Meet Peter Woods

Hello. I was born and bred in Manchester and I am a life-long Man. City supporter but I have lived most of my life in various parts of North Wales. I did an honours degree in psychology at Bangor University, where I also studied for my PhD. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was known as the University College of North Wales, and one of my peers at Bangor was Nick Barlow, who founded and was the first chair of this special group.

Nick (who was quite a character) had named it 'Psychologists in Social Services' – a title used for several years until somebody at the BPS realised that it had an unfortunate acronym, and so it was re-named PASC.

The three musketeers

Two of my other peers at Bangor are seen with myself in this photograph, which was taken by my late wife, Susannah, in 1976 when we were receiving our PhDs. I found it in an old album in which Susannah had labelled it 'The Three Musketeers'.

I am the good-looking one in the middle, and on the left is Chris Cullen; Professor Chris Cullen was President of the BPS in 1997/8. The chap on the right is Dr Peter Higson, who sadly died in January this year.

All three of us had trained as clinical psychologists, and Peter and I were part of the team which established the North Wales Clinical Psychology Course of which Peter was its first Director. Later in his career Peter was appointed as Chief Executive of Health Inspection Wales, and then Chair of the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB); BCUHB provides NHS hospital and community services across the whole of North Wales.

The three of us collaborated in conducting clinical research and we published several journal papers and book chapters together (e.g. Woods, P.A. and Cullen, C.N. (1983), 'Determinants of staff behaviour in long-term care'. Behavioural Psychotherapy 11, 4-18, and Woods, P.A., Higson, P.J. and Tannahill, M.M. (1984) 'Token Economy Programme with chronic psychotic patient: The importance of direct measurement and objective evaluation for long-term maintenance'. Behaviour Research and Therapy 22, 41-51).

The three of us also appeared in an Open University programme for its 'Biological Basis of Behaviour' course about the 'North Wales Hospital Token Economy'. It was made in 1978 and was used by the OU in its TV programmes twice a year for 10 years!

Professional and BPS experience

I spent all of my professional career working in different parts of my beloved North Wales with a range of client groups. I was the Head of Psychology and General Manager of Learning Disability Services for over 15 years, and at the end of my 40 years of NHS employment, I was the Director of Clinical Psychology and Psychological Therapy Services in BCUHB.

Over that period I developed extensive networks throughout the UK and internationally (including Belgium). In the BPS I have had numerous roles: Welsh Branch committee member, DCP committee member, Chair of the North Wales Branch of DCP, Professional Affairs Board member, Chair of the National Learning Disability Special Interest Group (which became the Faculty of Intellectual Disability) and Hon Treasurer of PASC (1995-2009).

I was also a BPS National Assessor for Consultant Applied Psychologists for many years, which took me to the four corners of the UK, as did my contributions to conferences and workshops for various organisations.

Internationally, I have been fortunate enough to contribute to conferences, symposia and workshops in many parts of the world including India, Malaysia, Australia, Tonga, Maldives, Kenya, and Zambia (did I forget to mention Belgium?).

My advice to early-career members of our special group would be to take every opportunity you get to broaden your network of contacts and experiences.

From 2007 I began to reduce the number of days per week I spent at work until by 2016 it was down to one, and I retired. My gradual transition from full-time employment to full-time retirement made it easier to increase the number of holidays and experiences my wife and I could enjoy together.

But in 2020 Susannah was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and she died in my arms at the North Wales Cancer Centre in May last year. Those of you who have lost loved ones will know how painful the emotional consequences can be, and for me it felt that my world had ended. But two things have helped me to cope with grief.

Coping with grief

Firstly, family and friends have given me great support and, in particular, two of my sisters-in-law and two of Susannah's best friends involved me in producing a celebratory tribute to her life, with photographs from all stages of her life and careers.

They 'interviewed' me and got me to talk about her life, and persuaded me to search for old photos to produce Hanes Susannah (Welsh for Susannah's Story). The process of focusing on its production was immensely therapeutic for me and definitely helped me to handle the grief and pain. 

Secondly, Zenobia (Nadirshaw, PASC Chair) persuaded me to be co-opted to the PASC committee again, and she twisted my arm to become its acting treasurer until the next AGM. So reluctantly I agreed, but as a consequence I have re-established links with old friends and colleagues (and met lots of interesting new ones), and I have been given plenty of new things and tasks to focus on which seem to be giving me a new additional purpose in life.

So I am extremely grateful to Zenobia (who I have known since the early days of PASC) for forcing me back into the activities of the special group, which I am finding to be an enjoyable way of dealing with grief.

Need to attract younger members to PASC

One of the things that has struck me about how PASC has changed in the more than 30 years of its existence is that the demographic of the committee has shifted to that of predominantly retired persons. So I have suggested that we need to attract more early- and mid-career people to join the special group and perhaps become members of the committee and contribute to the activities of PASC.

So, as part of our efforts to involve more students, early-career members and trainees, we are offering two bursaries for the annual conference, and we are introducing a new regular feature of the group's newsletter for publishing essays, projects (and other types of contributions) from them.

When Zenobia asked me to recruit a younger person to become the new newsletter editor ('because they are more IT-savvy than you and I') I managed to persuade Millie Dalton, a first year psychology student from Bangor University to take it on. But I have to declare an interest.

Millie is the girlfriend of my cousin's middle son, which I think makes her a sort of 'twice removed, second cousin in-law'. And I also have to admit another declaration of interest in the person I have suggested for the first early-career essay.