Qualified Honorary Psychotherapist (Volunteer)

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust; Aylesbury; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Part time

Job summary

A leading healthcare organization in Aylesbury is seeking an Honorary Psychotherapist to support psychodynamic practitioners while gaining NHS experience. The role requires a commitment of 2 patients per week, collaboration with multidisciplinary teams, and offers enhanced clinical skills and training opportunities. This is a voluntary position allowing for flexible arrangements and a minimum commitment of 6 months.

Benefits

Flexible working arrangements

Access to NHS training and workshops

Weekly supervision from qualified professionals

Qualifications

• Experience working with complex presentations is ideal.
• IT skills are essential.
• Must complete training and get satisfactory references.

Responsibilities

• Support qualified psychodynamic psychotherapists.
• Commit to working with a minimum of 2 patients per week.
• Participate in clinical work and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Skills

Psychodynamic psychotherapy

Ability to work independently

Communication skills

Education

Qualification in Psychodynamic or Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (BPC or UKCP accredited)

Job description

We are pleased to offer a unique opportunity to join our Adult Mental Health Psychological Service as an Honorary Psychotherapist. This voluntary role is designed to support qualified psychodynamic psychotherapists in gaining valuable NHS experience and to contribute to the ongoing development of psychodynamic psychotherapy within specialist NHS mental health services.

As a team, we are committed to supporting psychodynamic practitioners in preparing for clinical work within the NHS and fostering the integration of psychoanalytic approaches into multidisciplinary mental health care.

You will be based at the Whiteleaf Centre in Aylesbury, working with the Buckinghamshire Psychological Therapies team – a friendly, experienced group of psychological therapists, psychotherapists, and psychiatrists. The service is embedded within a vibrant NHS environment that includes adult and older adult mental health services, a primary care mental health team, the Early Intervention Service for psychosis, the crisis team, and the community mental health team.

• This is an unpaid honorary position, with flexible working arrangements available to accommodate other paid employment.
• We ask for a minimum commitment of 2 patients per week, with an initial commitment of 6 months.
• There may be opportunities to undertake psychotherapy assessments, depending on your experience and interest.
• The role will be reviewed on a 6-monthly basis.
• Hands‑on experience working psychotherapeutically with individuals with complex and enduring mental health difficulties in an NHS setting.
• Close collaboration with a diverse team of senior psychotherapists, a medical psychotherapist, group analysts, and other professionals including clinical and counselling psychologists, family therapists, and multidisciplinary colleagues.
• Opportunities to observe and learn from other areas of the service, such as family therapy, pre‑therapy groups, or the Complex Needs Service, depending on your interests and availability.
• Weekly supervision from a qualified psychodynamic psychotherapist and access to weekly multidisciplinary team meetings.
• Enhanced clinical skills through reviewing patient histories, contributing to assessments, writing reports, and potentially conducting your own therapy assessments.
• Involvement in audit, quality improvement initiatives, and ongoing professional development, including access to NHS training and workshops on topics such as sleep, neurodiversity, and more.

Who Should Apply

• Appointment to this post is subject to the trust receiving satisfactory references covering 3 years of employment or study. Please ask your referees to respond promptly to reference requests.
• We're advocates of flexible working and many of our roles offer a range of employment options to help you balance your work and personal life.
• Employees are expected to undertake mandatory and statutory training related to their role.
• We are ambitious in our pursuit of excellence, driven by the belief that a fair, just and fully inclusive organisational culture enables our teams to deliver the best quality of care and services possible and we work hard to ensure that our diverse workforce reflects the communities that we serve.
• We welcome applications from all sections of the community, are an Equal Opportunities employer with a number of internal networking groups to support our employees and where possible will always look to make reasonable adjustments in order that you can fulfil the role to recognise your full potential. All our employees are committed to demonstrating through their behaviour our core values - safe, caring and excellent.
• We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults, we expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
• Oxford is a world-renowned centre of excellence for research. Oxford Health works closely with the University of Oxford department of Psychiatry and the Department of Primary care, has a Biomedical Research Centre dedicated to improving mental health and the NIHR Clinical Research Facility at the Warneford site. The Trust also hosts the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) which carries out applied research that directly impacts patient health and wellbeing.

We welcome applications from individuals who have completed their training and obtained a qualification in Psychodynamic or Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (BPC or UKCP accredited – CPJAC, CMP or UTC).

Ideally, candidates will have prior experience working with complex presentations, given the specialist nature of our service. IT skills and the ability to work independently under supervision are also essential.

What We're Looking For

We are seeking enthusiastic, self‑motivated, and trustworthy individuals who are:

• Passionate about psychodynamic work within the NHS.
• Organised and reliable.
• Comfortable working both independently and as part of a team.
• Keen to contribute to a multidisciplinary clinical environment.
• All new starters have a thorough induction process, both local and Trust wide, which aims to create a positive supportive working environment allowing new employees to learn key elements of their role over a reasonable timescale.

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust has been rated as Good by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). We are a responsive and innovative Foundation Trust that places our values of Caring, Safe and Excellent at the heart of everything we do. We take great pride in our staff and believe that investing in you is key to us achieving our vision of outstanding care delivered by outstanding people.

We work with a wide range of partner organisations to deliver care and support to people in their own homes and from a number of hospitals and community bases. We focus on delivering care as close to home as possible for people of all ages across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Swindon, Wiltshire, Bath and North East Somerset.

We actively support anti‑racism, equality, diversity, and inclusion so, if you're excited about this job opportunity and you meet our Trust values, but feel unsure about applying, then please get in touch and we will be happy to have a conversation with you.

We are also committed to increasing diversity in the workforce, that is why we actively encourage applications from those groups of people who are currently under‑represented such as people with disabilities; men from all socio‑economic backgrounds; people from diverse ethnic backgrounds; and people from the LGBTQIA+ community.