Anyone gone back to being an educational psychologist after a long career break?

[Neolara]

I have taken an extended career break (13 years!) to bring up the kids but they're all now at school and I want to get back to some kind of work. Prior to having kids I worked as an EP for 5 years. During my time at home I've volunteer extensively in both primary and secondary schools and so have a good under of many of the changes that have been brought in over recent years.. However, I obviously have not worked as an EP for a very long time and would need to update specific skills (e.g. All tests would presumably have changed, I'd have brush up on my consultation techniques etc). There are currently a couple of vacancies for EP jobs in my area.

Has anyone gone through the process of updating their skills to allow then to register as a psychologist after a career break? If so, how did you do this? Did you go on training courses or did you get someone from your local authority to supervise you. If the later, did they pay you while you were doing supervised practice? Was it hard? Part of me feels that it should be fine ( - I was perfectly competent when I worked as an EP before), but the other part of me is worried I'll have no idea what I'm doing after such a long time.

Would be great to hear everyone's experiences. Thanks.

I haven't taken a career break but someone I know is going back after ( I think ) 5 years out. She secured a post with a Local Authority (where she was a senior EP) who are paying her and supervising her practice. There are lots of vacancies at the moment ( I don't know of a service who wouldn't take someone on, even if they are not advertising) . 13 years is a long time out of the profession ( as long as I've been qualified for) and I think that you would need to do a lot of extra training and development. It's not just the different assessments ( e.g we are on WISC 5 now, administered on iPads ) but also the changes in the Code of Practice, person centred planning and getting your confidence up to work independently. I'm sure it could be done though, if you are really determined. Perhaps a good first step would be to contact HCPC to discuss re-registration and contact a service local to you to see how they could help. The UCL leading edge days look good as a source of training, and perhaps think about joining one of the post qualification doctorate courses too.