Finding Professional Leadership during change

Liz Kell, Co-Chair of the PPN North West

Reading Gita Bhutani’s recent blog “The times they are a’changing” really brought back to me the stabilising effect the PPN has had for both me personally as a psychological professional and also for my professional group of ‘psychological practitioner’ – offering a steadying and supporting force during turbulent times.

Throughout the last 20 years of my career working in the psychological professions in a ‘new’ role, I have seen my fair share of change. There has been change within the identity of my role, moving from what was originally called a ‘Primary Care Graduate Mental Health Worker’ to a Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner or PWP. There has been change within the organisations I worked – I think I changed organisations four times without ever moving from my team; and then when I did move to a new organisation there was more change, sat within a Public Health Team moving from a Primary Care Trust to a Local Authority. There was of course also continued political change within government and working in the brand new and innovative system of IAPT in itself meant change was constant.

In the early 2010’s, there was still support for IAPT with ‘regional teams’ but these were starting to be phased out. As a person in a ‘new’ role, there was no professional body to support us, and we had relied on the regional teams events and masterclasses as a source of support, networking and helping us find our identity. Seeing these start to end left us feeling isolated and worried about how we could continue to meet and learn as a professional group, and where we could get support and be heard when we needed help. 

It was at this time that in a whole different set of conversations, Gita Bhutani was sowing the seeds of the need for the Psychological Profession Network (PPN) as a multi-professional approach for the psychological professions, recognising the importance of the different roles, and also the strength of mutual support, and I’m so glad that was happening. The PPN has been so instrumental in supporting PWPs, and now the other Psychological Practitioner roles, to have a professional ‘family’ benefitting from professional leadership but also supported to develop their own leadership as the younger siblings within the Psychological Professions. I do wonder what the landscape might look like now, particularly for the new roles, if PPNs hadn’t started to emerge when they did.

As a ‘new’ leader at the time, the PPN in the North West gave me a place to be a leader. I was invited to be part of the newly formed Workforce Board representing PWPs, and through that was able to learn so much from my older siblings, in clinical psychology, and cognitive behavioural therapy and counselling, but also support the other Psychological Professions to learn about, understand and value the role of the PWP, and over time the other Psychological Practitioner roles as the new younger siblings.

The PPN gave PWPs a home when they so desperately needed one, providing professional leadership, experience and guidance, and also giving us a voice when it felt so hard to be heard. And over time this home became a family. For me personally, it has also turned into a home in other ways. I’m so proud to now be Co-Chair of the PPN North West alongside Gita Bhutani as the founder, and I want to keep working to enable all psychological professions, including the future generations, to benefit from the family support and strength as I have.