The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Educational & Child Psychology and working in Education Settings with Dr Michele McDowell

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi there, it's Marianne here. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly let you know about something exciting that's happening right now. If you've ever wondered how to create income that works for you, rather than constantly trading your time for money, then you'll love the Race to Recurring Revenue Challenge with my business mentor, Lisa Johnson. This challenge is designed to help you build sustainable income streams. And whether you're an aspiring psychologist, a mental health professional, or in a completely different field,

Starting point is 00:00:32 the principles can work for you. There are also wonderful prizes to be won directly by Lisa herself. And if you join the challenge by my link, you can be in with a chance of winning a one-to-one hours coaching with me, Dr. Marianne Trent. Do you want to know more? Of course you do. Head to my link tree, Dr. Marianne Trent, or check out my social media channels, or send me a quick DM and I'll get you all the details. Right, let's get on with today's episode. If you're looking to become a psychologist, then let this be your guide. episode. with Dr. Marianne Trent.

Starting point is 00:01:36 Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. Thank you for listening and thank you once again for being part of my world. Thank you also to everybody who has been in contact to say how useful they have found the Clinical Psychologist Collective book. And of course, the aspiring psychologist membership in supporting their application process in psychology this year. And there have been a few success stories as well within the membership of people getting on to clinical training and also people who found reading the Clinical Psychologist Collective book really helpful in helping them develop their own confidence in talking about their narratives and in reflecting and being able to draw on strengths and experiences across their career. So if you haven't grabbed a copy yet, or if you're not yet on the waiting list for the Aspiring Psychologist membership, then do check out the details in the show notes so that you can go and check it all out

Starting point is 00:02:40 on my link tree. But with no further ado, whilst we're talking about the Clinical Psychologist Collective, why not meet someone who is featured in the book, but not in the capacity of clinical psychology? Let's think about other routes to professional qualifications in psychology. In today's podcast episode, I am joined by Dr. Michelle McDowell, who is an educational and child psychologist. She's lovely to chat to, and I hope you'll find this episode super useful. I will catch you on the other side. Okay, welcome along. I am joined today by my wonderful guest, Dr. Michelle McDowell. Michelle is an educational psychologist. Hi, welcome along, Michelle. Good morning. Thank you for having me, Marianne.

Starting point is 00:03:39 You're so welcome. So what I think can be really useful is if we give the audience a flavor of where you're at right now but also a little bit of a potted history about how you got there and why okay I'll try to remember and recall all of that all in one so like you said Marianne I'm an education and child psychologist um I didn't go directly um to route and I'll tell you why. When I first trained many years ago now, so in 2000, I trained as a psychologist, you had to be a teacher first. So I did my teacher training and by the way before I did teacher training I had no clue of what I wanted to do and so somebody was saying to me oh you know the PGCE is one year and at the time it was very well funded so I was like right okay that sounds great. So I did the PGCE for the

Starting point is 00:04:42 year and was trained to teach government and politics and history. Although I had aspects of psychology within my initial degree. So I went along to teach training. After that, started on my teaching career in secondary school. And in my very, very first term term I was a form tutor right in my very first term of teaching I had a pupil who was a lovely young man in year seven never forget him he was you know just really sporty actually and just a joyous young man really bubbly in the class struggled with literacy just couldn't get to engage with literacy and um of quite a few of his teachers at secondary school obviously so you know would comment and say he's got all the answers but it's really struggling so the SENCO I've had to be

Starting point is 00:05:38 special education and these coordinators and she'd organized for the educational psychologist to come into school. And during the consultation, I said to her, can you tell me what exactly is it that you do? And after an elongated conversation, I had my aha moment. And that was it. I was like, this is my calling. This is what I'm supposed to do. Educ so I then continued on the journey now I want to make a distinction because it's very different now but my journey through to the training to become an educational psychologist like I said at the beginning was you needed some teaching experience so I'd already started on that journey I had a degree that had some aspects of psychology in it but not enough to get the GBR status so I then had to do an initial master's

Starting point is 00:06:36 in psychology and then it wasn't quite a diploma but I guess it was certificate in the additional topics that you needed to become a um to get that GBR status and then I applied to be an educational psychologist now that sounds like quite a simple route but it took years because I was studying part-time I'm going on and on here do you want me to continue absolutely how old were you when you started your um when you started your qualification i'm sorry what a question what a question does that feel okay to us of course i'm confident in my womanhood and aidhood as they say um i i don't know let me think now because i did my doctorate later so actually let me carry on with the journey so when I trained you needed a master in science at MSc to become an education and child psychologist it was many moons ago so I think I did the MA and then the MSc. And I think by the time 2000, how old would I have been?

Starting point is 00:07:46 30. Yeah, I was fully qualified. You were not hanging around, were you? You know, you did your teaching qualification and you did all of the stuff you needed to do to be able to qualify as an Ed Psych at 30. That's some going. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:08:01 Well, to be honest, I spent much longer in teaching because I loved it. So there was quite a bit of, I go do I not go because I really really enjoy teaching um but it was changing and it was at that stage that we they were making adjustments in the curriculum again and it was much more sort of paper-based and I was like it's probably a good time to you know transfer and change really and so I chose to do it's probably a good time to, you know, transfer and change, really. And so I chose to do it then in 2000. I love that actually it was a personal story, a personal connection, something that you could tangibly almost feel and connect to that really turned your head in the direction of educational psychology and you know I think it is oh it's my one of my favorite things about this profession of psychology of ours is that we get to work

Starting point is 00:08:51 with people you know who can shape us as well as um hopefully we have a positive impact on them as well but that young man might never know you know that actually absolutely the impact he had on you and it's really incredible um but I'm really pleased it happened because it it did you know lead you towards this new passion absolutely I and I think if we if I think about my life actually there have been these significant movements as I'm sure it is for everybody else um and often personal that have been impacted and triggered moving on to something new you know um or certainly a change in transition so yeah definitely it's important that we can reflect on that can't we have you ever done any you know journaling or diary kind of keeping to help you with your reflections or how do you manage your

Starting point is 00:09:46 reflections if you don't do that? Do you know it's really interesting you know because I used to journal quite a bit um I used to write poetry actually and then I I used to journal almost I think daily for years and years and years and years and um after I had my son so about um well about 10 years ago now isn't it I um paused and then just kind of I've done it intermittently but not quite ever got consistently back into it and I miss it and so I think maybe I'm going to start again start again I think it's never too start again is it but you know it's recognizing the stuff that's been useful along our journey um and then thinking oh I might do that again you know what what form did you used to do it did you do it kind of at the end of your day would you do it at the beginning of the day or a little bit of you know ad hoc um here and there I think there were phases so I think when I was much younger I used to do it

Starting point is 00:10:50 at the end of the day and it used to be almost a kind of um a reflection on what I'd experienced each day and then I think sort of post degree around that time it used to be something that I did quite early on in the morning and it was more intentional so I used to focus on what I wanted the day to look like and it was much more focused and then I went through a period of time it was very intentional and I got into the more than neuropsychology of it all really and you know that kind of focused intent and being having gratitude and you know um and so it would be preempt you know it would preempt the day if you like so that was quite an adjustment yeah I think it's uh children they squash all of our good practices you know they bring much joy with them but

Starting point is 00:11:45 you know our our window of kind of tolerance is just I think just a bit more shrunk for you know the other particular joyful things that might have kept us well as well. So I'm aware that with clinical psychology you're employed via NHS trusts to train as a trainee clinical psychologist could you tell us a little bit about whether there's funded options available for trainee educational psychologists yes so my understanding of this and it might not be the best because it's been quite a while now but it transferred from masters at MSc to become a fully a doctorate. And I think that was in 2000 as well or 2000 and 2003. I think it adjusted, changed over. So but even with the MSc, I think there's the body of educational psychology,

Starting point is 00:12:40 the local authorities all joined together. and so there's a funding pot previous to the doctorate you could for one year you could finance yourself so some of the applicants would have a unfunded offer and then there would be funded offers my understanding now is that there are only funded offers because i think it's quite a lot to expect anybody over a three year period to be able to afford. Are they now doctoral courses or are they still masters? Only doctoral courses now. OK, because that's different than I think health and counselling psychology are self funding only. And yet it is still a three-year doctorate it's very

Starting point is 00:13:25 tricky oh okay it is very tricky and I think educational psychology has gone through quite a tumultuous time so I remember when I was training um there was talk about there going to be a period of time where there was going to be a real gap in educational psychologists because there were so many retiring at the same time. I don't know why that occurred that that seemed to be such a kind of bubble if you like of people that were retiring but it feels like we never quite caught up so there's quite, it's heavily in demand education and child psychology at the moment, but there seems to be a bottleneck because of the funding. There's only ever a certain amount of people that go through the training.

Starting point is 00:14:15 And then on the other end, there are so many local authorities that are in desperate need of education and child psychologists. Yeah, certainly when i worked in cam services you know i think there was an allocation of um ed psych hours per school and it was like 10 hours a term or something like that you know it was really minimal and so you're having to like almost pick your neediest children or young people in the school but that doesn't mean that there's not lots of other people who also have you know valid needs for that it's very tricky do you get involved with triaging

Starting point is 00:14:52 who to see or is that a case of the school having to make those referrals so part of my journey has been um that since 2007 i've pretty much been self-employed. So I work quite differently to a local authority educational psychologist, educational child psychologist. But what ordinarily would happen is the local authority, the educational psychology service, would very, very skillfully and carefully carve out time

Starting point is 00:15:24 for each of the schools and it would be based on things like the priority needs of the school in terms of, it used to be free school meals, those children that are vulnerable etc and they would identify the needs of the school and based on the size of the school as well and then allocate a caped time and it was almost always bottom heavy if you like so the primary schools would always get more time than secondary schools it's always underpinned by early intervention as much as possible thank you for sharing that with us what's a typical day

Starting point is 00:16:02 if there's such a thing, in the life of an ed psych, specifically you? So I might be very different to an ed psych and a local authority. But you did say specifically me, so I will say. I do a range of things at the moment. And I think that's the Sagittarian in me. I've always struggled to do one thing at a time. So I do a range of things at the moment and I think that's the Sagittarian in me I've always struggled to do one thing at a time so I do a range so at the moment if I look at my diary this week I am doing some consultation for a company who will be supporting schools of mental health

Starting point is 00:16:38 and they've had asked me to have a look at their program and support them with you know sort of highlighting what they could include in the programme but also emphasising some aspects of the emotional literacy curriculum for them within the programme so they can deliver that to schools. I am offering some supervision and support to an organization again that works with young people and i'm writing a report so i'm i locum sometimes for local authorities and um so i work like a local authority educational psychologist but they it's a piece of this a case-by-case basis so i'm completing a report today for a very tight deadline, which is constantly my life. What else will I be doing? I'm on podcast, which I'm really happy to be doing as well.

Starting point is 00:17:38 So that's today for me. But I'm constantly, I think this the the challenge and the benefit of local sorry of independent work is I'm often offered various different types of work and that's great um the challenge is I'm always thinking right okay should I I'm always worried really about a gap um so I'm constantly saying yes to things and i'm often thinking my goodness you know the bucket is full so it's it's getting that balance between not saying yes to absolutely everything ensuring that you have some effective time absolutely and i think that's something that we start to begin to be able to learn as aspiring psychologists as well

Starting point is 00:18:24 isn't it you know there's lots of people chucking work down at us and we're having to say I'm only one person exactly I said to you just before we came on camera as well you know oh it's the summer holidays soon because we're speaking in June um you know is that a quieter time for you and you were like no not really no not necessarily because the schools do close but you know especially skilled SENCOs have been really busy at identifying the children that have needs and ensuring that they have put in support for them or requesting support before they leave for the summer so we're then busily around the summer you know we've probably done those assessments previous to and we'll be writing them up during the summer then you have children who will be transferring from primary to secondary school usually in the following year but they need

Starting point is 00:19:16 to have their adult reviews done you know to review it if they had a education health and care plan are they still the same as they transitioned in secondary school, for example. Would it be okay to briefly outline what an education health plan is for our audience, if that's okay? Of course. Education, health and care plan. So previously it was known as a statement of educational needs. And what it means is a very small percentage of children, they have a higher special educational need than the majority of their peers.

Starting point is 00:19:54 It's usually between 0 to 2 percent. I think we've got quite significant needs. And so even though the school is putting in as much support as they can, asking for advice and support on the outside, they feel and the parents often feel that without additional funding and additional support, they'll not be able to reach their full potential and will struggle and have a kind of a challenging experience at school. So the Educational Health and Care Plan is about all the professionals that work with the young person offering advice if you like. So we as educational psychologists usually do that via some form of consultation and assessment with the school, the parent and the child. It's varied and it's become more complex over the whole lockdown period because usually it was always ever face to face but during lockdown it became more remote. So some of the work I'm doing now is remote and I'm engaging with young people online as it were.

Starting point is 00:21:00 So the whole idea of the Educational Health and Care Plan is for all the professionals that are working with the young person and the young person and their family to put all the information in one space. And that space, that Educational Health and Care Panel, that information is then viewed by what's known as the SEN Panel. So every local authority has a special educational needs panel. And the idea of it is that it's quite representative so you'll have usually school heads or school Senkos will take terms in attending the panel at the local authority you'll have the special educational needs department from the local authority you'll have an educational psychologist on there and sometimes time permitting you'll have somebody from health as well so that paddle then meets on a weekly basis and what they do is look at the requests

Starting point is 00:21:54 for an educational health and care plan and they'll decide on which ones they think are in need of a further assessment and which aren't and they'll also look at the educational health and care plan information for each child and decide on whether they think that it warrants them at this point having some additional support and if that's agreed then the education health and care plan is written now this is a plan that follows a child from 0 to 25 years old so it's earmarked funding for a young person throughout their their educational career if you like okay thank you so much for that i know that will be really useful for people trying to navigate their way through psychology and perhaps if they're working with educational service as well or perhaps if they

Starting point is 00:22:43 just want to you know it's often abbreviated isn't it um could you tell us the abbreviation that people might be seeing so the educational health and care plan is ehcp ehcp educational health and care plan um and do you ever work alongside aspiring psychologists or you know how can people get experience of working alongside um people like you in your profession um it's a it's a question that i i every so often i said should i get an associate should i not you know or an assistant sorry um psychologist so i probably could do i think it would it's very much about the type of ways that you're working, because I work in quite an eclectic way. I think I'd find it quite challenging to support an assistant, sorry, I keep saying associate, an assistant psychologist at this point.

Starting point is 00:23:41 But I think most local authorities, people keep knocking on their doors I know there are issues around GDPR etc but um most local authorities will be open to having a discussion with somebody who is considering educational child psychology it is a bit more challenging to do shadowing if you like for a day because of safeguarding issues etc but um it's not impossible to do some work around an education psychology service but again that's changed so much and so much has changed since the pandemic so the way local authorities are set up so most of local authorities that I've worked in since the pandemic are working on a skeleton within the office really and people are very much just going in to pick

Starting point is 00:24:31 up their materials and then working at home really. So it's very different to when I first started out. So that might be a challenge for, you know, being able to shadow somebody. But I don't think it's impossible so it pretty much is very much about approaching the local authority and asking. I think it's important to say that the educational psychology role again has changed because there are so many people that are now leaving the training and becoming independent psychologists almost immediately. When I first started it was very much frowned upon because it felt that you needed to do your foundation within a psychology service. But that seems to be quite different now. So people are becoming independent much earlier on.

Starting point is 00:25:14 So there are different organisations out there, if you like, or groups of associates. So, again, it might be helpful for an aspiring psychologist to approach one of the many organisations that are out there, obviously ensuring that their psychologists are hcpc registered etc but um yeah because that you need to be you're a part of the practitioner psychologist cluster aren't you the same as clinical psychologists yeah so you need to be registered um with the health and care professions council they definitely added an extra p in there at some point, didn't they? It used to be shorter than that. Lovely. You mentioned Sagittariusness.

Starting point is 00:25:52 I'm a Gemini. It made me think about, you know, maybe that's why I like to have lots of things going on. But has spirituality, culture and faith been important to you in your journey as an aspiring psychologist and beyond, Michelle? Oh, I think absolutely. Very important. In fact, I think it's become more so. Obviously, sort of definitions of all the things that you've mentioned are very different for different people and mean different things. But I think my intention around life has certainly changed as I've developed experience and grown in my profession. I've always been a believer, you know, in God, et cetera. Although I've always found it quite challenging to find a specific space because, again, I'm quite eclectic with my thinking and my processes around belief. And quite early on in my career I

Starting point is 00:26:47 started to become curious about neuropsychology, the idea that you can you know sort of intend things if you like into your life, focus on you know focus your thoughts on the direction and the behavior seems to follow so I've been really interested in that type of research quite early on I changed an emotional freedom technique EFT tapping which I've always really enjoyed and always found really helpful so that's very much a stay of my practice at the moment and hypnotherapy which I know there's been it it's ranged, isn't it, in its popularity, I think, hypnotherapy. But again, it's been something that's been really helpful for me and I've promoted in my practice as well.

Starting point is 00:27:35 So I know that in NHS and funded LEA services, we can often have to kind of stick to nice guidance and kind of tried and trusted approaches that have got a firm evidence base and hypnotherapy is something that lots of clients ask for or you know inquire about but it's not necessarily registered or regulated or recognized by the NHS for example but does it free you up to use that more within private practice it does i think um again ensuring that that you you use correct cpd and training etc um i think things with hypnotherapy i think i'm a bit more comfortable in using an eft because the research is developing all of the time so there's quite even though it's it's a challenge because obviously it's not as conventional as other practices are it's helpful that there is

Starting point is 00:28:32 positive research you know out there in terms of outcomes for others and I do feel that sense of freedom of being able to use that um much more so than they probably would do if i was working entirely for a local authority yeah absolutely it you know it allows us to have the freedom when working in private practice to do what's going to work for that client um as long as it's ethically sound of course which of course i know it would be um lovely have you got any advice for people that might be listening to this that might think oh you know i think educational psychology might be a good route for me what could they what could they do or what should they do what would be a good first step for example if they

Starting point is 00:29:16 were i don't know a level students or if they were doing their psychology degree right now funny enough i just spoke to an a-level student who's thinking about um well psychology it wasn't necessarily educational psychology but I was saying to her get a good sense of what you're really interested in what is it that you would like to get out of your career you know um and I think we were speaking about that earlier the idea of connecting and connecting with people i think it's really important i would say secondly it's really really if i did my time again i think it would have been really important to get that shadowing in much earlier on and get a sense of what the job looks like on a day-to-day basis so knock on much more doors ask for that you know opportunity to do that um find out as much as you can about educational child psychology so it's not this kind of miss so i think sometimes i speak

Starting point is 00:30:15 to young people they think it's going to be um this sense of just um you know sitting with a child sometimes almost like psychotherapy and it's not like that at all so just getting a sense of what it looks like you know um a child in educational psychology and then familiarize yourself with that area familiarize yourself with schools get some experience so even though you don't have to be a teacher anymore you do have to have a show and understanding of the educational experience and the provision and educational provision so get some experience in those areas perfect thank you so much is there anything that i haven't asked you which you think i should have done or

Starting point is 00:30:56 might have been useful for me to ask so far that's an interesting question I think joy what do I enjoy about the role or do I enjoy it and what I would say is I do think it was the role and has been the role for me not the role sorry the topic psychology

Starting point is 00:31:20 as a heading I've always been interested in people and the mind etc um so it does bring me joy even in the most challenging moments I would say that I've enjoyed it as a profession you know that is such an important answer and it's something I do with clients quite often as we'll have a bit of a joy audit. You know, we'll look at which areas of our life we're getting joy from because it is supposed to be enjoyable, isn't it? If it's not feeling enjoyable, then it might be that it's, you know, it could be many reasons. It could be that you haven't got a good fit with your psychology supervisor. It could be that there's just too much work and you're being kind of consumed by it you

Starting point is 00:32:06 know it might not just be that it's you that's the problem it's worth looking at some other factors as well isn't it and with that in mind I often ask my guests if you've got any advice to support people from reducing burnout when they are aspiring psychologists what would be your top tips I would say when you diarize for the week you're writing your diary about what you're going to do for the week get an entrance something that's completely different you know and have that kind of um tea morning well-being morning well it's something that is included within that week because it can become really intense and I would say as an independent psychologist quite lonely as well so I often try and booking engaging times

Starting point is 00:32:55 with others so it's not just this kind of soul time on your own so yeah I think many many of our audience are probably working remotely as well, aren't they? So I know remote working can also foster that feeling. And yeah, I do what you say, really, you know, I book lunch and brunch dates, you know, I connect with people through the podcast, and more widely as well. But being connected to something, you know, that's not just you sitting yeah yourself tapping away is really lovely thank you so much for joining me Michelle it's been an absolute pleasure to speak with you how could people get in contact with you if they wanted to to to send referrals your way or learn more about your work um I've been a bit naff on social media i have to say but i do have a linkedin page and i have a facebook page both the same name dr michelle mcdowell on linkedin so what i will do is i will make sure i pop links to your socials um and your website or whatever you need in the show notes for this episode but thank you so much for um you know opening our eyes to this really important

Starting point is 00:34:06 area of psychology which is education and child psychology and yeah let us know if we can do anything for you or with you in future and thank you thank you thank you thank you so much for listening i hope you found everything that dr mich Michelle and I had to say really useful. If you'd like to read Michelle's story and for that matter, lots and lots of other qualified psychologists stories, including, of course, clinical psychology, but also including health psychology, counseling psychology, forensic psychology and academic routes into psychology, you can most definitely do so by checking out the Clinical Psychologist Collective book, which you can grab from Amazon or for ease, you can click on the link in the show notes. Don't forget that the Aspiring Psychologist membership is opening just for another 15 people

Starting point is 00:35:06 on the 1st of July so get yourself on that waiting list and then you can swoop in there as soon as it opens at 8am on the 1st of July and that's just £30 a month and there is a ton of value in there even for you to catch up but each month we have um a live group zoom with myself where we did go through professional and personal issues there is um live cbt teaching and formulation sessions we've got stuff coming up on research we've got um trainings that go in every month. There's opportunities each week to ask me anything you like. And so it's a really great resource and there's a really nice community spirit in there. People are really supportive and kind. So if you feel like you're missing your tribe or you haven't yet stumbled across them or it's feeling a bit lonely or you're not receiving you know quality clinical supervision

Starting point is 00:36:08 perhaps you're just not with someone who you think gets you or is furthering your skills then why not come and top that up so that you can get the optimal experiences from your from your occupational employment. Yes right I hope you have enjoyed today's episode and I will look forward to catching up with you very soon for the next time our podcast pops in, because you should be subscribed really, at 6am every Monday. And don't forget, you can always catch up on all of the replays, which are available through your usual podcast channels. But you know, Spotify, Apple, Google, Amazon, all those good places. So do listen to the back catalogue. And I will be along with the next episode very soon. Take care. Have a lovely day. If you're looking to become a psychologist, then let this be your guide.

Starting point is 00:37:09 With this podcast at your side, you'll be on your way to being qualified. It's the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast with Dr. Marianne Trent My name's Jana and I'm a trainee psychological wellbeing practitioner. I read the Clinical Psychologist Collective book. I found it really interesting about all the different stories and how people got to become a clinical psychologist. It just amazed me how many different routes there are to get there and there's no perfect way to become one and this kind of filled me with confidence that no I'm not doing it wrong and put less pressure on myself. So if you're feeling a bit uneasy about becoming a clinical psychologist I'd definitely recommend this just to put yourself at ease and everything will be okay. But trust me you will not put the

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The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Educational & Child Psychology and working in Education Settings with Dr Michele McDowell

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