Systemic Family Psychotherapist, CAMHS Eating Disorders

Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust
Systemic Family Psychotherapist, CAMHS Eating Disorders

Closing date: 16 August 2026

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.

About us
The Royal Free is part of North Central London integrated care system - consisting of the NHS and Local authority organisations in Camden, Islington, Barnet, Enfield and Haringey. As with other ICS's, we are working increasingly closely with partners and indeed many of our financial and performance objectives are measured at this system level. Whilst all organisations remain as standalone, statutory bodies we have an ICS infrastructure for making shared decisions and agreeing shared approaches.

We are proud of our staff and want to ensure their training allows them to provide excellent clinical care. We are also a training unit for medical students from UCL and St George's University Grenada, and for nursing and midwifery students from Middlesex and City Universities.

Details
Date posted: 31 July 2026
Pay scheme: Agenda for change
Band: Band 8a
Salary: £57,528 to £64,750 a year, per annum, pro rata exclusive of HCAS
Contract: Permanent
Working pattern: Part-time
Reference number: 391-NMUH-8055544
Job locations: The Royal Free Hospital, Queen Mary's House, 23 East Heath Road, London, NW3 1DU, United Kingdom

Job description
Job responsibilities

• In conjunction with the specialist multidisciplinary team assess the suitability of a systemic intervention including the capacity of the individual and family to engage in the treatment offered.
• The post-holder will be responsible for carrying out systemic family therapy assessments, bearing in mind highly complex factors concerning family history, the physical and developmental needs, devising a detailed care plan and providing specialised family therapy interventions using a range of therapeutic skills and knowledge involving observation and systemic techniques.
• To communicate with the family, referrer, other professionals and the specialist multidisciplinary team in a sensitive and skilled manner, information concerning the assessment, formulation and treatment plans, and co-ordinate a care package appropriate for the clients needs.
• The post-holder will be a key clinician within the Eating Disorders Assessment clinic for new referrals, and will be responsible for delivering the relevant treatment model (FT AN, FT BN, FBT Arfid) with efficacy to patients and their parents in a timely, efficient and sensitive manner, working alongside professional colleagues.
• To assume responsibility for managing and care coordinating their own caseload, following the trust and service protocols. This will include reviewing and assessing the young persons level of risk on a regular basis, changing the care plan accordingly and liaising with the young persons consultant.
• With reference to own professional limitations ensure excellent communication with and inform/seek support from the Child & Adolescent Eating Disorders Service/generic mental health CAMHS team when dealing with complex mental health risk assessments for eating disorder clients and where required ensure safe transfer of care.
• Demonstrate expertise in analysing and reflecting upon own clinical practice and those of others in the team. Use constructive means to enhance team building in the light of the emotional/psychological impact for staff working within the complex field of eating disorders.
• As care coordinator, or as an allocated Systemic professional to a case, if required and as agreed take the lead in communicating relevant information with the referring agent on a regular basis and act as an advocate for the Service user/team at multi-professional/health, education, social and voluntary agency meetings.

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

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.

Certificate of Sponsorship
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

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: Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust
Address: The Royal Free Hospital, Queen Mary's House, 23 East Heath Road, London, NW3 1DU, United Kingdom
Employer's website: Apply through our website (Opens in a new tab)

Employer contact details
For questions about the job, contact:
Lead Systemic Family Therapist
Lucy Brown
Lucy.Brown39@nhs.net
02078302093