Empathy & Compassion in Society Conference

Speakers

Tomorrow marks a unique opportunity for those involved in the fields of policy, education, health and social care to come together to hear internationally acclaimed scientists, leaders and change makers in a series of presentations and workshops focused on Empathy & Compassion in Society. The Conference actually begins with a free event for young people, an encouraging sign that the focus of empathy and compassion will begin with hope for the future and the encouragement of our young people to award status to these ideas.
The conference is being supported by a range of organisations dedicated to making a diference in the daily lives of individuals and the overarching consideration of national and international peoples.
As a group of psychologists we are committed to active investment in cutting edge science and provision of services to enable as many individuals as possible to achieve their potential. As a result we are endeavouring to stay abreast of such movements and to incorporate these ideas into our work with individuals and organisations.
The publication of the Winterbourne report, after the revelations of the dreadful treatment of those within the care system at Winterbourne, gave particular emphasis to the importance of compassion in the care and support of vulnerable people. We will attend the conference and hopefully let you have feedback on how it goes and what outcomes there may be. Watch this space....

CPD, who has responsibility?

We all know the rules and requirements of CPD for Practioner Psychologists. We also know that it is in the interests of our practice and the support we offer to others, to stay up to date with professional development. For those of us who are employed there is an expectation that our employer will provide CPD or foot the bill. For those of us who are self-employed there is obviously a need to source and pay for our own. Is there a point at which the two cross over? Is there some form of CPD that would benefit you directly in your practice, that would make little or no difference in business or efficiency terms for your employer. Are there just things you are plain interested in? Are there things you could be doing to help yourself?

We need to bear in mind that many daily activities count towards CPD. None of us can practice without supervision and this counts. Teaching individuals, managing provisions, reading articles, networking with other professionals - all of these things count towards the maintenance of CPD. In a climate of fiscal austerity, take responsibility for some of your own CPD and find training or interests that inspire and motivate you to take ownership of your own CPD. Tackle the issue head on and gain a sense of choice and autonomy in where you place your attention. Both you and the individuals you support will make greater gains than attendance at perfunctory training in areas that hold little professional passion for you.

Frustration with the lack of psychotherapy for adolescent sex offenders.

Over the last few years I have been asked to assess adolescent sex offenders either pre-trial or pre-sentencing.  More often than not these adolescents have experienced trauma that predates their offences and often I recommended psychodynamic therapy in addition to the traditional sex offender treatment programme.  I recommend this not just because it would be beneficial to the psychological development of the individual, but also because if (as is also common) the adolescent is emotionally under-developed as a result of their trauma, the psychotherapy will enable them to develop to such a point that they would be able to fully engage with sex offender treatment.

So last week I was asked to reassess an adolescent who was applying for parole whom I had recommended the above with concern that his mental health would deteriorate.  I was saddened to discover that his mental health had worsened and I considered him to be of greater risk than two years previously.  He had not received psychodynamic psychotherapy, but had been accessing sex offender treatment but had not completed it, in my opinion due to an inability as a result of his emotional incapacity.  This left me feeling frustrated, but ready to improve awareness and try to change this.

Nigel organises a good congress!

Well it has taken a little while to post this, but still worth a little read:

Joint Congress of the European Association for Mental Health and Intellectual Disability and IASSID Challenging Behaviour and Mental Health SIRG

1-3 September 2011, Palace Hotel, Manchester.

Well, it was always going to be a good conference with Nigel Beail organising it… and I am not just talking about the Social Programme (although the Casablanca Steps were rather fabulous!).

It was a conference where I could not find a slot in the programme to have a break, so I attended throughout, despite my weariness (noting the good social programme again!).

My highlights were hearing: Noelle Blackman presenting a case study of an eight year psychotherapy with a woman with learning disabilities who initially displayed some very disturbed and dangerous (self-injurious) behaviour; Valerie Sinason raising our awareness of the presence of Dissociative Identity Disorder in people with intellectual disability in her wonderful expressive and heartfelt style (which prompted me to buy the new edition of her book Mental Handicap and the Human Condition); and overall, Pat Frankish giving her keynote speech considering the Paradigm Shift that has happened over the last thirty years from a position where psychological therapies were not considered appropriate for people with intellectual disabilities, whereas now they are widely used, and this was reflected in the congress programme.

Pat has worked hard over the last thirty years… I guess it’s time for us to keep the momentum going!

Happy opening ceremony day everyone.  I rang my school bell with many of my neighbours this morning to celebrate the countdown to the beginning.  It was a beautiful 3 minutes, shared across the country with many many people and car drivers tooting and ringing away.  It was beautiful for the soul and three minutes of connection at a very spiritual level.  Enjoy!

Thoughts from the Annual Institute of Psychotherapy and Disability Conference in Dublin, June 2012

I was lucky enough a couple of weeks ago to travel to the Annual IPD Conference in Dublin with a colleague from PFP&PC.  The conference was entitled What about me: Psychotherapeutic Applications to Disability.  Professor Nigel Beail presented the keynote address about setting up psychotherapy services for people with learning disabilities where he outlined the areas for consideration including the available outcome research and the importance of evaluating services to provide data to commissioners about the value of the service. 

After the break, we presented our paper “Providing Support within the Private sector: a UK experience” on behalf of Dr Pat Frankish, which described the development of our service model with case examples of the model in practice.  We were followed by Patty Van Belle-Krusse from the Netherlands, who described her project in Arduin which provided support to people with intellectual disabilities in an environment that is therapeutic. 

In the lunch break, Irish author Jack Harte read from his novel Reflections in a Tar-Barrel which tells the story of a man who is considered to be a “half-wit”; he also believes this to be true.  The story describes how he grapples with life and the spiritual and arrives at his own world view.  Harte uses a tragic humour in his story-telling, which characterised both the pain and wonder of hero’s journey.

Following lunch there were a series of parallel seminars, of which only two could be attended. I chose Angelina Veiga’s Who Framed Sigmund Freud? On protecting patient and therapist from attack and Grania Clarke’s Working with Systems within Systems: the value of systemic approaches in working with people with disabilities and the systems designed to support them. These two seminars reminded me of the huge variations in approaches to working with people with intellectual disabilities, and the vital importance of the presence of all of them as there are large variations in our clients and their needs will be different requiring different forms of therapy and support at different times.  Angelina’s psychoanalytical presentation raised the blocks to therapy that are even more damaging of the therapy for people with intellectual disabilities and the importance of the therapist to be aware of these attacks and be ready to address them.  Grania described the complexities in the systems of people with intellectual disabilities and the varied perspectives of individual’s within the system.  She used case examples to highlight the importance of using a systemic perspective in working with people with intellectual disabilities.

Well worth the whistle-stop tour!!



Statement of Equivalence (SoE) – the old fashioned way

As an Australian-trained Clinical Psychologist I began the SoE process in 2007, and, after four years was last year awarded Chartered status by the British Psychological Society (BPS) and registered by the Health Professions Council (HPC).  What a process!  It would have been quicker to undertake the doctoral program from beginning to end.

There are inherent difficulties in gaining the now defunct SoE and practitioner status via the international route with the HPC.  The biggest, yet most important, was, as an international applicant, circumnavigating the ‘system’ to find

a)     placements and supervisors in order to meet the required competencies

b)     a university to support you if you need to undertake doctoral level research

c)      an establishment that supports candidates through the process.

My experience has been “Well, this is what you need to do, go do it”, but without documented links to Trusts or private practices that are willing to take on overseas clinicians. 

Of greatest disappointment is the as yet unaddressed issue of candidates undertaking doctoral level research, being examined as if a doctoral final year student, but not getting the qualification at the end of it.  While equivalence was always the goal, surely the next step for the profession is recognition and reward for those candidates who complete this process?

Any thoughts from other SoE candidates or from those who applied to the HPC via the international route are welcome.

Yorkshire PQT training day: Teaching psychology to non-psychologists

Two of the team from PFP&PC attended a one day workshop run by The Yorkshire Psychologists’ Post Qualification Training group, at University of Leeds. The day covered ideas around teaching psychological thinking to other professions. Interestingly, three of the speakers were non-psychologists which gave a good all round feel to the day, acknowledging areas of expertise amongst professionals willing to share.

The first sessions was run by Gary Latchford, a research director at University of Leeds. He introduced us to the amazing Dr Fox and we discovered that it’s not what people try and teach us that aids recall, but the dynamism of the person teaching us. He also gave us hints and tips from the famous, Steve Jobs, founder of the Apple company, and his approach to public speaking and selling his products. It is well worth noting that the need to physically practise cannot be over emphasised.

Jason Heppell, academic support officer, University of Leeds, gave us a more theoretical background on recent research in the literature on higher education. It would be worth your while to investigate some of the findings on e-learning, seminars, and self-directed learning followed by student teaching. Seems the work students put into preparing presentations and teaching projects, gains them valuable deep learning. Also interesting to note that in spite of all the evidence in support of learning styles, these have little bearing on how we might teach effectively. What matters is that the method of teaching is suited to the content of the material.

Rebecca Dearden, from the staff and departmental development unit, University of Leeds, blew us all away with her grasp of electronic availability and manipulation of material. She came up with some amazing suggestions for use of technology from instant video uploading, to tweeting, to texting questions within seminars. All worth some serious investigation for gaining and maintaining audiences.

Claire Dowzer then announced and facilitated some understanding of the new Sharepoint system between the University and the NHS to facilitate collaborative working. A small area of the site is available to PQT members too. The Sharepoint system is a Microsoft system available to all for the sharing of info between teams and across organisations.

After lunch, a consultant psychiatrist, Dr James Johnston, gave a fascinating talk on facilitating reflective practice groups for those working in acute psychiatric settings.

More to follow in a future blog.

New sign up for Twitter

Finally beginning to coordinate our social media and networking to bring some of our thoughts and experiences to you from The Psychology Team. So you can follow us on our new Twitter feed @psydaily and we hope to bring you up to date information, comment and reflection. You can check out the work we do and who we are at http://www.patfrankish.com/or http://www.patfrankish.co.uk/