About this role
Job summary
This role provides senior clinical leadership in the development, delivery, and embedding of systemic family therapy across the Forensic Directorate inpatient services, spanning medium secure and low secure settings. Low secure services include non-LD adult male wards as well as Learning Disability wards.
The post holder will operate with a high level of autonomy and professional authority, translating the Trust's approved Family Therapy business case and policy into consistent, safe, and clinically effective practice across the forensic pathway. You will contribute to governance, service development, and evaluation activity, supporting equitable access to family interventions across medium secure, low secure, and low secure rehabilitation pathways.
The role combines advanced specialist clinical practice with service-level leadership. Alongside a defined caseload of complex family work, the post holder will provide consultation, supervision, and strategic input to multidisciplinary teams, ensuring that family-inclusive practice is integrated into assessment, risk management, care planning, rehabilitation planning, and discharge processes across diverse forensic populations.
We are serious about diversity and inclusion, and are working hard to build this into our DNA. We warmly welcome applications for any of our roles from people from diverse backgrounds, we are proactively encouraging applications from under-represented communities for our more senior roles like this one.
Main duties of the job
Responsibilities include:
Clinical Practice and Risk Interface
Provide highly specialist systemic assessments and family therapy interventions with service users and their families across forensic inpatient services, where presentations are complex and risk, safeguarding, trauma, and relational rupture are prominent.
Adapt systemic approaches to meet the communication, cognitive, and neurodevelopmental needs of individuals within Learning Disability services, ensuring accessible and neuroaffirming practice.
Apply advanced systemic formulation to understand how family and relational dynamics interact with mental disorder, detention, and offending-related risk, and to support MDT decision-making.
Contribute to psychologically informed risk formulation and management by advising MDTs on relational factors that may amplify or mitigate risk, including issues relevant to safeguarding, public protection, and victim considerations.
Work collaboratively with Responsible Clinicians and ward teams to ensure family perspectives appropriately inform CPA processes, care planning, leave planning, and discharge pathways.
Communicate complex and sensitive clinical information to families and networks in a manner that is clear, containing, and proportionate to risk and capacity.
About us
We are the Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust. We care for the mental health and wellbeing of people across Kent and Medway. Our teams support adults with a wide range of mental health needs. Because we cover the whole county and both hospital and community settings, we can make care more joined up and easier to access for the 1.8 million people of Kent and Medway. Rated 'Good' by the CQC, we care for over 2,000 people in our hospitals and 54,000 in the community each year.
Our vision is simple: We are here to help communities not just live with mental illness, but live well. It's why we're passionate about working with communities to make mental health care better for everyone. And everything we do is guided by our values caring, inclusive, curious and confident.
Join us - if you share our passion for better mental health care and want to be part of a team that's doing well together.
'The High-Cost Area (HCA) allowance, also referred to as London Weighting is a payment made to employees who work in London and the surrounding areas.
As this post is based in Dartford, Gravesham or Swanley, the successful applicant will receive an additional payment each month.
5% of basic salary, subject to a minimum payment of £1,346 per year and a maximum payment of £2,270 per year (the agreed annual amount will be divided into 12 equal amounts and paid monthly) (2026/27 figures)
Job description Job responsibilities
Please refer to the attached job description for the full details on the responsibilities and person specification
At Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust, we are serious about diversity and inclusion, and we are working hard to build this into our DNA. We warmly welcome applications for any of our roles from people from diverse backgrounds, and we are proactively encouraging applications from under-represented communities for our more senior roles, like this one.
Person Specification
Training, Qualifications and Registration Essential
o Core professional qualification in psychology, social work, nursing, psychotherapy, or a related discipline. o Postgraduate qualification in Systemic Family Therapy recognised by AFT or equivalent. o Current registration with an appropriate professional regulatory body. oAbility to adapt systemic and family therapy interventions to meet the needs of individuals with cognitive or communication differences within secure environments.
Desirable
o Additional postgraduate or post-qualification training in trauma-informed, neuroaffirming, dialogical or forensic-relevant approaches. oExperience of working across complex forensic inpatient pathways, including either general adult secure services or Learning Disability secure services. oExperience contributing to rehabilitation and step-down pathway planning within secure services.
Experience Essential
o Substantial post-qualification experience delivering systemic family therapy with complex presentations. o Experience working within mental health services. o Experience of multidisciplinary working, including consultation and contribution to CPA, care planning, and risk management. o Experience contributing to service development, implementation, or embedding of new clinical models. o Experience of audit, service evaluation, or research activity.
Desirable
o Experience working in secure settings or complex risk environments. o Experience providing formal clinical supervision.
Knowledge and Skills Essential
o Advanced systemic formulation skills, including work with risk, trauma, safeguarding, and neurodiversity. o Strong understanding of the impact of detention, secure care, and mental disorder on families and relational networks. o Ability to communicate complex clinical and systemic information clearly to families, MDT colleagues, and senior stakeholders. o High level of reflective capacity, emotional containment, and professional judgement.
Desirable
o Knowledge of forensic pathways and secure care transitions. o Experience influencing service-level or Trust-wide clinical practice.
Disclosure and Barring Service Check This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).
Employer details Employer name Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust
Address The Allington Centre, Dartford
Bow Arrow Lane
Dartford
DA2 6PB
Employer's website https://www.kentmedwaymentalhealth.nhs.uk (Opens in a new tab)