Job Title: Art Therapist

Job Location: The Grange School, Thatcham, RG19

Salary: Between £40,368.46 - £46,135.38 based on 40 hours per week working 42 weeks of the year.

Contract Type: Permanent - Term-time only.

As an Art Therapist, how do you spend your week? With us, you’d start your day with a morning briefing, updating others and getting updated on the great work the team is doing. Next, you may deliver training to our teaching team, run a reflective practice session, or design creative arts therapy sessions for children and young adults. Whatever you find yourself doing, you’ll be making a difference in the life of neurodiverse pupils, and pupils who may have experienced trauma.

As an Art Therapist, you’ll have a small caseload of pupils to support directly. You’ll be able to run 1:1 sessions or group sessions to best meet the needs of the children or young people you’re supporting. You’ll also have protected time to develop your own clinical and mentoring skills whilst still receiving your own clinical supervisions.

A day in the life of an Art Therapist will involve:

• Taking a Neurodiverse affirming and trauma-informed approach to clinical work you’ll work with a small caseload of pupils with neurodiverse needs. You can do this through 1-2-1 support, classroom work and group sessions.
• Assessing, planning, implementing, and evaluating individual and group psychological or creative arts therapy sessions.
• Working alongside Speech and Language Therapists and other Creative Art Therapists.
• Training and mentoring your education colleagues on best practice and effective ways to support the pupils within the school. You may do this by designing classroom strategies, running reflective practice sessions, or delivering training directly to teachers and learning support assistants or teaching assistants.
• Administration. Whilst doing all your great work with the pupils, we’ll need you to keep their records up to date and carry out all the administrative tasks you’d expect to come with this role.
• Attending monthly Psychological Services team meetings and quarterly Integrated Therapies Team meetings.

To be a successful Art Therapist, you’ll need:

• A recognised Post Graduate qualification in Art Therapy along with HCPC Registration.
• Great experience working as an Art Therapist.
• The desire and confidence to run supervisions and offer training and support to other Psychological Therapists.
• Good IT skills – We’ll train you on how to use our systems, but it would help if you had a working understanding of using Microsoft packages like Excel, Word, Outlook and Teams.
• A full driving licence. Whilst this role is based in a single location, travel to other sites will be required at times including travel to our Tiverton Hub for team meetings and training where required.

If you have experience working within the NHS, the best way for us to describe the level of experience needed for this role would be to consider it a “Band 7” position.

In return for your time, you’ll get:

• Holidays – You’ll get 28 days annual leave, including public holidays. You’ll also get an extra day off on your birthday after a year!
• Pension scheme– Our pension scheme is based on you paying in 5%, and us adding 3%.
• Learning & Development Opportunities – We provide comprehensive learning opportunities for team members to develop themselves.
• Discounts – You’ll have access to brilliant discounts through the Blue Light Card and our own employee benefits platform.
• Wellbeing Support – Your wellbeing is always our priority. You’ll have access to mental health and wellbeing support. On top of this, our therapies team offers a monthly confidential check in clinic, and group reflective practice sessions.
• Cycle2Work -The cycle to work scheme enables you to buy a bicycle at a discounted rate.
• DBS – As this role required you to have an enhanced DBS carried out, we will cover this cost.

After 12 months service you’ll also be eligible for our Medicash scheme which covers a wide range of medical, health and wellbeing expenses (Including immediate access to a GP!). You’ll get life assurance paid at x2 your annual salary.

At Phoenix Learning and Care, we pride ourselves on our diverse workforce, and ensuring we have an inclusive environment for all our team members. We remain committed to ensuring our teams can bring their true selves to work without risk or fear of discrimination.