Widening Participation into the Six Psychological Professions funded by Health Education England

The Widening Participation Project is focused on widening access into the six Psychological Professions roles that are funded by Health Education England. These include: the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist, Children’s Wellbeing Practitioner, Clinical Psychologist, Cognitive Behavioural Therapist, Education Mental Health Practitioner and Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner roles. 

We are aware that the Psychological Professions generally have a longstanding challenge in recruitment in terms of diversity of entrants. Some of these challenges may be similar across professions and whilst we acknowledge that there are differences across the different professional groups, there could be learning from success in some disciplines. We are identifying some of the challenges, barriers and facilitators to widening participation and based on this learning, a widening participation scheme will be developed for entry into the psychological professions.

Progress

A project team has been established and an initial meeting has been arranged for the end of January 2021 to review current widening participation schemes across the South East, identify good practice and gaps. We have also been conducting a survey with members of the six Psychological Professions that are funded by HEE. This will aid project planning and offer insight into what the workforce deems important to consider in shaping a widening participation scheme.  Further details will be announced on our website in Spring 2021. 

I’m interested…

If you have any further thoughts and ideas regarding this exciting project, or are involved in or know if any work that relates to the above, then please get in touch by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Amy Pound

PPN SE, Senior Assistant Psychologist