Psychological Professions Week 2021 - Equality, Diversity & Inclusion: Working towards Equity of Access in the Psychological Professions

Bill Tiplady, Co-Chair PPN South East, Associate Director Psychological Services Oxford Health NHS FT

Margo Ononaiye, South East Psychological Professions Widening Participation Lead, Programme Director Southampton Doctorate in Clinical Psychology

The next couple of years are going to be a key and transformative time for the Psychological Professions and we want to ensure you are informed and ready for the exciting times ahead! The Psychological Professions Network (PPN) is hosting its second *free* conference. #PsychologicalProfessionsWeek 2021 will feature keynote speakers, panel discussions and regionally-led sessions aligned to the National Vision of the Psychological Professions.

One of the key commitments of the PPN is to ‘unite and increase diversity in the psychological professions’.  This session focusses on the second element of this and shines a light on work being done to increase diversity in our workforces.   This virtual workshop takes place on Thursday 18^th November between 9.30am and 11am and will be convened by Bill Tiplady, Co-Chair of the PPN in the South East with input from Margo Ononaiye, PPN South East Widening Participation Lead and others.  We wanted to ensure we included a focus on this important topic in our line-up for PPN week and we hope you can join us!

We know that inequality of access to health services, inequality of health outcomes, and inequality of access to professional trainings and career routes are real issues – both from the data and from the voice of lived experience.  We won’t, in this session, be focussing on making the case for action as we consider this already made, but will focus instead on showcasing some current initiatives which have aimed to focus on tackling inequalities and providing new support to bring more diversity into our professions.  This definitely doesn’t mean we are regarding this as a problem solved or even as yet fully recognised – but we do think these initiatives offer some green shoots and some directions for future action.

In this session we will showcase some of these pieces of work, describing what has been done as well as hearing from the lived experience of aspiring and existing practitioners.

 We also want to hear from you and will be giving a chance for you to contribute and give your views on areas of future action the PPNs should consider as well as taking your questions via the chat.  We really hope you can join us.

To view the full week’s programme and register for the conference (it’s free!), please follow this link: https://ppn2021.com/

Lastly, we recommend becoming a member of the PPN. It is free and gives you access to the latest updates, events and newsletters. To become a member please follow this link: https://www.ppn.nhs.uk/membership/why-join-us

We look forward to seeing you on Thursday 18th!