What does a senior therapist do?
Senior therapists lead and manage a facility's therapeutic program and work hand-in-hand with other facility team members to deliver, oversee, plan, and coordinate the therapeutic program. These professionals promote professional accountability, quality development, evaluation, clinical governance, and monitoring. Besides supervising community forums and similar activities, senior therapists also attend appropriate staff and clinical supervision meetings. They document and share with the clinical team the right therapeutic guidelines and processes to follow.
Senior therapist responsibilities
Here are examples of responsibilities from real senior therapist resumes:
- Manage and target behaviors using the ESDM, ABA, PRT and SCERTS model.
- Function as a case manager, co-le group therapy and provide psychiatrist supervise individual therapy to adolescent patients.
- Work with children, adolescents, adults, couples and families.
- Produce detailed quarterly reports on each student, used in IEP meetings to assess student's progress.
- Collaborate with parents, teachers, and other professionals on the implementation of programs, and attend IEP meetings.
- Implement one on one behavioral intervention programs in the homes of children with autism while using apply behavioral analysis therapy.
- Develop and implement skill acquisition programs for individuals with autism base on ABLLS objectives.
- Incorporate educational drama methods to stimulate creativity and aid in language development and learning processes.
- Assess patients for barriers and leisure interests using leisure assessments and assist in developing individualize treatment and supervise release plans.
- Collaborate with a multidisciplinary team of medical professionals to provide outpatient services to those seeking rehabilitation in an ambulatory care center.
- Participate in functional behavioral support team meetings to increase adaptive skills functioning in the community setting.
Senior therapist skills and personality traits
We calculated that 12% of Senior Therapists are proficient in Social Work, Autism, and Mental Health. They’re also known for soft skills such as Listening skills, Speaking skills, and Compassion.
We break down the percentage of Senior Therapists that have these skills listed on their resume here:
- Social Work, 12%
Coordinated the daily operation and management of 10 social workers and 5 substance abuse counselors.
- Autism, 9%
Developed and implemented skill acquisition programs for individuals with autism based on ABLLS objectives.
- Mental Health, 8%
Implement Recovery Model to treat adults with long-term mental health diagnoses using trauma-informed, recovery-based therapy.
- Patients, 8%
Assess patients for barriers and leisure interests using leisure assessments and assist in developing individualized treatment and supervised release plans.
- Behavior Analysis, 7%
Developed, evaluated, and implemented programming and behavior intervention plans, following Applied Behavior Analysis techniques.
- ABA, 5%
Provided intensive in-home ABA therapy/case management to autistic children.
Common skills that a senior therapist uses to do their job include "social work," "autism," and "mental health." You can find details on the most important senior therapist responsibilities below.
Listening skills. The most essential soft skill for a senior therapist to carry out their responsibilities is listening skills. This skill is important for the role because "marriage and family therapists need to give their full attention to their clients to understand their problems, values, and goals." Additionally, a senior therapist resume shows how their duties depend on listening skills: "communicated with children with autism to provide them with comfort, encouragement and reinforcement. "
Speaking skills. Many senior therapist duties rely on speaking skills. "marriage and family therapists need to be able to communicate with clients effectively," so a senior therapist will need this skill often in their role. This resume example is just one of many ways senior therapist responsibilities rely on speaking skills: "represented mst program during meetings with stakeholders (i.e. "
Compassion. This is an important skill for senior therapists to perform their duties. For an example of how senior therapist responsibilities depend on this skill, consider that "marriage and family therapists often work with people who are dealing with stressful and difficult situations, so they must be compassionate and empathize with their clients." This excerpt from a resume also shows how vital it is to everyday roles and responsibilities of a senior therapist: "provide high quality, compassionate and ethical outpatient behavioral health therapy to clients as scheduled. ".
The three companies that hire the most senior therapists are:
- City Of Alexandria5 senior therapists jobs
- Lake County4 senior therapists jobs
- Caravel Autism Health4 senior therapists jobs
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Compare different senior therapists
Senior therapist vs. Family counselor
A Family Counselor treats married couples or family members in order to help them overcome mental or emotional problems. They provide effective treatment measures to help the family members resolve their issues.
These skill sets are where the common ground ends though. The responsibilities of a senior therapist are more likely to require skills like "autism," "patients," "behavior analysis," and "aba." On the other hand, a job as a family counselor requires skills like "poc," "family support," "dod," and "group supervision." As you can see, what employees do in each career varies considerably.
Family counselors earn the highest salaries when working in the professional industry, with an average yearly salary of $40,967. On the other hand, senior therapists are paid more in the energy industry with an average salary of $82,681.The education levels that family counselors earn slightly differ from senior therapists. In particular, family counselors are 0.6% more likely to graduate with a Master's Degree than a senior therapist. Additionally, they're 1.8% less likely to earn a Doctoral Degree.Senior therapist vs. Marriage counselor
In addition to the difference in salary, there are some other key differences worth noting. For example, senior therapist responsibilities are more likely to require skills like "social work," "autism," "mental health," and "patients." Meanwhile, a marriage counselor has duties that require skills in areas such as "cognitive-behavioral," "research data," "family dynamics," and "pre." These differences highlight just how different the day-to-day in each role looks.
Marriage counselors earn lower levels of education than senior therapists in general. They're 17.0% less likely to graduate with a Master's Degree and 1.8% less likely to earn a Doctoral Degree.What technology do you think will become more important and prevalent for senior therapists in the next 3-5 years?
Dr. Cheryl Stenmark Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Director, Industrial/Organizational Psychology Masters Program, Angelo State University
Senior therapist vs. Marriage and family social worker
The required skills of the two careers differ considerably. For example, senior therapists are more likely to have skills like "social work," "autism," "patients," and "behavior analysis." But a marriage and family social worker is more likely to have skills like "mft," "conflict-resolution," "educational resource," and "psycho-social."
Marriage and family social workers typically earn higher educational levels compared to senior therapists. Specifically, they're 18.2% more likely to graduate with a Master's Degree, and 3.8% more likely to earn a Doctoral Degree.Senior therapist vs. Director-child abuse therapy
Types of senior therapist
Updated January 8, 2025
