The DCP Leadership & Management Faculty Mentorship Programme

Getting your head round how the NHS is managed and commissioned, and how all the bodies around it fit together, is not something you are expected to find easy.

It's incredibly complex, and continually changing, and many people in senior positions struggle to navigate the various structures.

So don't feel foolish asking questions if people use terms you don't understand - it shows you're interested. And you should be interested, as it's your money (in taxes), your health (you are a consumer too), as well as for the majority of us, our employer.

So your first development opportunity is to watch this excellent short animation from the Kings Fund from 2017, and try to work out anything that wasn't clear with a colleagues, line manager, supervisor, or mentor.

If you had a go at the previous development opportunity, Understanding the NHS, you'll have a better idea by now of how NHS Trusts fit into the broader context.

The next bit of context it's worth getting to grips with, if you are working in an NHS service, is your Trust itself.

For example, do you know who the Chief Executive of your Trust is, or who the other members of the Board are? Do you know what their backgrounds or interests are? How about your Trust's overall budget or total number of staff, or how it fared in it's last inspection?

Much of this information will be available on your own Trust's website, so give yourself some time to have a look around in your lunch break - it's a legitimate use of Trust resources and will help you get a sense of what might be motivating those at the top, what they are having to consider, and therefore what opportunities they might be interested in for service development.

We can't link to that information for you from here, as each Trust website is different, but most have a section along the lines of 'Who are we', or 'The Board' that is fairly easy to find and which will usually have photos and blogs of the Board members.

You should also be able to find the date of your next Trust Board meeting held in public, which you might want to consider attending at least as a one-off, both to get a better sense of what's on the agenda where you are, but also to see how these processes work in action.

If you can't easily see when that is on your internal website, and you can also externally google the name of your Trust and 'Board Meeting' and that will usually get you there as well.  If you're interested in attending this, it would be a good idea  to have a look at the papers of the previous meeting (which should also be publicly available online), and maybe discuss them with your supervisor or line manager, to try to get a grip on what's going on before you go along.. 

Finally, in terms of inspections, you can go directly to the Care Quality Commission's website and look up your Trust's facilities to see if there have been recent reviews.

This next Development Opportunity is 'Learning More about QI' – QI being the acronym for Quality Improvement, a hot topic in healthcare over recent years, and an area to which your organisation is likely to have given considerable thought.

The good news is that the skills used to think about creating change in systems, creating plans to try to do so, monitoring those plans to see whether those changes work or not, and if they do working out how to sustain them, overlap hugely with your highly developed skills as applied human scientists, so this should be a breeze.. 

A good start would be to have a look at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's website and watch their 8 minute video about QI so that you can understand the terminology used better, and get a sense of what's meant when talking about QI in healthcare systems.

Although the video focusses on healthcare generally rather than mental healthcare, the same principles of systems change are being discussed and applied in mental healthcare settings, and many Trusts and other organisations have a current 'Quality Improvement Strategy', and/or actively provide support for individuals within the organisation to embark on their own small-scale 'Quality Improvement Projects'.  

Examples from real mental health Trust strategies and projects have included aims such as:

• Reduction in the number of violent incidents on an inpatient ward

• Reduction in DNAs

• Carers reporting that they felt appropriate involved in the care or treatment planning for their loved one.

The NHS Improvement website is a central information hub around improvement.

After you've got an idea of what's meant by QI, have a think about whether there is something you would be interested in trying to improve in your area/organisation, or if you work in the NHS you may want to put together a proposal to take to your manager or the QI lead for your Trust (check your Trust's website to see if there is one).

If you have a mentor, discuss the idea with them and think about whether to/how to put it into practice over the year ahead. Be part of showing that clinical psychologists bring more than therapy delivery to the organisations they work in.

Over the last few years there has been increasing interest in leadership and psychology in the issue of looking after the psychological workforce, including looking after ourselves, in order to have sustainable services that are actually able to provide effective help to others.

The 2016 "New Savoy Conference on Psychological Therapies in the NHS" launched a Charter for Psychological Staff Wellbeing and Resilience, to which NHS Trusts were invited to sign up, and this year's conference again has many work streams focussing on this issue.

Reading materials:

• Reflections on Psychological Therapies in the NHS Conference - Chris Clinch
• Psychologically Healthy Workplaces - Derek Mowbray
• Wellbeing Issues facing Psychological Professionals - The Psychologist

So after that light reading, here are some ideas for a development opportunity:

Find out whether your organisation is aware of the charter and has signed up already, and if not whether it would be interested in doing so, or if you already lead an organisation think about whether you should be signed up. 

Most large organisations collect and publish staff survey data – how is yours doing in relation to staff well-being, and what is its action plan to do better?

Could you propose/lead on an initiative around staff well-being using the evidence from your reading to back up your proposal?

What could you do more of (or less of!) in order to look after your psychological well-being and that of any staff for whom you are responsible? Discuss with a colleague, supervisor or mentor.

If charity begins at home, then psychological well-being may well begin in your workplace.

The British Psychological Society is your professional body, the same way that the Royal Colleges are the professional bodies for medical doctors.

Professional bodies differ from regulatory bodies such as the GMC or HCPC, as the regulatory bodies are not there to support or serve the interests of professionals, the regulatory bodies are there (appropriately) to protect the public from the professionals. So you are not "a member of the HCPC", the HCPC are the body that is there to police you and your work.

The BPS is the professional body for all psychologists, both those who work in academic psychology and this who practice as applied psychologists. The BPS has Divisions, each of which represents a particular group of applied psychologists, in the same way as the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has a number of Colleges (e.g the Royal College of Paediatricians), each of which represents a different group of medical doctors.  The Division of Clinical Psychology is therefore your equivalent of the Royal College of Psychiatry.

Being a member - that is being involved!

Ever felt frustrated that the RCPsych has a higher profile than the DCP?  Both organisations are member organisations - they are not externally funded or externally run, they are formed of the members, and resourced by the members. So if you want your professional body to have more clout, then increase its numbers and funding by the minimal step of making sure you are a member and encouraging colleagues to join (membership fees are what pay for the work the BPS and DCP undertake, including this CPL programme - the BPS is not government funded).

You are eligible to be a Chartered Member by virtue of being a qualified clinical psychologist.

Simply being a member increases what the DCP will be able to do on behalf of your profession, but in addition it gives you access to a range of subsidised CPD events, online journals, policy documents, updates on professional issues etc.  To join the DCP you need to also be a member of the BPS, as the BPS is the parent organisation and many of the shared assets (like the building we have in London, and the staff) are owned communally for all the Divisions by the BPS.

Find out more about the benefits of being a member of the BPS.

Being an elected official of a DCP Faculty Committee

Want to shape how the profession develops, how we are seen externally, and be the voice of your profession? Think the DCP could do better?  Then come and have a go at shaping things by putting yourself forward for a position on a DCP Faculty committee

 The BPS has employed staff, such as administrators and accountants and publicity people, who are employed using the money we all put in by being members, and then it also has elected committee members, people like you or I, who guide the direction of travel (a bit like civil servants vs MPs).

There are committee members, at BPS, DCP, Regional and Faculty level and the DCP has a number of specialist Faculties within it, which are a good starting point for involvement in professional issues.

As a DCP Faculty Committee member you are likely to be the first to hear about policy issues, you get to help plan the subsidised CPD for your speciality, and experience a range of other leadership challenges.

Being a Faculty committee member usually takes 4-6 days per year, and will ideally be agreed by your manager as part of your CPD, as it is something that also allows you to bring back to your service the latest issues from that speciality.

Find out more about the DCP faculties.

Regional Branches

Regional Branches also have committee members to shape and guide psychology in defined regions, this might be ideal if you want an overview of Clinical Psychology in your area and all the specialities and ideas within it.

Branches exist for you to meet up and exchange ideas with others in your local geographical area, and whenever someone joins the DCP they are automatically added  to the Regional Branch based on where they live - this doesn't incur an additional fee.

The Regional Branch might provide training, talks and events (often connected with local universities and services) or more informal meetings to share this knowledge, as well as calls for consultation on local policies and national policies.

Find out more about the DCP regional branches.

Contribute to policy

At any time, the BPS will have various policy documents that it has been sent to comment on, where it is looking for people to read those documents and provide views from the perspective of someone delivering psychological services to that group, or someone who has done research in that area.

Initially you will usually be asked to be a contributing author, which means you read the document and send in your thoughts about it to the person who has been identified as the lead author, and she/he has the tricky task of collating those ideas into a BPS response.

This is a great way to make sure you actually read some policy documents in a thorough and thoughtful way, and can help get you noticed and invited to take part in other policy discussions or to eventually take the lead on policy responses. For more contact the [email protected] or phone 0116 252 9936.

Be one of the public voices of psychology

Working with the media can bring personal benefits for psychologists and benefit the profession as a whole.

Benefits for psychology include promoting the profession, increasing public understanding of psychology and attracting more young people to study the subject.

Personal benefits include:

• Encouraging public interest in your work
• Building your reputation as a good researcher or practitioner, and as a good communicator
• Bringing your work to the notice of other professionals
• Attracting future funding for your research

If you're a BPS member and would like to be added to our media database, please email us.