Psychotherapist, Speech Therapist or Phyiotherapist

[DecisionsDecisions6]

I am looking to get back into work and considering retraining as any of these. I’m worried about work reliability afterwards. Please can anyone share if they know anything about these career options! Anyone in them or training now?

What qualifications do you already have? I assume psychology?

Have you thought about occupations therapy?

I am a physiotherapist. You need at least 3 B’s at A level including biology, it’s a tough 3 year slog at uni with 1/3rd of that time being on clinical placements, which could be spread far and wide depending on where you study. Once qualified junior jobs are hard to secure. I’ve been qualified nearly 20 years and still don’t feel like I earn enough to be fully comfortable. If one of my children said they wanted to be a physiotherapist, I would try to steer them in a different direction!

@stupididiot12345 ok that’s helpful, thanks - I am raising kids so really aware it can’t be anything that completely takes over my life to study/train for (also worried about the financial side so has to be something that then pays off). I also have 8 As and 2 Bs at GCSE level but BBC at A level.
Sociology BSc as a degree @drmindful ?
@Questions1234 would you say is better than the other options for any reason/s? Thanks!

Do you want to work with kids or adults?
“psychotherapist” is not a protected title so anyone can call themselves that… you might want to think a bit more about what kind of “psychotherapist” you would like to become: psychoanalytic? psychodynamic? Counsellor? CBT practitioner? Systemic?

I work in an mdt with psychotherapists and SALTs. They’re both fab careers but time investment and experience is required - they’re serious commitments.

MSc SALT is 3 years full time training. Relevant experience would be needed as the course is extremely competitive. So the new SALT on our ward worked as a teaching assistant, healthcare assistant, and did additional training in autism before applying. I think she was successful the 2nd time of applying. Pros is that it’s funded, although you will not be able to work during the time you’re training and it’s not paid, unlike the psychology doctorate (which with a sociology degree you’d not be able to do).

Psychotherapy is also a massive time and money investment. Level 4 is around 100 hours of unpaid supervised training, probably takes about 3 years again. Getting jobs after this is quite difficult. From my experience in the NHS, psychotherapists are only employed if they reach doctorate level of psychotherapy/counselling. The same with CBT/HI therapy roles in the nhs, mostly going to nurse practitioners, assistant psychologists. That said, if you go down the private route you could set up your own “practise” that what, but if security is what you’re after I’m not sure I would pick that.

I’d work on choosing what you’re actually interested in and working from there. They’re not careers I’d lightly go into without a degree of passion for the subjects.

Having seen a friend retrain as a speech therapist that seems the most achievable with your grades and background. She is able to work part time and there is also demand for private SALT where we live in London. Have also seen friends try to retrain as therapists - much more intense.

what about social work? I did that. Msc in 2 years.

The speech therapist that comes into our school seems to be absolutely exhausted-her case load is immense and she said they won’t take on anyone else to help her-she’ll quickly be burnt out if she carries on like this.

@amibeingaknob and how do you find it?

@drmindful I’m really interested in people and honestly think any of these careers would suit me. Just very daunting to get into! I’d like something where I can work hard, be passionate, earn a decent wage - but also I’m a parent so factoring that in.

I was a speech and language therapist for many years and I can definitely relate! I did end up totally burned out - mix of professional and personal reasons - and I left clinical work. I'm in a NHS Corporate role now

OP, they're all different jobs and different roles. What attracts you to each one?

Do a 2-yr MSc Occupational Therapy. Then you can specialise in either physical (orthopaedic, neuro etc - which are akin to Physiotherapy) or mental health (which can open up roles as Mental Health Practitioner or in CMHT’s. Or you could specialise in Paediatrics, or Older Adults (memory clinic) etc.

OT is the most varied of the post-grad health training routes IME.

@FoxLoxInSox thanks - does that then involve more training to specialise after the MSc?

You do clinical placements throughout your MSc, which will give you a sense of what rough kind of area you want to go into. Then once you qualify you can apply for a rotation in that. A rotation is where you work in your first full time Band 5 job and rotate around a number of specialisms. For instance, a physical rotation in a general hospital might be: orthopaedics, neuro acute, hand therapy, wheelchairs & seating, etc. A rotation in MH might be acute inpatients, community, learning disability etc….

From there you can go on to apply for a Band 6 (senior OT) role in one of those areas.

You can also choose whether to stay as an OT or go into an aligned role which just needs either a RMN / HCPC qualification.

Thanks @FoxLoxInSox. And I’m guessing the hours are long for the clinical rotation and don’t fit in with school hours very well? Just trying to work out how I’d manage things!

I love social work - it also opens many doors (as Im sure the other professions do) so you certainly aren't stuck doing local authority child protection work if you dont want to (I dont).

The msc was lots of time doing placements (which were invaluable) and a lot of theory and study. Many mums on the course (me included) did hours around school. You had to do a 7 hr day to meet Social Work England requirements for placement, so they allowed some to do an hour or two from home. For me, it was awesome and extremely fascinating, for others on the course not so much. Some really hated it. Then you are expected to do ASYE (follow up year) and go into local authority work. I never did that but I was the only one on my course who didn't. Im older and I knew what I wanted to do (work with women with autism). What I like is if I get bored of that I can do something else within social work. There are so many things you can do with that registration. I was going to train to be a counsellor but because its not a registered profession like social work I opted for that instead.

As I say, its probably the same with the other professions though.

just to add With a Bsc in sociology there may be other options to study physiotherapy on accelerated courses. Both physio and SALT is predominantly NHS careers, and the salary is a constant frustration for me.

I would think social work or occupational therapy would give you more employment options afterwards

No different from any other graduate level health or social care careers. Realistically none of your options post-qualifying are going to be advertised as 9.30 - 2.45/3, whether that’s physio / salt / soc work / radiographer / OT etc etc.
You'll prob need some element of wraparound childcare whatever you pick, but pretty much all jobs require this. Or you negotiate to work reduced hours for a pro-rata’d salary.

I know many social workers who mostly wfh, and/or fit in their home visits around their kids, or they do reduced hours. There are many parents doing a social work role who can manage school runs. In the disability team we barely ever went in the office, at MASH it was one week on one week off - I do know of people there who negotiated different times, and also more WFH so they were flexible. That said, it really depends what team you are in. If you are in the care team then you could be driving up to scotland overnight with short notice, so people in that team needed robust back up childcare.

Would that be straight from qualifying? The OP had asked me if OT might be difficult hours for parenting (in the immediacy post-qualifying) and I was assuming it was the same as things like SW, as OT is the same as Physio / SALT and all the other roles the OP was wondering about. None of them you’d pick because of especially term-time hours, but neither are they incompatible with having kids. I guess I was saying to the OP not to rule any of them in or out based on hours - as they’re all much of a muchness. In NHS AHP roles as a newly-qualified Band 5 you’d have less leeway to WFH, unsupervised, slip-off for school runs etc. But certainly within a year or so once you’ve got your preceptorship under your belt and are working with greater autonomy the roles get more flexible. I still think (depending on the age of the kids) it’d be pretty difficult / inappropriate to be WFH in a brand new profession with kids in the background.

In children's social work though, although in theory there's flexibility, a core part of the job is visiting children at home when they get home from school. It's usually quite straightforward for children's social workers to plan their diaries so they can do the morning school run, but it's not possible to do the job and be available for an after school run.

In children's the only roles that I have seen where people make that work regularly are those in MASH, who make the decisions on the referrals that come in that day. The downside though is MASH roles tend to be 5 days in the office, no WFH (at least they have been in the authorities I work in) because there is so much discussion between colleagues, including those from other sectors (eg police who are in the same office) that just doesn't work if people are sat at home on teams. The other can be in adoption, but whilst more of the visits etc can be done during the day, it can involve long distance travel as adoption searches are often national.

I worked in MASH. The standard was 9-5 one week in office, one week at home. They didn't have enough desks to do it any other way. Several people however, negotiated totally from home for various reasons. Or less days in office. Im sure people did pop out to get their kids but between 3-5 especially on day 2 (you have 2 days to close your cases) that would be VERY stressful. Those last 2 hours you are always white knuckling trying to get cases cleared as it is a very strict 5pm finish. It never goes over - they literally shut down the computers.

When I worked in disabled childrens team office days were once a month if that. The rest was home visits when you could fit them in and this could be when child was at school, sometimes youd visit child at school too. So it was doable. There were many parents who were doing school runs with that job. You have a caseload and its just gotta get done - lots of late into the night working from home though.

I think in social work the hardest team to do this would be CIC because you could suddenly have to take kids to a foster home at 11pm. Unless you had very flexible back up you would be screwed.

And to the poster that asked before is this once you are well qualified and seniour - i dont think so. When you plan your ASYE (first qualifying year) you can negotiate what you can do and can't do. As I said even in student placement you could be really flexible as long as you got the work done.

HTH