The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - What is a mental health and wellbeing practitioner? (MHWP)

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode 115: What is a mental health and wellbeing practitioner? Thank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. In this episode of the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast, Dr. Marianne Trent interviews Harriet Barnes, a qualified mental health and wellbeing practitioner. They discuss the role of a mental health and wellbeing practitioner, the training involved, and the potential career opportunities. Harriet shares her background and how she transitioned from being a teacher to a mental health and wellbeing practitioner. She also talks about the training process, including assignments and assessments. Harriet emphasizes the importance of rapport-building and the transferable skills she gained from her previous career. They also discuss the potential for progression within the role, such as becoming a senior mental health and wellbeing practitioner. Harriet highlights the need for support and supervision in the field and suggests ways to reduce burnout, such as staying curious and seeking out different perspectives. The episode concludes with a discussion about graduation and the future of the mental health and wellbeing practitioner role.We hope you find it so useful.I’d love any feedback you might have, and I’d love to know what your offers are and to be connected with you on socials so I can help you to celebrate your wins!The Highlights: 01:30: Introduction to the role of Mental Health and Wellbeing Practitioner.04:15: Overview of the training and qualification process.08:45: Importance of peer support and validation in the role.11:20: Comparison between different types of support received.14:50: Discussion about the role of senior mental health and wellbeing practitioners.18:30: Potential scope of the role across various mental health services.23:54: Emphasising the value of peer support in the workplace.25:13: Explanation of the role of mental health and wellbeing practitioners.29:46: Reflections on career transitions and leaving teaching for mental health work.34:37: Advice on staying curious and engaged in the field.37:56: Gradual transition from teaching to mental health work.42:30: Emotional reflection on the impact of the podcast on listeners and clinicians.Links:🖥️ Check out my brand new short courses for aspiring psychologists and mental health professionals here: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/short-courses🫶 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✍️ 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...

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,

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. Coming up in today's episode, we are introduced to the new kid on the block. We're

looking at the role of mental health and wellbeing practitioner. What is it? How can you train as it? What does it involve? I'm joined by a brand new qualified mental health wellbeing practitioner called Harriet. Hope you will find it so useful it may just lead to your future career. Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. I'm Dr Marianne Trent and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. Now the route to becoming a qualified psychologist, whichever you prefer, may well involve different jobs, different roles, different transitions. Or, of course, we may choose to stop at any of the stages before and without progressing to qualified psychologist status. Today's guest contacted me to ask if I'd heard of this brand new kid on the block, which is called mental health and wellbeing practitioner. I hadn't, but I was very interested to learn more. So I've invited her on and we're going to learn together. So I hope you find this

so useful. I will look forward to catching you on the other side. Hi, just want to welcome along Harriet Barnes to the podcast. Hi, Harriet. Hello. Thank you so much for reaching out to me to help us learn more about the new role, but also the role that you are doing, which is the mental health and wellbeing practitioner. Yes, yeah, that's right. Thank you for having me. That's all right.

I love being able to help illuminate new career options. So this sounds like a really viable job and potentially career for somebody it to be a psychology degree necessarily. So one element of the role is that it's encouraging people into a psychological profession or having the ability to provide psychologically informed interventions. So that's quite important to acknowledge that they're informed from lots of different backgrounds because they're quite keen to understandably sort of diversify the number and type of people offering psychology so a lot of people on in the role that I'm aware of do have a psychology degree but not everybody and it's certainly not a requirement when I applied at least. Great thanks for clarifying that did you do a psychology degree? I did yes yes so if. So if you want to know a tiny bit about my background, because it's everybody's backgrounds are so varied. It's not an example of a perfect what you would need, but just so you can have an understanding.

So I did my psychology degree and then I went to work in education. So I worked as an A-level psychology teacher and a few other roles around that for 15 years and alongside that I did my teaching master's and also a master's in psychological research and then took a few other roles just for a year or two because I wanted to kind of have an experience outside of education working with asylum seekers, working at a university so so not really out of education, but a different type of education, and then applied for this role, which has training attached to it as well. So since I applied, I've completed my mental health and wellbeing practitioner training. Gosh, amazing. So you're a fully qualified teacher with years and years

of experience. I think what I really like about psychology careers or about careers generally is that if you kind of have different careers like a series of them you don't just stop bringing the stuff from your previous career you know you're able to almost integrate and formulate whatever you're doing with the people you're working with the knowledge you bring forward you don't stop being an a-level teacher do you you know you bring that with you and that enhances your role and I think it's clear that you're not doing a-level teaching but all the skills all of the kind of engagement the brilliant way you'll have engaged your pupils over the years you know and how to stop them being rowdy I'm sure it's useful you bring that with you. Yeah, absolutely. I didn't expect, and it sort of seems silly now looking back, but at the time,

I sort of thought, this is, I almost felt like I was going into something completely brand new in the same way as I was when I first went into teaching. So, you know, first started my career, I thought, gosh, I'm really starting right from the beginning again. And in some ways, I was, absolutely. It's a new environment. It's getting used to working within different systems within the NHS, just like you would in any, you know, changing any kind of organisation and sort of more of a focus on risk because of the client group that the MHWP role works with. But actually, unexpectedly, a lot of the skills, because as much as I've taught in groups all my interventions are one-to-one and I have actually done one-to-one teaching as well in A-levels and you're absolutely

right I kind of I have to be very mindful because I don't to be a fully a teacher wouldn't be appropriate in a psychological intervention but a lot of the skills like being able to pick up if somebody's saying they've got an example but maybe they haven't or if they're if they're drifting off and losing engagement how to bring them back and sort of just knowing how to communicate sort of psychological concepts to somebody in an accessible way yeah definitely a lot more of the skills than I realized were transferable and I think that was the case for a lot of people on my course with their different backgrounds whatever they were that they found a lot of the skills they developed just through life and through having any kind of career was really valuable

yeah and of course it's making me think about the transactional analysis of how we kind of interact with each other and I don't know if that's anything you're familiar with but there's three circles sort of stacked one on top of the other and I think it's parent teacher child and it's making sure that we know at any one time which role we're in. So at the moment, if this is something you're not familiar with or our audience is not familiar with, you know, I'm doing the teaching. But it's useful in arguments when we realise sometimes me and my 10-year-old are both stuck in child. And that doesn't help an argument to kind of come to a nice amicable end. So just being able to sometimes in the moment be able to just observe where we're at.

And I'm not a transactional analysis expert there. So if anyone's like, look, that's entirely wrong. What I know I am right about is there's three circles and we need to look at where we're at. So if anyone wants to come on and discuss that, because I've got got it all horrendously wrong please do feel free. So what happened then did you were you already working in a role and then you heard about the MHWP or you saw it advertised how did that unfold for you? Yeah so I was working in a role in teaching and also working for a charity as well part-time um and about a year after I'd finished my full-time teach a level psychology teaching role um and it was always

something I'd wanted to do but decided now was the right time so just started to look um for job adverts so not too many tips in terms of finding them, but they're definitely out there just on the NHS. It was the NHS jobs track website. I came across, I'm trying to think what search terms I use, because at the time I didn't actually know the role existed. It's a very new role. I was in the second cohort, the first cohort of people recruited across the country. I haven't even been qualified a year yet so it was very new when I was looking at it in the summer of 2022 so I just used lots of different search

terms and I think I guess for me it was just being open-minded so it could have perhaps been an assistant psychology role I was looking at or a psychological well-being practitioner role and then when I saw this one I was just open-minded to this one possibly being one that I'd be interested in as well. Amazing I know when I was looking for roles I used to just literally sometimes search through all of the band four and five jobs within 30 miles of my house just to see if there was anything that would use my skills that I could apply for so I think yeah just getting a bit crafty with your search terms is a really good idea is it a funded role to train yes yeah so it's um when I applied for it was called a trainee mental health and well-being

practitioner role um so it came with um a year of training that was funded by the service. And then once you were in service, you remain with it. So you train the service that you train in, the team that I trained in. Once I then had qualified, I moved from a band four to a band five and remained within that team as a permanent member of the team. So that's quite nice. I think that's quite different speaking to the nurses in the community mental health team. Once they qualify, like lots of roles, they then have to look for a job. So there's the stress of qualifying, doing all the hard work,

and then on top of that, not necessarily knowing straight away where you'll work. So that's a really nice thing about this role. You do a year of funded training and working in the service at the same time. So you're building the relationship, starting to cement where the role fits within the team. And then once you're qualified, if anything, whilst it's new, because then you're qualified and your responsibilities change slightly. It's the relief of just working in service and not having to do any of the training, which is quite nice. Yeah, ideal. So it's the service that I've identified.

There's a gap in the market for this role. We will train the person, get to know them, and then almost like a preceptorship, then you graduate and you become your band five qualified MHWP. Are there assignments and things to do along the way as well, Harriet? Yeah, so I started the training in November 2022. Yes, yes. And there are three modules in it. So it varies, but generally it's about two or three days out of your role is on training. And my training was online and I would assume that most with a university and I'd

assume that most post would be online because our university covered a huge area geographically so I think realistically that's what most universities would also do. There were three modules. The first module had an assignment and something called an OSCE attached to it and focused on assessing people with. And this is a phrase that's used in the course because it's connected to the role and why it exists for working with people with severe mental health needs compared to IAPT or perhaps as they're called now, talking therapies, a mild to moderate mental health needs. This role is aimed more at people with what they call severe mental health needs or complex mental health needs. And so the first module is assessing.

So coming in and we learn things like the five Ps formulation, how to build a relationship with someone, a rapport, how to assess risk, how to develop that formulation. The second module is around care planning and that has an assignment and a reflective essay attached to it and that's about how to, as the module suggests, how to plan somebody's care. So how to kind of think about ensuring that all of the needs are met in the most appropriate way, enjoy the most, is looking at the interventions that we offer. And that's the same thing. It's an assignment

and then something called an OSCE. And both of the assignments, both in module one and module three, are case studies. So you work with a particular person and then anonymously write up a case study about how you either assess them if it's module one or how you provided a psychological intervention if it was module three and OSCEs essentially and and the way role plays so they the way they did them is I know they've changed they're slightly different now but the way that mine was done is they had um they hired uh people with lived experience of mental health needs to um play the role of a service user or a patient um and then they watched us live as and recorded us as we provided um in the first one we provided

an assessment session and in the second OSCE we provided a psychological intervention which they chose for us which was our confidence building one. I think that's changed now. I guess it all depends how you feel about OSCEs and how things work. I think they've changed it to try and make it a little less stressful in that you can now record it with someone else, another member of staff in the team as the service user or if you have a service user, you can ask them to do it so you don't have the pressure of knowing there's a third person right there in the moment live listening to you and judging you. Although that sounds really scary,

I found actually that they were really supportive. They're really keen for you to achieve everything that you need to and understand everything you need to but they are really keen to support you to to pass they want you to pass they're not there to make your life difficult or or sort of hide what the assessment criteria is and they're as supportive as possible so it wasn't as scary as it quite sounded amazing thank you that's so illuminating and it's also made me reflect upon my first ever assignment as a trainee clinical psychologist which was a role plays we were divided into groups of three i think one of us was doing filming one of us was doing the talking and then one of us was a patient um and then it was service users

who rated what they thought about us i think there was three service users rated each of our videos and it felt mortifying you know i think anybody who's going to train the mental health role is going to need to be able to tolerate their distress at the idea there will be role plays you know and that there may well be feedback on those role plays and we just need to kind of hold notice that distress but then being able to tune into the feedback and you know in my case it was it was good you know I remember one piece of feedback from a service user said there's nothing I wouldn't talk to her about like she's really welcoming she's really compassionate like you know i was like oh well that's that's all right that's a high compliment isn't it it is and then i think

that gives you permission then to to go on doesn't it you know actually maybe i'm maybe i'm not as bad as i thought i was you know maybe this is right. So in the podcast, I think it's often quite helpful to think about jargon busting. And often I use loads of jargon. I know what things need. And it's like the jargon we use is common sense. Always try to put it in brackets and in full so that people know what you mean. What does OSCE stand for? Do you know, Harriet?

Yeah, well, it stands for Objective Structured Clinical Examination but you're absolutely right it was I had to look it up and we didn't we used it on the course without even questioning it really and then as I sort of what it stood for and I thought oh I don't I don't actually know so you are right it's very easy to fall into that trap of using jargon and and not realizing definitely absolutely with you with you mentioning about um feedback that was a skill that I discovered that I'd something I developed through my teaching that then was um that I then was able to apply and something that you know again sort of gosh didn't expect that that would be something I would um I'd need to do

I found because I found um feedback really valuable but it was very tempting to be quite self-critical and focus on the negatives and beat yourself up about the things that you that you couldn't change and in teach for anyone who doesn't know in teaching there's a lot of observation that goes on we're observed regularly in the classroom by management by peers and very occasionally by uh if we're really unlucky by Ofsted um so I found that something really difficult that I needed to develop and I found something that I found really useful was I would print off my or get in front of me my feedback and have it broken down at each point that was made and I found it I skipped straight to the stuff that was about areas for development.

So I found that I had to, I really made a point of focusing on the strengths, exactly like you said, to really remind myself of those. But then with the areas for development, I found myself going quite circularly around a point maybe that either I didn't agree with or I thought well that was just unfortunate on the day or I can't change that so what I found really helpful was I'd have a I'd keep a clean copy but I'd also have a copy where I would cross out any of those that I didn't I couldn't do anything about because that really helped me then instead of focusing on oh I can't do anything about that that was my that was how unfortunate it then actually they disappeared. And then I had to admit, well, actually, yeah, that is a valid point. But then instead of just thinking, oh, why did I let that happen? I think right now, what can I do

to change that? And I'd write that next to it, like, what is something I can move forward? And then I committed to putting that into place. So I found that a really useful way of managing feedback oh thank you so much for sharing that with us that's so important and you know I think in in these mental health careers it's it's for your own development it's also for client safety it's important that that we have been observed that people have had a chance to experience what it's like to be in a room with us, either virtually or actually in a room. And we need to shape, we need to grow, you know, I genuinely care about

easing the distress of the clients I work with. And if there's something I can do that would make that more likely to happen, I want to know it. But you know, you absolutely sometimes, it's really difficult. And sometimes, you know, I think we look at compassion-focused therapy. Sometimes the angry part of ourselves will be in charge, and that's the part that scribbles it all out and goes, no, it's ridiculous, I don't know what you're talking about. Sometimes the sad part or the anxious part might be in control, and that's what's something different to say.

Hopefully, over time, the combined compassionate self will be able to step into the fore and be a little bit more objective and you know supportive to yourself as a growing clinician but also you know I think we should be observed as as qualified clinicians as well so every day is a school day and I think we can always improve but um sometimes you know I've worked with clients who've complained about me as well. Sometimes we're just not a good fit for everybody because we can't be. And sometimes we know that we've got a really, really good clinical rapport with somebody. And sometimes we know it's just a little bit sticky, you know, and that's either. It's just something about some of us that we get together and it just doesn't just doesn't work.

It's not a fit. And sometimes you just need to think, to think well actually maybe this is best being assigned to a different clinician you know have a fresh start someone that that can kind of just I don't know have a more natural rapport with this client we're all different aren't we yeah absolutely and I think that's a really big focus when they look to recruit people into the mental health role and also why they're really keen for a wide variety. So absolutely, there are people with a psychological mental health background, but not everybody in the role. I believe in the recruitment process that a really big part of what they're looking at is understanding the importance of rapport and being able to build rapport.

And I sometimes think that potentially people who haven't come from a mental health background might approach that in a different way. And especially for maybe people who've been in with services for a long time, that can feel quite refreshing. And like you say, that kind of that fresh start for people. So in the interview, there were the standard sort of interview questions that you might expect. But there was also a role play in that as well. So they are quite a fan of role plays when you're going through the process. But that one was a really simple one. It was, they didn't expect you to do anything because there's no expectation that you have any experience of clinical contact with people before. So it felt like they were looking for people who were comfortable to check in on risk.

But the key thing was how you built a rapport with somebody, how you created that compassionate and safe space for them and that therapeutic relationship. So which absolutely in reality, when you're practicing can't always happen. But I guess they're looking to see that you're able to with the majority of people. Thank you. So are you given a placement supervisor? Or is that just a general supervisor? Are you giving a kind of someone from the training course themselves to kind of be your mentor or kind of tutor? How does it work in terms of support in in the training and in your placement yeah so the main areas of sort of support that are really helpful and also the kind of formally expected and required by the course and every week you should have clinical

supervision and every two weeks you should have caseload supervision and your clinical supervision there's some strict requirements around them being somebody who's registered with the bibcp and is either a psychologist or qualified cbt therapist because almost all of the interventions we offer are cbt informed and then the caseload supervisor is somebody who's in the service is able to provide supervision so for me it was the same supervisor for both but I know in some teams it's a mental health practitioner within the community mental health team so someone with a nurse or OT background who's at a band six and then there is you get a mentor attached to you from the university, which is one of the members of staff. Obviously, I'm only talking about my university and my experience, who you could contact for kind of queries around the academic stuff, which was really helpful.

And then because the rule was so new, I've been really lucky that I couldn't be involved in the start of peer support development. So somebody within our cohort one has started a peer support group for mental health wellbeing practitioners within the role, the chance to kind of talk about any concerns that we have or things like that. And she's asked, you know, I've been able to be involved with that as well. So you do generally find that if there's a group of people who are doing the same thing and the grassroots, they all start to organise and develop some peer support

and that's been really, really helpful as well. So they're the main. And then really informal peer support. So the people on your course, you can message them and say, are you finding this assignment as difficult as me do you know what you're doing and it can be really normalization is so important isn't it you've got to have a safe space you absolutely have yeah absolutely and that was all of those different types of support were helpful at different points and in different ways but the the peer support

that validation is really helpful having somebody I'm lucky that i've got someone in a different team to me but in the same office and we'd regularly um in our wheelie chairs wheel over to each other and go do you know what's going on now i've got no clue either yeah exactly i love that is there a senior mental health and wellbeing practitioner? Because I know that senior PWPs are emerging. Yeah, absolutely. So I don't know the full details. So again, if somebody else knows, maybe they can come on and share that with you. But I believe the mental health and wellbeing practitioner role has come out of the community transformation work that's that's happening so moving the um community uh team mental health teams towards a more psychological focus or to have more more choice of psychological interventions um and it's but it uses a pwp model but unlike unlike PWPs where there is an IAPT or a talking therapy office where people go, there's a service being created that's just those people. Our role is similar, but we're placed within a service that already exists.

So rather than the service being made, I've been placed into a community mental health team as a role. And just like the PWP, there are discussions about senior mental health wellbeing practitioners that would be at band six. They're still being decided right at the top of the level. So our trust, just like any other trust in the country, don't have any plans to put any in place yet because they've not been advised by the strategic bodies above them what that would look like um but there are hopes there's some discussion that it could be that we would have some kind of supervisory capacity um and also we might be able

to offer have additional training um or the band sixes would have additional training to um offer um i don't know what the correct the right word is but slightly more complex like still still low level psychological intervention but um with um a little additional training as well lovely so are they just in adult mental health cmht services or are they in CAMHS, young people services, older adult services, psychosis, or, you know, it's fine if you don't know. Yeah, we're talking to, from talking to people on my course, we're absolutely everywhere. So my understanding of the role was to be mostly in community mental health teams where they hold a caseload of people who are defined by the organization's having severe mental health needs um but actually we've been placed in and that's where i am but there are people placed in lots of different places so

i believe there are people in early intervention psychosis eip in older adult services, in GP surgeries. So there's quite a lot of scope and based on the role and the interventions that we offer, it feels the fact that our interventions can be so helpful, they're wellbeing interventions. So in theory, absolutely anybody could benefit from them. So even people not accessing mental health services, if you think about the kind of things that they so we do behavioral activation which is getting people doing a little bit more when they're when they've got low mood a graded exposure kind of getting people helping people access situations that create anxiety confidence building problem solving sleep interventions guided self-help for binge eating disorder and there's seven so there's one more that I've missed but as you can so I wonder if I know I can identify

that when I'm not feeling great I start to do less or lose my routine or my sleep starts to struggle so actually the fact that our there the interventions are so appropriate for everybody at lots of different levels, it doesn't surprise me that we're being fitted into lots of different services. There is a particular role that's slightly different in CAMHS that I believe is something like an educational mental health practitioner. So I think it's the same sort of thing, but actually we're, our role is specifically for adults and older adults. Thank you. And I was going to say, what does an average day look like? But I think you've really nicely guided us through that. And, you know, I know this isn't specifically kind of a progression route for people going on to being an educational psychologist or a clinical psychologist or a counselling psychologist but it makes me think that actually this would have been for me you know I'm excited I would have liked to have done this role this would have been

for me even better experience even better experience than like an assistant psychologist because you're getting hands-on experience for how to do these things you know why they matter which things are going to work better you know mingling in your theory practice links and getting you know the bums on seat experience of putting that into practice I guess the bit that you're not getting which I did get as an assistant is the supervision from a qualified psychologist so that's if someone is thinking this might make a really good you know next step then yes I believe personally it really really will but you unless you happen to be supervised by a clinical psychologist even if you were supervised by a clinical psychologist I think you're being supervised

as a mental health and well-being practitioner not as an assistant psychologist and for me they are a little bit different because the job roles should be different but yeah for me it's it sounds really exciting and a really great way of skilling people up to either do this role for the foreseeable or to think about future roles yeah absolutely so so a couple of things there definitely it's you learn a lot about the really key skill the really key core fundamental skills and you do access some formal training which I know in some sometimes in some AP roles might be missing you know I, I now have a qualification that's formally recognised. Currently, we're not registered, but there is a discussion about us becoming a registered profession. And that's something to consider when you think about the role.

There's some real benefits to it being new. I've been able to get involved with lots of things like service evaluation that I think if the role had existed for a long time I wouldn't be able to because they'd all already been done or setting up the peer support but there are so what comes with that is a lot of discussion about what is the role where does it fit having to perhaps wait to hear what the progression route is or maybe wait for the registration process which all of it will definitely will come. But you just have to be patient. And I viewed it as a positive. I could be there at the beginning to have those, maybe wherever possible, inform those decisions. Definitely. I've been really lucky that my supervisor is a qualified psychologist and is really supportive with my supervision in that she lets me take it wherever I need to take it and in terms of discussing the skills or the areas that I want to go in

so I suppose maybe that could be a question if it's something people are thinking of it could be a question in the interview that people might like to ask um and alongside that I think a question about how people see the the service see the role fitting into the service could be really helpful. Acknowledging that it is still a brand new role, I think run to about cohort five of trainees will be the next one. But there is still lots of things happening. So that can be a really good thing to acknowledge in an interview that it's a new role and you're interested to see how they're fitting it in and you could if you're feeling particularly confident ask about community transformation and where they are in terms of that if it's relevant to community adult mental health and I'm happy to give a very brief over you mentioned a day in the life I'm happy to give a very brief overview for people who might want to know about that so because of the training that we have in an average day,

we might be involved or in my average day, which will look different because I'm in CMHT to maybe somebody else. But we'd have a huddle where we join together and talk about our contacts and anyone we've got concerns, which is lots of skills there you can develop. There's then formulations that you can, that I attend that are really helpful to see how a multidisciplinary team works and where my interventions fit. It might be, it's not something I do so much, but it's absolutely something that could be part of the role, something called phase one, so where you assess somebody, which will look different in different services,

but for us it's an extended period of time gathering information for the five Ps formulation, so getting a really good understanding of people's experience and how they've what's happened to them and how they've arrived, where they have their protective factors and goal setting. What do they want to achieve? What do they want to work on? And that's so important. That's a question that's asked all the time in formulation. What does somebody actually want? What's their their focus? How can we help them achieve what they want? Not what we think they need, but what they actually want what's their their focus how can we help them um achieve what they want not what we think they need but what they actually want and then the main body of my role is offering those um low-level evidence-based psychologically informed interventions um which is all of it's

great i really i genuinely really enjoy all of it but that's the real um that feels like the real the real work working one-to-one with people um and you and again in a smaller scale using exactly those same skills so having a smaller assessment with them that's focused on whichever intervention they might be using almost like a mini formulation working alongside them to help them um again to make shared decision making i'm not telling you i'm going to do this to you we're doing it together and then working through so all of our interventions are described as guided self-help so in theory they could be completed independently you could give someone a leaflet and they could do it but of course having that support gentle accountability a safe space to spare to share

is is a really important part of the of the process as well um supervision supervision and then anything my advice especially because it's a new role and for me i was so new to mental health i just tried to get involved in absolutely anything i could so if there was a meeting going on especially when i was in training because they they say just find out what's going on so if there's a meeting going on i'd join it if there was a free bit of training with a space on it I would join it knowing that I might not always be able to use it in my role but I always got something out of it and just asking people what do you do who are you how does that fit was really really useful too. I do and I'm very much getting the impression that the role of mental health, well-being practitioner and you specifically become the linchpin of the service because you have got your fingers in all the pies.

You're in all the meetings. And it very much feels like when I was an assistant, it would be like, ask Marianne. Marianne will know. And I feel like that's what they say about you, Harriet. Like Harriet will know. She'll know how to do it. She'll know where it is is she'll know she'll know what's going on and why we're doing that and what options are and I guess you'll also know a lot about community interventions as well and something I only stumbled across yesterday was something called Andy's Man Club is that something you've heard of? Yeah so so interestingly whilst my caseload was building, I am moving from trainee to kind of qualified. I did look for a few other things I could do just to kind of help the service. And one of them was that we had a really good understanding of third sector support, but kind

of really make some connections with those groups and kind of get to inform formulations. And yeah, one that we use a lot is Andy's Man Shed. It's a really, a very positive service that we use. Definitely. A third sector awareness is really, really key and actually acknowledge, and again, maybe in your interview or thinking about if the role, how you want to develop it,

knowing about the, acknowledging that you need to develop it knowing about the acknowledging that you need to know about third sector stuff and work it joint working is really really helpful but yeah we regularly refer to to people in the community of the charity sector community sector as to either to supplement or maybe after discharge to support that transition back into the community, definitely. So important. I love that you've been able to give our audience tips for their interviews as well. That's so important. I know that sometimes the episodes where we're looking at career changes have been really, really popular. What's it like when we've got all this internal chatter about what will people say when I say I want to leave or will they think I'm ungrateful for, you know, leaving this career?

You know, I get holidays, I get Easter, I get summer off. Like, you know, what's it like when you suddenly realise actually I might want to leave this career I'm in and do something different? Oh, well, it took me absolutely ages. I am, which I wouldn't necessarily advise like I don't I love teaching I loved everything about it I loved where I worked um but it was time for me to try something different um I like to try and if I have something I like to try and improve it and teaching allowed me to do that because I taught the same thing every year I could change what I was um you know

I could tweak and change things and you can do the same with the interventions you're delivering a sleep intervention you think oh that didn't quite work next time I'll do it like this so I still I still get that but I've kind of got to a point where it was really just sort of neatening things up you can always improve in every area um but I did it really slowly so I went down to three days a week and two days working at the charity and then I think I went down to three days a week and two days working at the charity. And then I think I went down to one and a half days teaching and the charity work and some of the university lecturing. And finally, I think I was on about one day when I left. So I really dragged it out because I've been there for years and knew everybody and what was really lovely is um there were two trainee teachers that myself

and another colleague who left at the same time um had trained and had seen come up so as we were kind of reducing our hours they were taking them on and and they've they've both really blossomed they keep in touch with them in their careers and they're doing really well and working nicely as a unit so i guess if there are worries about if you if you are worrying about maybe leaving because of kind of those those pressures about what will people think or how will the team feel? Me leaving allowed somebody else to start their career in that area and have another person in the world who's got psychological knowledge and teaching knowledge, which was something that I really appreciated and has been really valuable to me. So it's been it was a real positive such an important reframe and I don't know if you watch friends but it reminds me of when Phoebe has moved out of Monica's but not told her

and it feels like that's what you did there like where's Harriet oh she's moved out she's left didn't you notice she's been doing it like a bit by bit incrementally but that really made me smile as an idea like you just you did the transition in a slow gradual way and just it was just right for you um which I love before we finish have you got any advice for kind of reducing burnout in this mental health sphere that we find ourselves working in? I feel really lucky because I'm quite new to mental health, that everything feels very fresh. And as well as having a really supportive team, we have lots of different reflective things and support, you know, supportive things set up, which I access and I'm really encouraged and

to support by the team. So I guess one of my pieces of advice would be, having said I was there for 15 years and took years to gradually leave, what I would say now is if you're in a team that don't offer you those things or that support, then they're not the right team for you and that's a reflection on the team and not on you, which isn't my experience, but I can understand how it could be in others. And I guess maybe the thing that I really enjoy is is remaining curious being curious and I'm lucky because I'm right at the

start so literally everything is new to me so so everything is interesting but just um kind of looking up being things fresh and new making time very even if it's briefly just to to listen to kind of new ideas or new perspectives and that's where I stumbled across your your podcast um that that it has little snapshots of different careers or I can remember one one of your podcasts that was really interesting that I really enjoyed um was around there was somebody talking about kind of a culture and and their religion and how that informed their experiences and their practices. And as I work with asylum seekers who are majority Muslim, that was really interesting and an area that I had a passion for. And it's really nice to see those brought together. And when you mentioned about third sector,

I after listening to one of your podcasts about you had somebody in talking about green spaces and nature that really highlighted to me the importance of that and how lovely that was so um i've embedded into looking for my third sector people i looked for people had a focus on you know got there were people with gardening and nature as well um so definitely anything where you can learn other people's perspectives can feel so it's like a change is as good as a rest it can feel really refreshing to hear those different ideas and perspectives um at any way you can find them Harriet you're trying to make me cry like I didn't realize I was gonna be in there as a as an anti-burnout tip but that's that's honestly so lovely you know that I've had this idea to do a podcast series like a podcast and that I've had this idea to do a podcast series like a podcast and that I've had this idea to to talk to certain experts and approach them about coming on and that it genuinely is leading

to clinical shifts for people that I will never meet that will be benefiting because of the information that I've made available to clinicians like that's getting me a bit teary I won't lie like this is why I do what I do people are like why do you do this because it costs you money you don't make any money from it I'm like because I passionately believe in easing the distress of others but also giving great evidence-based practice for clinicians who I'll never meet who then get to go off and make people's lives better or make their own lives better or both. You know, that's why I do it. And thank you so much for saying that, because that's that's incredible.

Thank you. You're welcome. And I think as well, I know that you offer the aspiring psychologist, the membership. And I do wonder if that would allow the same thing, because you have the weekly lectures with people with different um perspectives so some of that of course would be career development but other elements would just be oh gosh yeah I never thought about that connection you know it's amazing how many connections you can make so so yeah definitely lots of really uh lots of really helpful things connected to you thank you so much thank you so much I will just briefly mention there's books available as well if anyone wants to check those out thank you so much for for approaching me about this podcast episode for helping us learn about the mental health and well-being practitioner do you get to graduate

do you get another little hat and a robe thingamajig like yeah there is um there is a graduation uh service yes definitely which is very nice after all that hard work to like you say get to do that little throwing the hat and yay so does it last a year it sounds like it's kind of rolling like there's multiple starts in the in the yeah in the calendar year but the whole process lasts a year yeah so um the recruitment the start of the courses and I think it's you I think it's universal not just um our trust is November and March so now would probably be quite a good time to people will be advertising for trainees the training is a year and then after the year one year is a band four after the year of training it's um and then you go into band five into a permanent post which is very

nice i love it thank you so much this honestly would have been a bit of me like this would have been amazing i think how incredible that we've got these new and diverse mental health practitioner roles for people to be able to do but also people to be able to benefit from thank you so much for speaking to us thank you ever so much for having me. You're so welcome. Oh, how lovely to have met Harriet and to be guided through the process with such expert care and attention. And yeah, I feel like it was such a great chat. And I think this would have been something that I would have really liked myself if it had been around an earlier stage of my career. What do you think? What does this sound like to you? Is this something you would be interested in exploring? I would love to know what you think. Do come along to the Aspiring Psychologist community on Facebook where you can let me know. You can also start a chat with me on socials about it,

any of my socials. I am Dr. Marianne Trent. If you would like to read the stories of aspiring psychologists, please do check out the Aspiring Psychologist Collective book. And there's also experiences of clinical health counselling psychologists, educational psychologists in the Clinical Psychologist Collective book. I just want to thank you for your time in listening to or watching this episode. I know your time is precious and you know I'm just really grateful that you trust in me to help you learn more about the field of psychology. Please do take a moment to rate and review. Please do subscribe to the channel.

I will look forward to bringing you the next episode of the podcast, which will be released as an MP3 on Monday mornings at 6 a.m. And it's usually available on YouTube across the weekend before it's launched as an mp3. Thank you so much, take good care of yourselves, be kind and I'll say you'll be on your way to being qualified it's the aspiring psychologist podcast with dr marianne my name's Jana and I'm a trainee psychological well-being 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 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.