threat of physical violence to self or others including florid psychotic symptoms, self-harm and aggressive or threatening behaviour. 19. To carry out this work under the supervision and guidance of a senior clinician of the same discipline, working closely with therapeutically trained professionals and other team members. 20. To ensure own ethical practice by working within ones Professional Associations code of ethics and guidelines for clinical practice and abiding by the Health Care Professions Councils standards of proficiency and conduct and the Trusts Confidentiality policies.