DCP Workforce and Training Update - November 2024

New publication on the employment of psychology assistants

The BPS has published guidance on the 'Expected standards for the recruitment and employment of assistant psychologists'. This guidance should help employers and those supervising assistants to provide an environment where they can develop and thrive.

Guidance on the use of placement tariff funds

The Department of Health and Social Care publishes annual guidance on central financial support for trainee placements in England. This year's publication has been delayed by the general election, so the 2023-24 guidance is still in operation. We expect the next iteration will include specific guidance around how funds should be used to support clinical psychology placements. We will provide a link to the guidance when it's available.

Clinical psychology commissioning numbers across the UK

New trainees have been starting programmes in the last couple of months and have been warmly welcomed to the profession. There are 84 new trainees in Scotland, 21 in Northern Ireland, 42 in Wales and 1,080 in England. We hope that despite the difficult financial position the NHS faces, these numbers will be maintained in 2025.

New supervision guidelines for practitioner psychologists

The BPS has published new supervision guidelines for psychologists. These have been developed by a group representing all practitioner psychologists and are intended to help make supervision an essential part of a psychologist's development, and support psychologists in delivering high-quality supervision.

Review of BPS's accreditation criteria for clinical psychology programmes

The major review of the accreditation criteria has finished and the second phase of public consultation has also been completed. The comments from the consultation have been integrated and a new draft is now being scrutinised through the BPS governance procedures. The plan is to publish these by November/December 2024, with a three-year implementation time frame.

Career developmental framework

A Task and Finish Group chaired by Beth Parry-Jones has started developing professional guidance to help promote equal access to career progression.

The framework will help service leads understand the benefits of employing practitioner psychologists at different A4C bands. It will also demonstrate how they can support the expansion and governance of psychological professions and increase access to psychological therapies and interventions in health and social care.

Additionally, the guidance will help inform practitioner psychologists working in health and social care about what's expected in terms of competencies and qualifications for different Agenda for Change bandings (or equivalent).

Responsible (approved) clinician podcast

A podcast interview with Professor John Taylor and Dr Esther Cohen-Tovee by Tony Lavender about the responsible clinician role is now available to listen to. The interview covers what's involved in the role, the training required, what a clinical psychologist can bring to the role and the issues to consider when attempting to help NHS trusts adopt the role. You can listen to the podcast episode here.

HCPC and the BPS HCPC Working Group

Tony Lavender, working group chair and Zosia Walecka, BPS senior policy and public affairs advisor, have continued to meet with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and the Professional Standards Authority throughout the year.

We have agreed to repeat the induction sessions for HCPC staff in 2024/25 to familiarise them with the training and working contexts of each type of practitioner psychologist. We have also provided a Fitness to Practice webinar for practitioner psychologists in conjunction with HCPC, the PSA and Unite.

We will continue to lobby HCPC to improve this and other processes and if there are particular issues you would like us to discuss with HCPC, please get in touch.

Finally, HCPC has launched a free service to support registrants going through Fitness to Practice, which you can find on their website.