Career change- clinical or ed psychology at 45?

[AngryPurpleSleepingBag]

I’m thinking of a career change. I am currently a teacher, earning 38K in an independent school. I’d like to work for NHS mental health services in some way and whilst I could take a slight pay cut temporarily I need to earn a bit more than this in the long run.

if I were to do a psychology conversion msc (I’ve figured out this much is doable) does anyone know what my chances are of getting an assistant ed psych or assistant clinical psychologist job in my late 40s and then being accepted onto a doctorate training for either of those professions? Are any mumsnetters doing these jobs and could you advise?

I am fairly confident I could handle the academic side of the doctorate training but it’s more the working life that I have questions about. Also do they give bursaries/ train people my age? I’d have about 20 years of service to give once trained, not sure if this is considered enough.

Alternatively is there a quicker route to being a cbt practitioner or similar in the NHS?

I'm doing a CYP IAPT high intensity CBT course at the minute and I've seen one or two places saying that teaching would be considered a core profession so it might be worth looking into that?

If you don't have a core profession (like social worker, MH nurse, occupational therapist) then you would need to do a KSA portfolio (on BABCP website) which needs a lot of evidence about experience in working / studying mental health. So it can be difficult to get onto CBT without EMPH / PWP first.

The course is also the most intense thing I've ever done and I did a degree, MA and PGCHE with 3 small kids! I bloody love it though.

This is also another useful website - application clearing house for clinical psychology. The stats have improved a bit since I last applied a few years ago - it's now a 25% success rate as looks like there are now more places available.

https://www.clearing-house.org.uk/about-us/number-places

Statutory work is providing the psychological advice for EHCPs. It varies a bit, but mostly it involves information gathering from school, the child themselves, and their family, and then writing that up into a report summarising their strengths and needs, and writing outcomes and provision. The info gathering can take lots of forms, e.g. a meeting, observing the child, 1-1 work with them (and all the different possibilities that involves), joint meetings with school/parents/other professionals, etc. The reports are often quite long and time consuming (though I know in my LA we're working to try and reduce this), and it can feel a bit like we're being asked to gatekeep resources, and firefight rather than coming in early before things get to a stage of needing an EHCP, which is frustrating. But then again, as one of my tutors said, it pays the mortgage!

For your other questions - I use my own car, and I think outside of a city centre authority it's nearly unavoidable. I don't get paid overtime, though I try to minimise how much I work beyond my hours, but it's sometimes unavoidable - it usually evens out throughout the year with some less busy weeks in the holidays. Holidays are often for catching up on admin/report writing, plus some nursery school work in ones which open all year, but noticeably less frantic than term time, where it can be a bit of a rush to fit everything in. Lunch break-wise, I plan my own diary so always try to put time in to stop, usually half an hour or so - sometimes less, sometimes more if I'm with colleagues and want a catch up! And I'd usually bring food from home if I'm out, but am not always organised enough so might pop to the shop or a cafe.

The job is very varied, so I wouldn't say I have a typical week as such. The type of things I'd be doing could be meeting or observing children, having consultations with school or parents, delivering training to school staff, supervising other professionals like ELSAs or speech and language therapists, as well as planning all of those things in advance, and report writing and admin (and I'm sure other things which I've not thought of!). I work 3 days a week and would usually try and work from home once for admin.

I echo these words

Great career

So many wonderful LA s out there looking to recruit and retain EPs for long term

Love my job so much

Feel very privileged and I have a great work : life balance

Psychology graduate and teacher here.
I was considering the exact same as you many years ago!
Clinical interested me more, however due to my experience I felt I would have a greater chance becoming an Ed Psych.
I wrote to many Ed psychology services asking if I could shadow one before I decided as such a big step but was told that due to confidentiality reasons it wasn't allowed (maybe this has changed, this was about ten years ago) and that the majority of assistant Ed psychs are those that are already on the doctorate course. I do know from my own research that although there's a shortage of Ed psychs there is also HUGE competition to get on to the course.
You can train separately to become a CB Therapist. I know someone who is doing this over the course of a year and it involves one day a week (Saturday) doing training.
CBT also fascinates me and great that this is an option.
I think with children's mental health these days more and more CB therapists will be needed...

Good luck!

@Bethany7 what did you do in the end? Did you retrain?

I went in and met the lovely Ed psych in my area about 10 years ago when my kids were small but to retain meant 3 yrs full time and the uni was over an hour away which I just could not commit to. I wish I'd done it prekids!

I hope this goes in the reply section, I always seem to muck up when replying directly!

Same, I wished many times that I had gone straight into Ed psych before children too.
I am still teaching, although like you, I have very recently moved to the private sector where I can actually have a work life balance.
CBT really interests me though and I would like to get into that at some stage in the future. Would be great to do alongside teaching. I've discovered my love for teaching again since moving schools. Like most of my colleagues, I was burnt out!

Also my colleague who was the Sendco
And dealt with Ed Psychs a lot felt that there was a huge amount of paperwork which took up a big part of the job. That did put me off a little. Although of course, I can't say for sure if that is the case.

I teach psychology to adults now which is fab, but about half my teacher salary... I completely went in the wrong direction!

@Bethany7 trainee EPS and assistant EPs are two different positions; it's not possible to be both at the same time.
Regarding the questions about working day and week...as a main grade Ep you'd manage your own workload (usually an allocation of schools, settings and system focused projects). As others have said the detail will depend on your LA team's model of service delivery. We (team in Wales) work with groups of schools and individual settings to try to make a finite and in demand resource go a long way - so often working with adults to support understanding and promote change. That will be the focus of your training, for sure.
I wouldn't allow shadowing except for teachers in our LA who meet medium criteria for doctoral training. But if you're a local candidate, I might well ask one of our current assistants or trainees to have a phone chat with you to explain their role and, importantly, the experience, reading, study that gas led to them gaining their current position.
And to anyone who gets that far, be as flexible as you can re training course. It won't be easy on family commitments but it's not really for people looking for an easy switch.

do PWPs spend the majority of time in one to one consultations?

Yes. Your work will be split between triage appointments with new patients (some of whom will be far more complex than anyone you would ever actually deliver therapy to as a PWP) and treating your own patients on your case load. These treatments will be split between face to face and telephone. These patient would be patients with 'mild to moderate common mental health problems'. You may also be asked to facilitate group sessions (in person or online) and depending on the service you work for they may also offer some (or a lot) of online treatment also. The final bit of your time will be supervision, and occasional meetings

do they take work home?
No. It's not like that at all. Pre covid it was basically not possible anyways, you need the system to even access patient data and it would have been not allowed. Now there is a lot of remote working but no you work within appointment slots with patients and then you're done. If someone cancels or doesn't show up, you use that time to catch up so that hopefully you're finished your admin on time.

do they do paid or unpaid overtime?
Sometimes things will run over. You get better at managing your time with experience. Occasionally if a patient is super risky (maybe saying they're not safe but refusing to safeguard themselves or maybe disclosed something that means you need to follow up with police/social services etc) you will be delayed finishing that day or paperwork will pile up. But that doesn't happen too often and there should be senior staff available to take over if for example you had to pick your child up from school etc.

what is the emotional impact of this job?
If can be tough but I was say you become quickly desensitised and if has to be something really close to home to get you upset. The emotional impact for most PWPs comes from the stress and also feeling under appreciated, over worked etc.

Do people burn out in the same way they do in teaching?
Yes to burn out. Massively. But not as bad as teacher. Definitely not as bad. And remember PWP is just your stepping stone and then you train in CBT and then you ideally move out of the world of IAPT cos that's where the problems lie - it's so heavily target based. I don't think as bad once CBT trained. Once you're a qualified CBT therapist you could do private practice though or whatever you fancied.

what settings do they work in?
In an IAPT service which will usually have its own treatment rooms where you see patient and then you do your triage over the phone. Since covid can also work from home in many services or hybrid working. Sometimes you will be ask go run a weekly clinic from a room in a GP surgery or local NHS building if that's where they need patients to be seen/have spare rooms. It's a nice mix and change of scenery.

Also PWPs mostly work 8-4/9-5 but usually with one evening a week in most services - which would be maybe 12-7:30pm or 8pm. Very occasionally some services do some opening hours on Saturdays (on a rota, so you do maybe 3-4 per year) but that's rare.

@biscuitcat those EHCPs are hard fought for by parents and it hard to hear them described as ‘paying the mortgage’

@Fraudornot apologies for upsetting you - it really wasn't my intention. I was being flippant, which I see might not hit the right tone - my main point I suppose is how EHCP numbers are through the roof at the moment, which is why EPs are snowed under with statutory work, and I think it's probably fair to say most of us are a bit frustrated by it, as if education was properly funded schools would be so much better able to support all their students and meet their needs without needing an EHCP.

This leads me to another question I had which is do you feel as an ed psych - or same question for any of these professions- that your work is helping people overall in most cases or do you feel continually frustrated by lack of funding and support and by working in a system that is never going to work for some people ie trying to help some autistic children in mainstream schools where the whole curriculum and format is at odds with their needs

And thank you again for all the replies and details it’s helping me be realistic about these options

as if education was properly funded schools would be so much better able to support all their students and meet their needs without needing an EHCP

I totally agree with this. As a senco, all I seem to be doing at the moment is putting in requests for Statutory Assessments because we can’t meet children’s needs on the funding we have. That gives me no time for doing anything else and is pretty much paying my mortgage as well.

I had a conversation with someone at the LEA just before half term who was really angry by how many EHCPs schools were requesting at the moment-saying it was simply unmanageable for them.

Well, guess what-it’s unmanageable for schools as well. I am so close to just calling it a day. I have no magic wand and can’t magic something out of nothing.

Hi OP
I am year 2 of the EP training and in my mid 40s.. there is a forum for applicants on Facebook which is incredibly useful called ‘Educational Psychology UK Doctoral Applicants’. The question of age often comes up there and the conclusion is it’s no barrier. I was a teacher before this and did not become an Assistant EP before applying so it’s not essential to do that, however you will need to spend a lot of time researching the role and thinking about how you apply psychology as a teacher as this is where a lot of teachers fall down in the application process.
Its a tough course - I had to do the conversion Masters just to apply to get on to it - the academic demands are high, the drop in salary while training is hard but I take home about £1,660 a month which is actually slightly more than I did on .4 at the top of UPS, there is a lot of need and lots of tricky conversations to manage, and if I’m honest more report writing than I’d thought.. you are also a bit of a lone wolf although you usually have team meetings with other EPs, but not the same ‘team’ feeling as teaching….however I really love it. The variety is second to none - a typical week can see you in nurseries, primaries, secondaries, post 16, home visits.. there is flexibility to work from home. Last week I delivered training on EBSA, co-delivered a parent course, did a play-based assessment with a 3 year old, conducted interviews for my thesis with year 7s and had a coaching session with an ELSA.

"if education was properly funded schools would be so much better able to support all their students and meet their needs without needing an EHCP"

I agree with this too. As an EP working in a local authority where our service are now pretty much exclusively focused on statutory assessments, I see EHCPs as a highly expensive and bureaucratic way to distribute SEND funding to school. The large increase in numbers of EHCP requests has sucked up the capacity of support services to offer any early intervention work, which would prevent the need for EHCP applications further down the line. It feels very frustrating. I don't think the SEND system is working well for kids, teachers, parents, local authorities or send professionals at the moment. (Although delighted to hear that not all EP services are in this situation).

The large increase in numbers of EHCP requests has sucked up the capacity of support services to offer any early intervention work, which would prevent the need for EHCP applications further down the line

Absolutely.

If I had sufficient time, funding and staffing, I would be spending my time coordinating solid evidence-based intervention programs. As it is, I’m spending all of my time writing endless requests begging for any sort of EHCP funding. When awarded, the amount given is almost always inadequate for what the child needs. Parents often see-‘ooh, EHCP, they get a full time 1:1!’ but this is very rarely the case any more.

A bit differently possibly to what you are wanting but I am an ex teacher working as a specialist teacher assessor assessing children for dyslexia. I love my job now and produce full diagnostic reports similar to EPs but work privately. Did a two year part time course to qualify.

Was that funded by the LEA?

Most of our specialist teachers were got rid of in an LEA restructure a few years back :(

@Shinyandnew1 nope all self-funded. Studied whilst teaching part-time so I had some income coming in x

Just a reminder that EHCPs are critical for parents - it ensures our young people get support until they are 25 and also ensures that we have some recourse to getting our child’s needs met. Whilst I’m sure it would be amazing if the time could be put into early interventions, they could be pulled at any minute. The EHCP means we can have a leg to stand on if we need help with our children.

Whilst I’m sure it would be amazing if the time could be put into early interventions, they could be pulled at any minute.

Indeed. Though from a school point of view… as a SENCo, I am spending hours and hours of my SEN time writing paperwork for EHC plans that help a small number of children, whereas I could be coordinating interventions which would support many many more. If schools were funded adequately, I could do both.

@Abelard40 that’s encouraging to hear. So are you paid a trainee salary? Will you get the same salary for year 3?