Well-established, friendly team
We are a well-established team, some members have been with the service for over a decade! Whilst there are a number of reasons why our clinicians choose to stay working at Merton Talking Therapies the reason most often cited is the friendly and supportive nature of the people they work with. This means there is always someone on hand to support you, whether this be to help you to develop new skills or to help with any challenges that may arise.
Focus on Training and Supervision
Merton Talking Therapies provide many opportunities for training, both at the start of your career in psychotherapy and as part of your onward development as a clinician. Every year training is offered in different modalities such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR), Behavioural Couples Therapy (BCT), Interpersonal Therapy (IPT), Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy (DIT) and Person-Centred Experiential Counselling for Depression (PCE-CfD) with ongoing specialist supervision following completion of the courses. We also regularly receive expert training from external trainers who are invited to teach the latest techniques and adaptations for treatment. Past speakers have included Andrew Beck, Helen Kennerley and Anke Ehlers.
Professional development and Career Progression
As a service, we really care about supporting staff in their career progression and have a high success rate of staff gaining promotion internally and externally, and/or moving on to HI CBT training, Clinical Psychology and Counselling Psychology doctoral courses.
Role Variety
In addition to direct clinical work and supervision, our clinicians have the opportunity to develop areas of interest through taking on projects and Champion roles. Some of our current Champion roles include Perinatal, Long Term Physical Health Conditions, Domestic Violence, Learning Disability and Substance Misuse. These roles are crucial in supporting the services to meet the needs of people we work with, and our Champions develop greater knowledge and skills related to their specialism. Our passion for supporting our community and developing a breadth of skills in our team means that our Step 2 clinicians are trained to provide Guided Self-Help treatments for binge eating disorder and trichotillomania, and our Step 3 team have the opportunity to train and work with complex trauma and eating disorders, which is not usually offered in other NHS Talking Therapies services.
Support to look after your own wellbeing
We know that working in a fast-paced environment with people who are in distress can be challenging and we want to support our teams to maintain their own wellbeing. Our services and Trust support flexible working and many of our clinicians prefer to work condensed hours to allow for a good work/life balance. Our senior managers are always looking for ways to make working life easier and are open to feedback about how to change processes to make them more efficient. We have a number of wellbeing initiatives including active buddy systems and our staff wellness groups which organise weekly events such as reflective groups and yoga classes.
Sounding too good to be true? Here are some comments from our team about working in Merton Talking Therapies:
I joined Merton Uplift as a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist approximately a year ago and really enjoy working for this service. They have flexible working hours and both remote and in person options available. What surprised me was how good the training opportunities are; with monthly CPD sessions on a variety of topics delivered by a mix of in-house staff and external facilitators. They have also been great at supporting me in developing my own goals of delivering supervision. There are options to become involved in service development, such as group work and champion roles which helps to make the work more varied. Most importantly, they are a fantastic and lovely group of people. Everyone has been warm and welcoming and made me feel like I had always been there. A great team to be a part of!
Merton Uplift is such an amazing service to work for, I have never felt so supported in a team. I am really happy I made the move to work with Merton Uplift!
Merton Uplift is a very welcoming place to work at. The team really take into account their staff’s wellbeing which, as someone who works in mental health, is something that is very important to me. I feel supported throughout my time here and have had one of the best working experiences in my career thus far. I would recommend this workplace to any of my colleagues & friends working in the field.
