Career change - advice needed please

[AddisonForbesMontgomery]

I have this crazy idea to change my career, it’s not something I’m questioning if I should do, more how would I do it?

Currently I am an office worker with an undergraduate degree (i’d rather not say what in), I would like to change to a skilled profession, my degree leads into a very obvious career route and sadly, it is one I am not interested in (I was young and made the wrong choice)

Now, I am interested in being a child psychologist, does anyone have any experience in this? Would I need to take a psychology undergrad and then some form of masters/doctorate? Could I do a conversion course? Would I be able to get a psychology masters and then go from there?

Any advice would be appreciated, I have no idea where to start and it’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to do anything like this so I have no idea where to start looking.

Bump

My understanding is this

You can do a conversion course to psychology at huge expense. It takes 2 years.

You would then need to work in a psychology type job to get experience.

Then you'd need a masters degree I think (1year/ more money) before applying for the clinical psychologist training scheme.

It's incredibly competitive to get on the training scheme and I think there are hundreds of applicants for each space. You also have to be flexible in location. Part of the training is a doctorate so massive amount of work.

Someone with actual experience please correct me as this is only my understanding after researching it online with a view to doing it.

There is just too much time and money cost involved for me in terms of fees, lost earnings and study eating into family time.

I did a counselling certificate thought I might pursue that further but the reality of making a decent career out of that didn't seem great.

I also realised that I am interested in psychology in that I'd enjoy reading a few books about it but maybe not dedicated enough to commit to such a full on training path.

I am late 30s and 2 young DC so maybe if my circumstances were different I'd go for it.

Thank you, that’s really helpful, it does sound like it will cost a lot, do you mind me asking how you researched it? So I can try and look into it and the coatings etc a bit more?

I just started by googling conversion courses in psychology and that led me to what choices were available near me.
Open university offers psychology degreeso that was one possibility that I could do while still working.

I know a couple of people who are psychologists so had seen what they had to do to get on the training programme. Good luck if you decide it's what you really want to do.

Thank you for that, it does sound very difficult, I will certainly look more into this