‘Educational psychology has always been about sharing for the collective good’

After school, my first career was a hairdresser. Back then, I didn't see myself as academic and I was a relatively shy child/young person. At 20 years of age, thinking about a career change, I took a typing course and then retook my GCSE English. My English teacher helped me to see that I was perhaps capable of doing more academically. She encouraged me to consider university and signposted me to an Access Course as a local FE college. It was there that I fell in love with psychology.

A psychology degree at the University of Plymouth (1993-1996) followed. During my undergraduate degree I undertook a work placement at a special school. I became interested in how schools can make a difference for children in relation to their development, and I conducted research at the school evaluating an intervention designed to improve language and communication. I loved working in this environment with the school staff and the children. It was lively, interesting and enjoyable and very much helped my decision to pursue a career as an educational psychologist (EP).

The university had a module on the career of an EP. At this time, being a teacher was a prerequisite to training. I was keen to focus on the lower primary as I wanted to understand in practice how children developed during this phase of schooling and what helped all children to learn.

And so a PGCE at Homerton College, Cambridge University followed (1996-1997), and then teaching at a primary school in Cambridge (1997-1999) and an MSc Educational Psychology, Tavistock Clinic/ University of Essex (1999-2000).

I enjoyed being in schools; the rhythms and routines, being ready to deal with the unexpected. I learnt so much from my teaching colleagues, the process of developing positive relationships with individual children, witnessing them develop as people and progress with their learning over the course of a year (i.e. leaving as readers and writers). I continued to use my psychology and think about the quiet as well as the noisy child in the class, the child who had a difficult family life and the child who was developmentally younger than their peers. That was valuable in my professional development.

My path as an EP

I joined Enfield Council's EPS team in 2000. Enfield is a large North London borough with enormous linguistic and ethnic diversity and considerable socio economic challenges. It is the 9^th most deprived London borough and has the 11^thhighest rate of child poverty in the country. It was a service where I felt immediately at home with kind and supportive colleagues both in the EPS and in the broader partnership. The quality of their thinking, experience and wisdom was inspirational. At the heart of it all was a collective commitment to do our best for children through our relationships with schools and partners. This ethos and culture have very much remained.

In Enfield there has been a continual stream of opportunities for EPs to engage in a variety of programmes and work in partnership with different professionals. My own journey has involved working with many different professionals on a range of programmes. I have been the lead EP for the Deaf, supported Nurture Groups and specialised in early years alongside CAMHS colleagues. Within educational psychology, you can pursue a wide range of interests and there are potential opportunities within the local authority services.

I became a Senior Lead EP for Early Years in 2007; a job I shared with my wonderful colleague, Sara Bierer. We worked part time and, in partnership with other key services, we delivered programmes promoting the importance of positive relationships, attuned care to support development at the earliest stages of a child's life.

I secured my first leadership role whilst I was 7 months pregnant and have been supported in developing my career through having flexible opportunities at work. This has been a testament to Enfield Council in relation to its commitment to supporting women in leadership roles. It is an area that I remain passionate about and promote this in my own team, e.g. all EPs with leadership roles have flexible working arrangements.

I became Principal EP / Head of Service for EPS & CAMHS in 2015. It was at a difficult time when local authorities faced financial pressures. It was necessary to make big changes to both CAMHS and the EPS. For many years CAMHS was Local Authority led and integrated with the EPS. I became involved in a change leadership programme in close partnership with commissioners, senior leads and clinicians in the NHS to move CAMHS fully over to an NHS organisation over a four-year period.

In 2019, my role changed to being Principal EP / Strategic Lead for Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health. This enabled me to continue to work closely with commissioners, CAMHS colleagues and other partners to promote the emotional wellbeing and mental health across Enfield, with an emphasis on delivery through schools and settings. A key partner was the clinical lead in CAMHS and we worked closely together on a range of programmes and projects focussing on developing the mental health workforce.

In 2018/19, I completed the Post Graduate Certificate in Management and Leadership of Mental Health Services with UCL and the Anna Freud Centre. Led by leaders in the field of mental health this was an important learning experience for me which involved looking at the challenges within mental health services, appreciating the developing frameworks for promoting emotional wellbeing and mental health and understanding the strategic direction at a local, regional and national level. The emphasis was enabling the development of a community of support through centering the experience of the child, young person and their family.

Pandemic

2020 was clearly unique for all public services and the communities they served. The only way was for us to work together as a partnership. We set up Enfield Thrives Together Network Meeting. This started as a small group of professionals meeting with school and parents/carer reps at the centre so that we could pivot our services and meet their emerging needs.

Over the course of the pandemic, this group grew to over 100. It provided a platform for services to share their adapted offers, encourage partnership working and mobilise support to better help our school communities. I loved co-ordinating this group; it has given me the opportunity to know more about our partners, their services, their energy and commitment.

In Enfield, our offer to schools in the form of Wellbeing for Education Return was as a partnership involving 26 professionals from across Council, NHS Trust and voluntary and community sector organisations. The key framework that brought a common approach was Stevan Hobfoll and colleagues' five essential principles from post disaster psychosocial care – promoting (1) a sense of psychological and physical safety (2) calm (3) self and community efficacy (4) social connectedness and (5) hope. We learnt about the value of these principles from a trainee EP who was placed with us and had been working with EPs supporting school communities following the Grenfell Tower tragedy. Feedback from our schools showed that the programme was vital in ensuring that they had the knowledge, skills and confidence they needed to meet the wellbeing and mental health needs of children and families affected by Covid.

Given the experiences of many, we knew that there would be a spike in the emotional needs within our schools and communities for some time to come and we started preparing for this as a partnership, launching Enfield Trauma Informed Practice in Schools and Settings (E-TIPSS) in 2021. We are thankful to our educational psychology and mental health colleagues in other boroughs who had trailblazed the Attachment Regulation Competency (ARC) Framework (developed by Kristine Kinniburgh and Margaret Blaustein, United States) and introduced to us in Enfield by Kati Taunt (ARC Trainer and Consultant) who has worked with us throughout. Promoting the emotional needs of the adults and those with caring responsibilities is key to the model and approach in Enfield. The E-TIPSS champion approach has also been a key enabler – we now have 20 E-TIPSS champions working across nine different services supporting the development of trauma-informed care… that's always been part of their approach, but having a shared framework has been a uniting experience.

The educational psychology profession is a small profession but we remain closely connected across the UK, and I have found that educational psychology has always been about sharing for the collective good.

Supporting at all stages

Being an EP is a challenging profession – more so in the current climate of increased need. But it can be rich and rewarding too. As a service, we want every member of the team to enjoy their job – we aim to provide a varied workload that involves providing educational psychology involvement towards statutory Education Health and Care Needs Assessments, a patch of schools to provide psychology work at individual, group and whole school level, and work within other teams or projects.  

Bringing along the next generation of EPs is a crucial strand of our work as a service and a profession and we all take the responsibility very seriously. Enfield EPS has been a placement for trainee EPs for many years having an established history of working in close partnership with the university courses. The value of having trainee EPs is that they bring a fresh perspective, unique set of talents and knowledge from their previous careers and carry out research that potentially benefits our local area.

We are committed to supporting the profession at all stages. We have assistant educational psychologists in our service – we aim to provide them with good experiences here in Enfield and support them in applying for EP training courses. We do this because we all want great EPs in the workforce in the future.

Two other services are within my portfolio – Enfield Advisory Service for Autism and The Primary Behaviour Support Service (known as SWERRL). Both of these are excellent services that are led by extraordinary leaders who are strategic and child and family centred. They are psychological and deliver their services through evidenced based approaches, models and frameworks that are strategically aligned both in Enfield and on a national scale. Part of my role is also about quietly raising the profiles of these leaders and helping the work of their services become known and valued by stakeholders.

My strategic responsibilities include supporting the partnership in relation to children with SEND, autism and emotional wellbeing and mental health. This involves looking for opportunities to align the work we do strategically so that we have a shared vision and approach. For example, promoting a needs-led (rather than diagnosis-led) and trauma-informed approach are both reflected explicitly and implicitly through the SEND Partnership Strategy and our developing Autism Strategy. These principles are then threaded through and operationalised in the work of the services. The training and experience of EPs positions them well to engage in this strategic work where they can apply psychology at a systems level that has a greater reach and benefit to children and families.

I am fortunate to work with incredible and committed colleagues in Enfield. A key and important partner is the Head of Service for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. Whilst the EPS provides the independent psychological advice as part of the EHC Needs Assessment, at a strategic level we have a strong relationship and work well together. We appreciate the different experiences, knowledge and thinking that each other brings and have a shared aim to improve processes and the quality of our services for our children, families and schools and so that together we make a difference.

As an EP Service, we have tried to find a balance in creating spaces for conversations, personal reflection and professional/service development in relation to developing a culturally competent and anti-racist service. We also need clear collective action. These can be grand plans over time such as developing Dynamic Assessment as a service so that we are providing more culturally sensitive assessments for our children. They are mostly small incremental steps. For example, making sure our team are systematically offering interpreters, checking out the families' experiences of our service, and continually developing our communications to ensure that all of our families know about the role of an EP. We offer annual career events for prospective educational psychologists in partnership with EP services in other boroughs. We are trying to develop a more ethnically diverse profession and to reach our local sixth formers when they are at the stage of thinking about their futures. Our aim is for EPs to be more visible to the communities of Enfield, so students and residents can aspire to be one, if they choose.

Calling people in

As I was preparing to move into a Principal EP position, having space and time to learn about and reflect on the psychology of leadership was invaluable. As Principal EPs we are typically not line managed by an educational psychologist – being able to secure regular external supervision from a psychologist has been essential to help me step back and reflect on my position and influence within a complex system and appreciate what is going well and grapple with persistent areas of challenge. Alongside many other valued colleagues, I feel honoured that Dr Roger Booker has provided me with kind, supportive and psychological supervision.

Leadership is often the invisible work of growing a partnership and creating a sense of belonging to something bigger, where everyone has a valuable contribution that can make a difference. It is about turning up, being present, bringing together the right people and lifting up the right voices at the right time. It is also about calling people in as opposed to calling people out, and the assumption that everyone has good intentions and is doing their best.

To get something done we still need a clear vision that is shared, but more importantly requires perseverance and patience and knowing when people might be ready to engage or not and understanding the barriers. Most importantly it is about working together in partnership, applying psychology through an approach that is welcoming, kind and supportive.

I did not have a traditional academic route to educational psychology. Our working lives can be long – there is time to develop as a person, and to change your mind and direction. Professional and life experiences are valuable and we take them with us as we move forward. When I look back on the shy young person I was, there is no doubt that doing this job has developed my confidence socially. At the heart of that has been creating spaces for talking and thinking with people, valuing different perspectives and the people we work with and serve.