Creative Therapist

Shooting Star Children's Hospices; Guildford; On-site; GBP 30,000 - 40,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a leading children's hospice as an Art, Drama, Play or Creative Therapist. You will provide therapeutic support to children and families facing life-limiting conditions and bereavement, utilizing creative techniques in a collaborative, multi-disciplinary environment. The role requires expertise in therapeutic methods and working closely with families and professionals to offer holistic care.

Benefits

NHS Pension Scheme with employer contributions

27 days annual leave plus Bank Holidays

Enhanced maternity, adoption, and paternity leave pay

Flexible working arrangements

Reimbursed professional membership fees

Free nutritionally balanced meals and fruit

Qualifications

• Experience as an Arts or Play therapist in a health or social care environment.
• Significant experience working with children facing disabilities, loss, and grief.
• Strong understanding of safeguarding.

Responsibilities

• Provide high quality, evidence-based art, drama, or play therapy.
• Utilise skills to support families experiencing loss.
• Work within a multi-disciplinary team and provide individual and group therapy programs.

Skills

Therapeutic techniques

Multi-disciplinary collaboration

Clinical expertise

Job description

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Location: Christopher’s or Shooting Star House

About Shooting Star Children’s Hospices

We have an exciting opportunity for an Art, Drama, Play or Creative Therapist to join our team at Shooting Star Children’s Hospices to help extend our care to more families.

Shooting Star Children’s Hospices provides specialist care and support to families who have a baby, child or young person with a life-limiting condition, or whose child dies suddenly or unexpectedly. Rated ‘Outstanding’ by the Care Quality Commission, we support families across Surrey, north-west London and south-west London from diagnosis to end of life and throughout bereavement.

staff; their exceptional commitment and professionalism means every family has the opportunity to make every moment count.

It’s a great time to join Shooting Star Children’s Hospices as we launched our Specialist Bereavement Service at the end of 2023 and we are now supporting more bereaved families than ever before, alongside our usual caseload of life-limited children and their siblings. Our team of arts therapists is expanding to ensure we can deliver care to those who need it.

About the role

The key purpose of this role is to provide high quality, evidence-based art, drama or play therapy to life-limited children and families and those experiencing the sudden death of a child. Our therapy services are child and family focused, utilising the medium of art, drama, play or other creative techniques, addressing the psychological challenges associated with life-limiting conditions and issues of loss and grief.

This is an opportunity to work holistically with a multi-disciplinary team of psychosocial professionals, with a diverse caseload, providing assessment, individual and group therapy programs with children and/or family members. The post holder will utilise skills, knowledge and expertise to provide advice, education, signposting, supervision and support to staff, families, schools and other professionals.

This role requires previous experience of working as an Arts or Play therapist in a health or social care environment, as part of a multi-disciplinary team. You should have significant experience of working with children and young people, including those with disabilities, those experiencing loss and grief, and chronic or acute trauma.

We are looking for a therapist skilled in working closely with parents/carers, providing clinical expertise and suggesting specific approaches/strategies, and advising other team members in MDT case discussions. We require a strong understanding of safeguarding.

Please see the attached job description for more information about this opportunity at Shooting Star Children’s Hospices.

In return you will receive a competitive salary along with a range of benefits, which include:

• NHS Pension Scheme (for eligible employees) or our stakeholder pension scheme, with up to 7% employer contributions

Annual leave

• 27 days plus Bank Holidays rising with length of service

Contractual benefits

• Enhanced maternity, adoption, and paternity leave pay
• Flexible working arrangements
• Reimbursed professional membership fees
• Eye care

Health and wellbeing

• Employee Assistance Programme
• Occupational Health
• Cycle to work scheme
• Mental Health First Aiders
• Nutritionally balanced meals at Christopher’s (free for employees) and free fruit at our Hampton site

Safeguarding

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expect all our staff to share this commitment. Employment is subject to receipt of satisfactory references and a DBS check.

In addition, an enhanced/standard disclosure will be required for this role. Our recruitment checks, induction and ongoing support and supervision reflect our commitment to safeguarding the families we support.

Shooting Star Children’s Hospice is committed to inclusion and diversity in everything we do. We know that getting things right is critical for us to live our organisation’s values: Professionalism, Respect, Integrity, Diversity and Excellence.

We are always trying to improve our way of working to be more inclusive and equal. Our vision is for Shooting Star Children’s Hospice to be a place where people of all backgrounds, groups and communities feel welcomed to work and volunteer.

Please contact Marion Barton marion.barton if you have any questions about this role.