Reflecting on the importance of leadership

   Leadership has been on my mind this week. We’ve recruited to two multi-professional leadership programmes that are jointly funded by the CPWD. The first is a one day introduction to leadership for early career psychological professionals and the second for practitioners who are already in leadership roles to help them to develop skills in ‘transformational change’. The number of applications have been high showing that psychological professionals are keen to develop leadership both within day-to-day practice and at a strategic level. The number of applications has been particularly impressive for the introductory course and we’re really pleased to be able to offer two more dates in the autumn for those who didn’t make the spring dates.

Our executive steering group met to discuss the development of its leadership role alongside the new PPN workforce board. Without the support its members gave to myself and Gita last year the network wouldn’t have got nearly as far as it has in such a short period of time. A real strength of the steering group is the will of clinical colleagues, academics, professional leaders and health education northwest to work together for the shared aims of the network. We’ve taken this model and developed it further with the new multi-professional workforce board. Made up of practitioners from across the professions many are chairs of their own special interest groups or leaders in clinical specialisms. All of them are there because of their commitment to promoting excellence in psychological health and wellbeing.

Every board member is valued equally for their expertise; so the psychological wellbeing practitioner sits along side the clinical psychologist, who in turn is alongside the health psychologist, next to the counsellor and psychotherapist. Full details of the membership of both groups will soon be available on the web site, and I’ll be working to make sure representation for areas such as SMI, psychosis and prison mental health join us over the coming year.

We’ve had news of the next 'Counselling in the NHS' special interest group event hosted by the University of Salford at their exciting new media city campus, and we’ve set up a kick-start consultation event for newly qualified clinical psychologists in May. Look out for online registration details for both of them in our events section over the next week.

Finally, we have been notified that the 6-week pre-election period of ‘Purdah’ starts on 30^th March until 7^th May 2015. During this time publicly funded organisations are not able to communicate by any social media, so this means we aren’t able to tweet, put new postings on the web site or send out items on the news bulletin. You can still register for events and view the web site as usual, it’s just that new items will not appear until the 7^th May 2015. So we are working hard to get all the new updates and conference videos on the web site over the coming week, and we’ll be using the purdah period to spring clean the web site and reorganise some of its parts. 

So, this may be my last blog until after Election Day. Whatever the outcome on the 7th May it looks like mental health, psychological approaches and talking therapies will continue to be on the agenda and the network will be there alongside you all working to make the rhetoric a reality.