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Working in Assessment & Therapy

Careers in our our Assessment & Therapy service

Are you a clinical practitioner looking for a varied and rewarding career? We’re looking for multi-disciplinary experts to join our Assessment & Therapy service to help assess and improve children’s mental health.

You will benefit from working with a well-established, child-centred social enterprise, with over 30 years of experience. We are well equipped to support you to develop in your role and strive to recognise and reward you for the work you do.

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The variety of roles include:

  • In-house HCPC Clinical & Counselling psychologists
  • UKCP Child Psychotherapists
  • Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist
  • Research specialists
  • Referral specialists
  • Administration specialists

About our Assessment & Therapy Service

Our Assessment & Therapy service helps children, young people, and foster carers to understand a young person’s past and present. The therapeutic approaches that may be adopted thereafter help the young person to maintain and maximise their independence, develop practical life skills, and reach their full potential both at home and in education.

Our standing is reinforced by being a social enterprise, driven by social objectives, not profit: this means that any surplus is reinvested into providing every child and young person in our care a comprehensive assessment. If you are looking for the chance to work with a socially driven organisation to truly turn children’s lives around, view our vacancies page.


Our team is made up of regionally based in-house clinical practitioners, complemented by an affiliate network of trusted specialists across the country. Together we offer a range of psychological interventions to children and young people, foster carers and adoptive parents. Our interventions are based on the needs of the client and draw from an eclectic range of psychological approaches including: 

  • Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP)
  • Play therapy
  • Attachment Regulation Competency (ARC)
  • Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR)
  • Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
  • Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (TF-CBT)
  • Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT)
  • Video Interaction Guidance
  • Mentalisation-based approach
  • Psychodynamic approaches

Our practitioners play a vital role in the development of Five Rivers’ unique and highly regarded practice model of Attachment & Trauma-Informed Integrated Care, but our support is not limited to children in Five Rivers’ services: our expertise is increasingly needed by local authorities to help children, young people and families in a wide range of fostering, adoption, specialist and mainstream education settings.  

Benefits

Training and career progression

Our original founding members of the Assessment & Therapy team are still with us today. This is not only because of the healthy empowering and collaborative team culture we create, but also the training and opportunities for progression. We enable our staff to develop and flourish in their roles; we recognise the need for growth and have supported progression to Senior Principal Psychologist grades. We have also supported others to become UKCP registered child psychotherapists. We also work closely with Universities that provide Doctorate Clinical Psychology training, to offer supervised placements to trainees.

At Five Rivers, we prioritise and discuss your personal development goals to ensure you’re getting the most out of your career. We offer the following opportunities to our Assessment & Therapy colleagues: 

  • Certification in a range of trainings related to trauma expertise for clinicians 
  • Opportunities to be involved in research projects with leading universities and research centres 
  • Two-day events are planned throughout year that focus on our growth, both as individuals and as a team 

“I have been working for the Assessment & Therapy team for 4 years and it has been the most supportive and contained working environment I have experienced since qualifying in 2005. I have had many opportunities for career development including training, clinical experience and research.”

– Alison Hodgetts, Senior Principal Psychologist

 

Leadership, support and supervision

Our team structure provides support and supervision by experts in the fields of assessment, formulation, interventions and consultancy. These supports are planned and predictable, and are complemented by informal, easily accessible contact with the senior leadership team. 

We place a significant focus on ensuring we maintain a healthy positive culture within the group. All members of the Assessment & Therapy team are empowered to be creative and to bring their ideas to the table. We are progressive in that we have a safe learning culture, which is all about growing and developing, both as an individual and together as a team.  

Meet the team

 

Why Five Rivers?

  • On-going training and learning: Our Learning and Development team are committed to sourcing and delivering up to date, high quality training opportunities. We continually look at new learning initiatives to make sure we’re providing the best continuing professional development we can. We also prioritise and discuss your personal development goals to ensure you’re getting the most out of your career. 
  • Simply Health Cashback scheme: You will automatically be enrolled in the Simply Health Cash Plan scheme, which means you can claim back the cost of your everyday healthcare appointments. The membership also offers free, immediate access to a 24/7 GP telephone helpline. 
  • Employee discount scheme: We are pleased to offer our valued employees access to a free online platform called Perkbox. The employee discount scheme gives you exclusive access to a wide range of retailers and services. 
  • Employee assistance programme: We know how demanding our lives can be and that life isn’t always plain sailing, so we take great care in supporting and caring for you. You will automatically have access to free, confidential, 24/7 counselling. 
  • Long service and recognition scheme: We appreciate the invaluable contribution our employees make, so we recognise and reward loyal service. Our recognition scheme provides additional holiday entitlement for length of service and financial recognition for ten years and above. 
  • Annual leave allowance: Our generous annual leave allowance increases with your length of service. 
  • Employee referral scheme: We know how important it is to have the right workforce, and we’re confident your network includes professionals who could bring expertise and experience to our work. We offer financial rewards to staff for successful appointments from your network. 
  • We have an enhanced maternity policy: In addition, mothers with a year’s service can choose to return to work on a part-time basis for three months, while being paid their previous full-time pay.

Staff Stories

counselling psychologist

Connie, Counselling Psychologist, Assessment & Therapy

Find out what it’s like to work with the Assessment & Therapy team at Five Rivers. Counselling psychologist Connie tells us what her role involves, and what she loves most […]

Read more

Work with us

We are always looking for engaged and passionate people to work for us and have a range of opportunities.

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Our Values

Our values are at the heart of everything we do. We live these values day in, day out.

Respect Adaptability Integrity Support Excellence

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