Clinical psychology training places in London

With the national expansion in training numbers for clinical psychology, London's training courses require more placements than ever. This is the second in a series of articles where trainees and their supervisors describe the same clinical psychology placement from their individual perspectives. The aim is to describe some novel and specialist placements that clinical psychologists in London may not be aware of and remind those qualified colleagues who don't regularly supervise what a rewarding and important professional activity this can be.

This interview involves trainee Michael Rolt and his supervisor Paul Chadwick talking to Keith Miller about working together in a specialist placement in the Centre for Behaviour Change (CBC), based at University College.

The CBC's mission is to improve global wellbeing, social cohesion and equity, and environmental sustainability through enabling behaviour change. This is achieved by carrying out research to advance the scientific understanding of behaviour and how to change it, developing methods and tools to improve the quality, use and impact of applying scientific understanding, and working with others, nationally and internationally, to translate behavioural science expertise into real-world impact. Paul is Deputy Director of the CBC, and along with the centre's Director, Professor Susan Michie, has exemplified psychology's contribution to the Covid-19 pandemic in a series of vital contributions and many media appearances in the last 18 months.

The CBC also offers many interventions aside from Covid-related work. They are involved with using evidence-based interventions to create change in the real world in settings ranging from small businesses to multi-national companies. They offer training and consultancy and carry out basic and applied research, working on issues such as the prevention of violence against women, race-based inequities as well as climate change and health-related behaviour.

Michael Rolt provides a trainee's view:

Michael has just finished the Royal Holloway course and talked about his specialist placement at the CBC.

He worked across the areas of research, training and consultancy in his placement, which was completely non clinical. The placement allowed him to develop a new set of organisational and leadership skills. He emphasised the breadth of input clinical psychology can offer across a range of settings.

He primarily carried out training and consultancy work on his placement. The main focus of his work was with a Higher Education organisation which wanted to change its research culture as it  was having a negative effect on researcher wellbeing. Michael was involved in the project from its inception to the final stage and, following a series of focus groups and a literature review, developed a systems map of the key players and how the culture was being maintained. Having checked that his map sat squarely with the lived experience of researchers, he developed concrete practical changes which would improve researcher wellbeing.

He observed how this process followed the same stages as clinical work: assessment, formulation and intervention.

Seeking out this placement was informed by his previous career. He was a chartered accountant and business analyst for 15 years prior to undertaking clinical training. He reflected on his early placements and concluded that traditional work as a clinical psychologist did not allow him to use his business analytic skills, and this placement allowed him to bring the two phases of his career to date together.

In the future he intends to apply the behavioural change wheel approach developed by Susan Michie and Robert West in his role as a newly-qualified psychologist.

Paul Chadwick talks from a supervisor's perspective:

Paul emphasised the specialist nature of the placement, particularly stressing the fact that it involved no direct clinical intervention. Michael was the second clinical psychology trainee to carry out a placement at the CBC and Paul was extremely positive about the input trainees made within the organisation. This was partly due to the fact that the trainees brought with them the culture of traditional clinical psychology work, keeping supervisors up to date with developments within the profession. Paul also enjoyed the challenge of helping trainees think about how theories about individual change can be applied to organisational settings. They provided a fresh pair of eyes and could apply the principles of assessment, formulation and intervention which they had learnt at an individual level within an organisational context.

Paul emphasised that trainees needed to have acquired a full set of individually-based clinical competencies before working at CBC. This gave them the freedom to fully embrace new ways of working, and be able to respond to the needs of the organisation, rather than being limited to acquiring competencies. He spoke about Michael's research culture project, noting that he had worked autonomously and highly effectively, collaborating with others to coproduce a report that contained 20 practical recommendations for organisational change.

There is a clear intention to continue having trainees on placement in this novel setting and clearly the process can involve benefits to both supervisor and trainee.

More information on the theories and methods used by Michael and Paul during the placement can be found on the UCL website.