Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust (BEH) has announced their involvement in Aspire, a programme of work focusing on efforts to develop a workforce that can reflect and serve their diverse borough, along with providing necessary experience to aspiring clinical psychologists.
The Aspire project, a nationally-funded programme from Health Education England, seeks to improve diversity of the clinical psychology workforce by improving access to training for people of all backgrounds.
BEH, describing itself as serving a “socially, religiously, culturally and ethnically diverse borough”, has deployed psychological therapies leads to oversee the local programme and coordinate a trust-wide group for the candidates, with the aim of ensuring that they receive a broad range of experience. It is hoped that this will allow them to gain the insight that they need to help them progress to the next phase of their careers.
In the first round of funding, the project has successfully hired six roles with a view to expand the programme in the future.
Candidates will be offered experience in at least two different clinical models, learning auditing skills and service evaluation. Core areas would include Adult Community (including EIS, rehab and personality disorder), Older Adult Mental Health Services, CAMHS, Learning Disability and Psychiatric Liaison.
The clinical involvement will include experience of working as part of an multidisciplinary team; supporting the work of a clinical psychologist; involvement in the running of groups; experience in collecting outcome measures and understanding the value of data through participation in evaluations and audits; and more.
IH previously reported on the launch of the ASPIRE programme here.
