Clinician/Family Systemic Practitioner

Bexley is an outer London Borough with the best of both worlds, located between the hustle and bustle of London and the Garden of England, Kent. Within the borough we have award winning parks, open spaces and listed heritage sites.

Working in social care in Bexley is endlessly rewarding. As well as helping some of the most vulnerable people in our borough, we invest in looking after you and your career.

Part of that is offering excellent benefits, from competitive salaries and generous leave to flexible working and a wealth of health and wellness programmes.

As of February 2023, our Children’s Services have been judged ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted inspectors for the second time in a row. They found that the service had a ‘clear strategic direction, strong partnerships and good political and corporate support’ allowing it to make a significant difference to children’s lives. Inspectors found that the service has a well-trained workforce that is improving the lives of children and families and that frontline workers feel safe and supported because of the quality of management oversight and decision-making.

Our practice is relationship-based, using the Signs of Safety framework. 

Signs of Safety
At Bexley we use the ‘Signs of Safety’ model, which has been adopted as our practice framework and is in line with our ‘Bexley Values’. As with all practice frameworks, we also work within the framework of the Children Act (

https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/provider/44/303 

Lead on embedding a systemic family therapy approach within the Looked After Children and Leaving Care Service and align with the Signs of Safety Practice Model for Social Care.

Lead on providing expert clinical consultations to Social Workers and Team Managers in relation to a child’s emotional wellbeing and mental health needs, to inform care plans and decision making around risk management and safeguarding, to promote the welfare of children and young people.

Lead on providing training and development to Social Workers and Team Managers in the systemic family therapy approach.

To effectively assess presenting difficulties of children and family’s relationship brake down and make recommendations for intervention (where needed) and provide evidence-based interventions.

To provide specialist assessment and therapy to families with children and adolescents within the Looked After Children and Leaving Care Service.

To provide specialist advice and consultation regarding diagnoses and intervention to colleagues and external agencies, working autonomously within professional guidelines and within a team, contributing to overall service delivery as required.

Providing intensive therapeutic interventions to support children, young people and their families with complex and challenging emotional wellbeing needs.

Be a lead contact for CAMHS and other professionals in relation to children and young people with emotional wellbeing and mental health concerns, advocating to secure the most appropriate treatment.

For an informal discussion about the role please contact Nicoleta Stangu, Service Manager on Nicoleta.Stangu@bexley.gov.uk

We will offer you in return a package that includes a competitive salary, an excellent pension scheme and generous annual leave plus bank holidays. For more information on the benefits package on offer please refer to the We will offer you in return a package that includes a competitive salary, an excellent pension scheme and generous annual leave plus bank holidays. For more information on the benefits package on offer please refer to the Candidate Information document attached.

We reserve the right to close adverts earlier than the closing date.

For the full list of essential and desirable criteria for this role then please refer to the Person Specification within the Job Description attached.

Appointment to this post will be subject to the outcome of an Enhanced Disclosure obtained through the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) 

This authority is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

This post is considered by the authority to be a customer-facing position; as such it falls within scope of the Code of Practice on English language requirement for public sector workers. The council therefore has a statutory duty under Part 7 of the Immigration Act 2016 to ensure that post holders have a command of spoken English sufficient for the effective performance of the job requirements. The appropriate standards are set out in the JD/Person Specification. These will be applied during the recruitment/selection and probationary stages.    

Use the ‘Apply for vacancy’ button.

Anticipated Interview Date: to be confirmed

Please note that the system has a one-hour time limit. We would advise you to prepare your answers separately and then copy and paste into the online form once finalised and have your CV and/or Supporting statement ready to upload.

If any mandatory fields are missing, a pop-up box will appear at the top of the page advising which sections require completion. Please check your Junk email for any correspondence.

Additional Information

As a disability confident employer Bexley welcomes applications from people with all disabilities, including hidden disabilities and mental health conditions. We will interview any disabled applicant who meets the minimum criteria. If you require reasonable adjustments to be made to any part of the recruitment process due to your disability, please contact us on  recruitment@bexley.gov.uk

This role may be available as a development opportunity through secondment for the Council’s existing employees.  The Council’s Secondment Scheme can be found here. If this option is of interest, please contact the recruiting manager.