Family therapy job hunting

Most family and systemic psychotherapy jobs are in NHS Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), specialist adolescent services, local authority children’s services and eating disorder services. But there are also roles in adult mental health teams, perinatal services, specialist trauma services in the NHS and charities like domestic abuse and counselling organisations.

• Find out more about working in the NHS

Independent work can include associate roles in private clinics, consultation contracts with schools and court expert witness work.

• Find out more about working in independent private practice

Experienced practitioners may also work as clinical supervisors and teaching on systemic training courses. They also deliver continuing professional development (CPD).

Where to look for work

• Take a look at our jobs page for a range of family and systemic psychotherapy roles.
• Sign up to the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy’s (BACP) weekly job email alert on their website.
• Visit the BACP’s job page.
• For NHS roles, visit NHS Jobs and Trac, and search for ‘family therapist’ and ‘systemic psychotherapist’.
• For jobs in social care and local authorities, look on local authority job portals and the social care section of Guardian Jobs.
• For jobs in charities and the third sector, Look on CharityJob, Indeed and charity websites directly.
• For independent and private practice work, add your profile to our professional directory and the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP)’s directory if you’re registered with them. You can also join other directories, and contact local GPs, solicitors and schools.
• For training roles, look on university job portals, academic job boards and our job board.
• Use your networks. Ask people you trained with to bear you in mind for any roles that come up, come along to our local branch meetings and join a peer supervision group.
• If you want to work in a hospital, visit the jobs section of their websites.
• Have a look on LinkedIn, Google and other job websites and search for ‘family therapist’ and ‘systemic psychotherapist’.

Preparing your CV

• If you’re looking for a role as a family and systemic psychotherapist and you have a supervisor, it’s a good idea to discuss your CV with them.
• Include a short professional profile summarising your main qualification (for example MSc in systemic psychotherapy), years of clinical experience, the client group that you work with and your key strengths.
• List if you’re registered with UKCP and include your registration number. Also state if you’re a member of the Association for Family and Systemic Psychotherapy (AFSP).
• The most important part of your CV is the section about your clinical experience. For each of your roles include the: job title, organisation, dates, brief description of service, key responsibilities and key achievements or impact. Share the detail, including your caseload, ages of the people you worked with and the issues the work covered.
• Include a section on supervision: how often you have supervision, whether you provide supervision to others and your experience in group supervision or reflecting teams.
• Include relevant safeguarding experience.
• Make sure that your CV is aligned with the criteria in the job description. For example, if the job description asks for child protection experience, include this on your CV.

What to expect in an interview

• You’re likely to be given an example case scenario and asked how you would approach the work. The panel want to see how you would manage things like assessing risk and deciding who to invite to a first session. Think about what you need to reference, including guidance from your registered professional body or our Code of Ethics and Practice (PDF, 199KB).
• You will be asked why you want the role. So, consider what narrative you have for this and what made you want to be a family and systemic psychotherapist.
• The panel may ask you to prepare an anonymised case study. Consider culture, power, gender and race in your presentation and different aspects of intersectionality.
• You will be asked about risk and safeguarding. Think of clinical examples to back up the points you make and review the safeguarding policy for the service you’re applying to. Also think about risk in terms of keeping clients’ data safe.
• Prepare to relate your experience to the values of the organisation that you are applying for a job with.
• Someone with lived experience may be on the interview panel. For example, a young person who has had an eating disorder. They might ask you about a situation and how you might tackle it. Consider what you want to say about the importance of lived experience.
• You will likely be asked about neurodiversity so consider any relevant examples you can share related to this.
• There will normally be at least 3 people on the interview panel. This may include the person you’ll report to, someone you’ll manage and a HR staff member.
• There might be an AFSP National Assessor on the interview panel or observing the interview. National Assessors are AFSP members and qualified and experienced UKCP-registered family and systemic psychotherapists. Employers may ask National Assessors to help shortlist candidates. Generally, they’ll be looking to see that candidates meet all of the criteria for a role, can do the job with the experience and qualifications they have, and they’ll fit in with the team. Find out more about AFSP National Assessors.
• Expect to be asked some questions about clinical governance if you’re going for a clinical role. This would cover things like data protection, following government and NHS guidelines and keeping patients safe.
• You might be asked to share case study examples. For example:
  • Tell us about a piece of work you did with a family that went really well.
  • Tell us about an occasion when someone in your team was prejudiced against somebody.
  • Tell us how something went wrong in your clinical work and how you put it right.