The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - HCPC Audit Survival Guide: What Psychologists Need to Know

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

What happens during an HCPC CPD audit and how do you pass it with confidence? In this episode of The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast, clinical psychologist Dr Carly Pointon joins Dr Marianne Trent to explain the CPD audit process for psychologists regulated by the HCPC. Learn what documents to include in your portfolio, how long you have to respond, and what the HCPC is really looking for in your submission.Whether you’re a newly qualified psychologist, in independent practice, or just want to feel audit-ready, this episode offers practical advice, reflection tips, and emotional reassurance.From CPD folders and supervision notes to writing effective reflections and avoiding common mistakes, this guide will help you survive and pass an HCPC audit without the panic. #hcpc #cpd Highlights00:00 – Introduction02:21 – What is an HCPC audit and how common is it?04:20 – Who gets chosen and how are they notified?06:05 – How Carley felt when she was selected for audit07:45 – CPD folders: what’s inside and how to keep track10:30 – Examples of CPD: supervision, podcast learning, conferences13:12 – What the HCPC is looking for in your submission15:50 – How long do you have to prepare and submit?17:25 – Reflective writing tips for CPD evidence19:30 – Can you fail the audit? What happens if you do?21:05 – How Carley organised her submission (and survived!)23:10 – Top tips for staying on top of CPD throughout the year25:15 – Final words of reassurance and encouragementLinks:Connect with Dr Carly: 📲 https://www.facebook.com/PointonPsychology. https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-carly-louise-pointon-35574915a/ 🫶 To support me by donating to help cover my costs for the free resources I provide click here: https://the-aspiring-psychologist.captivate.fm/support📚 To check out The Clinical Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3jOplx0 📖 To check out The Aspiring Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3CP2N97 💡 To check out or join the aspiring psychologist membership for just £30 per month head to: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/membership-interested🖥️ Check out my brand new short courses for aspiring psychologists and mental health professionals here: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/short-courses✍️ Get your Supervision Shaping Tool now: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/supervision📱Connect socially with Marianne and check out ways to work with her, including the Aspiring Psychologist Book, Clinical Psychologist book and The Aspiring Psychologist Membership on her Link tree: https://linktr.ee/drmariannetrent💬 To join my free Facebook group and discuss your thoughts on this episode and more:

My name is Yana 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 book down once you start. Continuing professional development. We all know we should be doing it, but what happens when the HCPC

actually checks? Today we are giving you the lowdown, the real truth on CPD audits and what to expect. Hope you find it so useful. Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. I am Dr. Marianne, a qualified clinical psychologist. Now when it comes to continuing professional development, we ought to be keeping records for all stages of our career because it can be really useful at times of appraisal when you need to review your performance or perhaps even feed into reviewing somebody else's performance as well. But once we advance to becoming qualified,

it means that in order to keep up our HCPC registration, that we need to be logging and potentially able to evidence the continuing professional development, the CPD that we are doing. This is not something we've covered in the podcast yet. And I do think that everybody at every stage of their career working towards a regulated profession will find this a really eye-opening episode. I do hope that's the case. If you do find it helpful please do drop me a like,

drop me a comment and subscribe to the channel wherever you get your podcasts for more. Thank you so much. I'll see you on the other side. Hi, just want to welcome along our guest for today, Dr. Carly Poynton. Hi Carly. Hi Mary Ann, nice to see you. Lovely to see you too. And thank you so much for coming and speaking to our audience about this very important topic because I know it's been a bit stressful at times for you too. Yeah, absolutely and unexpected but I knew it would come at some point. Yeah, so tell us then for those who, we've got people listening to this podcast or watching this on YouTube, all different stages of their career,

so some may already know what an HCPCPD audit is, others may not. Could you give us a little bit of an overview about that please, Carly? Absolutely, yeah. So every couple of years when registration comes around, the HCPC choose, I think it's 2.5% of the registrants to randomly select 2.5% of them to audit and that involves choosing registrants to look at their continuing professional development. So you have to provide evidence of what you've been doing over a two-year period and obviously we'll go into a little bit more detail as we talk but essentially you have to show two years of records and you have to do a little bit more of a deep dive on four to six pieces of CPD from those two years. Provide that back to the HCPC within a certain time frame,

three months, in a particular style of evidence and of written reflection as well as a sort of chronological record around the work that you do. And it has to be against the standards that the HCPC expect to see. So it's something that you know you have to do and you should be keeping records. But when you get asked to do it, it can be quite a daunting experience because whilst we all develop as we go through our work, we don't necessarily reflect on it in the depth that the ACPC needs to see to ensure that you're continuing to develop and you're doing that for your benefit and the benefit of your clients that you work with. Okay, yeah, this does sound quite involved. I'm yet to be called, but I understand that when we get that call to re-register, and you've got to do that within a set window,

otherwise you get unregistered. So for anyone who is already HCPC regulated, look out for that email. Because I don't think they send you a letter anymore. It's literally like an email. You've got to catch it and you've got to do it within a certain timeframe. So you log in to your HCPC login portal. And is it at that stage that you realise you've been one of the lucky 2.5%? So, yeah, so what happened with me was I noticed that probably like yourself, so I'm part of quite a few Facebook groups, one of them being the UK Psychologists in Private Practice group, and somebody had mentioned that they had been chosen and

they said that on the breakdown of registration, the registration page, that their audit section was in red. So they hadn't received an email to say that they were going to be audited but their section was just in red so they assumed they might be. Whereas a couple of other people have commented underneath and said, No, I have received an email asking me to do the audit. So this alarm bell went off in my head because I've been qualified nearly 11 years. And I thought, even though it's supposed to be random, I just thought, oh, I just feel like

fate might be it might be my turn. So I logged on to register and the section was in red, but I hadn't received an email either. And then lo and behold, a few days later, I just I did receive the email. So lots of people had the same sort of thing had happened for them. And funny enough, I supervised somebody in New Zealand. And she was a trainee of mine a good few years ago. and she had been asked to do her CPD in New Zealand at the same time.

Just as a funny fact, in New Zealand, you can't re-register until you've given your CPD in. So actually, for all the psychologists that live over here in the UK, we've actually got a better deal because we can re-register and stay registered while we do our CPD, whereas in New Zealand you have to put your registration in and then you get your registration back. So we actually have a slightly better deal, so it takes the pressure off. So you can go on the register, you can put your registration in and then you put your CPD in by the end of May. So it's slightly less pressurised, to be honest,

Mary-Anne, than I thought it was going to be for that purpose. Yeah, because obviously when we're in private practice, and if you haven't got your registration, you potentially can't work, you can't earn any money. So I'm very glad for the UK system in that regard. This might sound like a silly question, but what counts as CPD for a qualified psychologist? So it's quite broad and varied. I mean, I did know, you know, I knew that things like reading journals, going to conferences, attending formal training courses, you know, those things are obvious, aren't they? You know, those are the things that spring to mind. And when you support assistant psychologists and trainees, and your peers, if you're a line manager as well, those things are

obvious, aren't they? If you've supervised and managed people over time. If you're newly qualified, and perhaps you're starting out in your career, maybe some of the more subtle things might not be as obvious. Things like developing a new presentation or a training course, going through your personal development plan with your line manager, or going to a reflective practice session and talking things through with your peers and being able to write that up. Those things might not seem as obvious. When I went through my two years, and obviously going to clinical supervision, actually those discussions that you have are continuous professional development. I think people jump to the first most obvious thing,

like attending a course, and think that you've got to have a big long list of courses that you've attended, and actually it isn't. And what the HCPC do is they give you the categories of educational type work, you know, CPD that you can provide, formal, informal, indirect type of CPD, but also voluntary, you know, voluntary work that you can do, things that will help to support to show that you're growing in your role, but also what benefits you and what benefits

in the ACPC they talk about service users. So not everybody uses service user, that term in their work, but service user can be both clients, so patients, etc. But also it can mean the staff, the staff that you work with. So if for example, you've done a course or read an article or done some reflection that benefits your staff team, then that can then actually count as CPD as well. So there's a whole range of things that you can do that all counts as CPD. Okay, so it's very diverse. And actually, it's not always things that need to have formal CPD points. This can be kind of listening to podcast episodes and reading books and you know, things that might not have that CPD accreditation per se. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I took up a piece of work. Mine were quite broad and varied. So I had, I did attend a conference with lots of peers and some steamy colleagues and was

lucky to listen to a talk by Francesca Happey about autism girls. But then on the other end of scale, I'd done some reading around grief and I feel a bit silly now because I've got the name dropped, but I've read the Grief Collective and things like that. I absolutely had before I knew I was going to be recording this, obviously, because it was last year, but it was a new piece of work for me. So I'd gone to people that I, you know, psychologists that I knew and I'd gone through charities that deal with adolescents that have lost relatives to support me with that piece of work because it was a one-to-one young person I was working with. And I obviously did a

lot of reading around that because it was the first time that I'd worked with a young person who had lost relatives, very close relative during the work that I was completing. And so I used I used that, you know, as as evidence of CPD. And also the feedback that I received from the family as evidence of CPD, CPD for my reflection afterwards when the work came to an end. And so those two parts of that reflection as evidence and that was done, that's part

of what they submitted when I put the evidence in. Okay, so it's so important you can use feedback to kind of demonstrate that you are kind of professionally developed and competent. That's really interesting to know. And I really, you know, I didn't know that you'd read The Grief Collective, but I hope that was really helpful in you getting on board

with kind of different people's experience of grief, actually, and how it plays out for people, for different griefs across their lives. So, yeah, I'm really heartened to hear that you've read that. Thank you. You're welcome. And I'd actually forgotten, I had forgotten that I'd put that in. And when you asked me about this, and it's funny, isn't it, that you forget the things that you, and you do forget the things that you've done. And I think that's a really, really good point. I have become a bit of a pain to the assistants and the new trainee that I've just started supervising because, you know, recording things is really important. But I was absolutely so grateful.

It sounds really strange to LinkedIn as a system because where I had forgotten some of things that I'd done and not done records as probably as detailed as I should have done for the last couple of years because I've had a really busy time, I went back through my LinkedIn profile. And what that actually captured was more personal reflections on days, things that I'd done, and more personal, you know, photographs, for example. So I used social media where I'd shared things. And actually I could see things and how I'd felt on the day about those experiences that I've had, days that I'd been to, conferences that I'd been to. So I had my professional records, I had my diary, and I had receipts of conferences that I'd been to. And I had my CPD record

of this was when I did supervision and these were my supervision records. But actually I found that my LinkedIn record also said, oh, this is where I went on this day. And this was how I felt about it. This is how excited I was. So that enabled me to do the reflective pieces for those four to six actual CPD that you need to write reflective pieces on, because that's where you need the much deeper evidence of. So that's what I've been saying to the people that I supervise at the moment is it's the reflective pieces that you have to go to town on. Okay. So yeah, like you're almost having to go forensic accounting on your own life, and I'm guessing they give you the two-year window, are they, that you need to span? Yes. I chose to spread mine out, but they weren't specific about that, to be fair. They

didn't say that it has to be across the two years. There's a webinar that you can attend. They'd offered that back in March, and that counts as CPD as well, the webinar itself. If you can't go to the scheduled one, it's recorded and you can watch that back. And it was really, really good. So I'm quite a visual learner. I'm not very, I don't like to be given a great big document and just wade through that myself. There's a lot of help on the website, but I actually found it really useful to sit and watch the video. And the lady that talks you through that, it's really straightforward and she explains things really well. And she puts the slides up and she talks through what the expectations are, this is what the assessors will be looking for and I found that useful and I would recommend that anybody who finds

themselves in this position does that first. Don't start writing and then do it after a month, do it at the beginning and look at the examples. So there are examples on the website of your peers that have a very early career, medium, mid-term, mid-seniority, senior, and for psychologists. And they recommend looking at other types of professions as well, if you've got the time. And that was really useful I found. For layouts to see how the people have represented themselves in their CPD records. Okay, so that's good to know you're not on your own. You're not just kind of flung under the bus and like get on with it. There is, there is support around that is really useful to know. The way that I kind of keep a log of my CPD is I use my

because I'm in private practice, I use my clinical notes software which is called WriteUp and I add a patient in called Continuous Professional Development and I try to kind of add notes and kind of use the calendar function of that to add that. But definitely speaking to you is gonna make me more mindful about perhaps adding a bit more of a reflection in rather than just a date and a thing, because actually I hadn't realised that I might need to go deeper on this for specific things. I thought I was literally just ticking off what I'd done.

Yeah, so over the last year I did a course which was about building your career. It was a year-long course actually, as it's one of my examples. And within that course, the lady that ran the course, she encourages you to look at achievements and to record those. So I've used one of her spreadsheets recently. There is also an online system and the name of it escapes me, but I'm thinking about it quite a lot. It's in the UK's private psychologist page

and the path we can ensure that we could give that to your listeners, the name of the online recording system. What I did was the spreadsheet that I set up rather than it just having the recording on, because I used to just keep mine as a list. I hadn't thought about using WriteUp actually. I've only been using WriteUp for about six months. But the spreadsheet that I use now

has different tabs across the bottom. So it has one for my achievements that I sort of just almost a snapshot of achievements that things that I feel that are, um, stick with the categories that the CPD, the HCPD request, one for feedback. So if I do get an email or I do get a piece of feedback, just said to me very, very cool about that. And then one for the record. so it has the record on it so I can connect

them together because it was the practical aspect, collating the evidence, making sure that it's in the right format etc for the HCPC. The week before I submitted I calculated that I spent 30 hours in the week before I submitted on admin formatting and tweaking the document that I sent in. So that wasn't even the hours in the month before on actually getting it. So I didn't calculate the host. That was on making sure I put things in the right order, making sure that it's right and redacting. So you have to make sure things aren't identifiable, obviously, and that they're anonymous. And for those people that are working full-time, obviously, you've got to find the extra time. But those that work in private practice, 30 hours is a lot of time. And when

you've got families, etc., and even if you haven't got families, it's 30 hours is still a lot of time in an extra week. I had a really nice one. I can't remember the days before I submitted, just sitting there making sure it was right. And the other thing that the lady did say who did the webinar was that if the assessor can't make sense to evidence, because you have to connect things together, and they have to go in on separate documents, you can't just put them all in one. So if they can't connect things together, it's really tricky for them to understand which document links to the other. So I was wanting to be really sure that it's clear. Yeah, okay. And that was going to be my next question, really, how many hours has this taken? But you've beautifully answered that within your

within your kind of answer anyway, like that. And that's, you know, for me in private practice, that's 30 hours of unpaid work, you work. I guess it's factoring that in. And do you think with hindsight, you could have done your regular recordings better to speed that up? Or do you think it's always gonna be a very involved process, Carly? I think as a senior leader, historically,

so I did five years as a senior leader on really large teams. And I think that as you re-work your way up the ladder, you can become slightly more, I think you know that you achieve your CPD through development because you're doing personal development plans, courses, you go to conferences.

As a psychologist, you are training and ensuring other people are receiving their CPD and you're ticking it off with the line manager. But, and you know, as a psychologist, it's incredibly important. I think we're very good at knowing we have to train and develop. I mean, keep a list. We attend our supervision because it's strummed into us in training, how important that is, and especially reflective practice. I think we know it's there.

But to show that as evidence, to show it to the right level, particularly the part around standards. So the standards say that there should be a continuous record, but it should show a variety of evidence and it should the three and four kind of cover. It should benefit the service users and it should, three and four kind of cover, it should benefit the service users and it should benefit us, our quality of practice. And I think that is the bit that's more tricky because I've got to write it in such a way that it's synced, but still is at a high enough quality to show how it's reflected. And I think that's the

bit where I wanted to choose the right evidence. So I had to do all of my records were adequate enough to demonstrate my skills and abilities from the last two years and then choose ones to write about. So it did change my mind probably about six times to understand which ones to write about. And that was the bit that took the time, Marianne, to be honest. So I wrote a couple and then discarded them. And I don't know if that's because I'm a psychologist and I was procrastinating about getting it right, or whether it was because I am the sort of person

that thinks like an assessor, because obviously I've worked with, for years I've worked with for years I've worked and a lot of other people so I helped trainees to get on courses you know help them with their development. I've been a trainer myself. I read a lot of comments on Facebook which was from people saying don't overthink it because you know they've done theirs quite simplistically and still passed. So I did in the end, I was quite strict to myself and thought it can be good enough. Because the one thing I wanted to say to your listeners today was that the lady who ran the talk said that if the assessors aren't happy, they will come back to you and they will talk it through with you and say, this is what's missing and here is your second chance and so please don't worry that you are just

going to be suddenly struck off the register if there's something missing and that was really reassuring and it's not she wasn't completely free-range just to hand anything in I think we've got to take it seriously, the audit. But she was very clear that if for some reason we can't quite hit the mark, there is a second and she intimated a third opportunity to get it right if we haven't quite understood the process. So when I got to sort of my third and fourth pieces, I was thinking, is this the right one? Is this the right one? And so I, you know, I thought don't overthink it, put it in and if that's what an obvious evidence I've got some in the bag to hand them if I haven't got it quite right.

Okay, that really is reassuring to know that it's not a first first strike and out situation. Do you have a sense of the people that are reviewing what you submit? Are they fellow HCPC registered professionals? Are they trained administrators? Who is it that's determining whether we are enough? So we were reassured that at least one of the assessors would be of the same profession as us, which I thought I actually I hadn't expected that answer. I think it was in a Q&A actually at the end of the webinar that I think somebody asked that if my memory serves me correctly, but it was definitely stated and I wasn't precious about who it was, but I thought that was actually really interesting and useful to know because that was what I was

writing. I'm quite a plain speaking person, but know because as I was writing I'm quite a plain speaking person but I actually as I was writing I was thinking I reduced down because I have word limits which is good. I think the tendency to write far too much and I had to reduce down some of my explanations and I felt like I was missing a couple of things out, but I had to limit. And I thought, right, I've missed this out because of the word limit, but hopefully somebody is reading it within the professional understand

with these emissions, why, what I mean here. So I felt reassured by that, absolutely. And also the time scale, you know, I just thought, once it's gone in, you've just got to get it out because it does say on the email, it might take eight to 12 weeks to come back to you, which is a lot of time.

It is, but I think people have been hearing back with it around about a month, but I think those people had handed it in early. So I do wonder if the eight to 12 weeks is closer to the submission date. I handed mine in a little bit early, but not massively. So I'm kind of thinking it's in, I forget about it now, and just wait and see. Wait and see and do keep us posted and we can give a little update to people.

We have another, there's a little two part special on on HCPC actually and this is the second of those episodes. We've also had a chat with Nick who's a legal supporter who helped people navigate the HCPC complaints process. So if anyone watching or listening to this is like, oh that would be an interesting watch or listen, please do look out for that one as well. Carly, this has been so eye-opening and, you know, if you could offer one piece of advice to someone, what would it be? Actually, I didn't, and I didn't mention, I talked mine through with my supervisor.

So I'm lucky to be supervised by Professor Helen Dent. She's been a colleague and a peer for many years. I met Helen during my clinical training and I think the benefits of speaking to someone who knows you well and also knows your work is you can be very honest and open with them about both your feelings about the process because nobody has the time to suddenly just drop everything and add something in that takes so much time. It was a 30 hours around all the adding and the flattening and the agonizing. But it was also the early weeks of putting the information, writing about that. But talking to you in a course supervisor about it was really, really useful. And Helen

herself had been through it as well. So she gave absolute words of wisdom. Helen's retired now, so she's been there and done that. And I found that really, really helpful. And also just being honest with people that I was worried, nervous, even though I kind of knew what I needed to do, just being, you know, sharing with peers. I put a funny post on when I'd finished and just seeing people's comments underneath made me laugh and made me realise that other people were in the second position and that made me feel better. So I didn't feel alone, which was really important. Really important and it's also led us to talking together today as well,

because I thought that's something we've not spoken about for the podcast. It would be so useful for everybody, whatever stage of their career they're at. Do you have a sense of where the lightning can strike twice? So, you know, I very much hope that you will get the green tick and everything will go forward okay. Are you put back into the same pool of 100% next year or next registration time or do you get kind of a, do you get a little few years out? Apparently not. Apparently, everybody, yeah, everyone can absolutely be chosen again. So I have heard from a few people here and there that were picked up in two years time again. So yes, I guess that is the whole definition of the word random at the end.

Yeah, indeed. So not like the Hunger Games where if you survive the Hunger Games, you don't get reaped again. Like this, you could get called again in two years, but hopefully it will be a smoother process because you'll know exactly what the expectations are. But I hope that anyone who's listened or watched this episode will find it a smoother process, because hopefully it will really help them to think about what they need to be recording. Perhaps they keep a CPD log

so they can easily go to the kind of things. Like I said, I use WriteUp. I know that Dr. Deborah Kingston recommends a spreadsheet that you, I think it is kind of a spreadsheet, but I think you pay a monthly fee for that. So I will get the details of that. But if anyone wants to get a bit of a demo about how WriteUp works and how I use that for my CPT and how I use that for my clients, obviously I won't show you my client identifiable data, please do let me know. Carly, thank you so much for your time. Like I said, please do keep us posted with the outcome of your audit. And thanks for being so willing to share your knowledge,

skills and expertise with our audience. If people want to know more about you, where's the best place for them to head to? So my practice point in psychology is on LinkedIn on there under Dr. Carly Pointnton and I do have a Facebook page as well which is Poynton Psychology. Amazing. I will make sure that those links are on screen and they are in the description and show notes as well. Thank you so much for your time and I will look forward to catching up with you at some point in the future. You're welcome. Lovely speaking to you. Take care.

Thank you. What a super useful episode that was and a lovely chat with Carly. We did have some sound and connection issues at times, but I'm very much hoping that ultimately the uploaded episode has done the trick and that it was possible to work out everything we were saying at the right time. If you found this episode helpful, please do drop me a like, please do drop me a comment. Please do engage with one another in the comments on YouTube as well. Let's support each other. Let's raise people up. Let's really make this a wonderful community to be part of. Carly mentioned my book, The Grief Collective, Stories of Life, Loss and Learning to Heal in the episode. And if you would like to get a hold of that, you can click the link in my bio or in the description

or on the show notes. But it's a really nice way of learning about grief, especially if you don't have that personal resonance with grief yourself as well. I was talking to a Sun journalist today about grief and trauma. Grief is around us all the time and having an awareness of it can be so important so that we're better able to understand ourselves,

our friends, our family and our clients. So please do check that out. I also mentioned WriteUp in there. If you'd welcome a free two-week trial to check Write up out yourself. Please do check the link in the description or contact me by sending me a DM and we can sort you out at not just the free two week trial but a demo with me and I can show you how I record my CPD but also how I use it to organise my clinic and make it run so much more smoothly. The kindest thing you can do for any podcaster

that you rate is to subscribe or follow their show. So please do that for me if you do enjoy the content that I create and the guests that I bring on, the more engagement we get, the better and better guests we get too. If you are an aspiring psych, please do come and join my free Facebook group, The Aspiring Psychologist Community with Dr. Marianne Trent. If it's your time and you're ready for the next step in your career, please do consider the Aspiring Psychologist membership and for that more bespoke touch, the Ready to Rise Program,

which I'm very excited about and having some lovely one-to-one sessions with people for two. My name is Diakolo La Amujo. I am a recent psychology graduate from Ireland. I am also an aspiring clinical psychologist. Dr. Marion's book, The Clinical Psychologist Collective has been so helpful to me on this journey to becoming a clinical psychologist. As I plan to continue postgraduate studies in the UK, I found it extremely useful that this book provided in-depth information on the UKD Clean Side Application process. I enjoyed reading about the experiences of both qualified and trainee clinical psychologists. The various narratives were my favorite part of the book as

everyone's story was different and it provided amazing insights into the clinical psychology journey. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in psychology and aspires to become a clinical psychologist.