On 1st March The British Psychological Society (BPS) opened a public consultation on its new draft Clinical Psychology Accreditation Standards. Scrutiny of these standards is crucial as they set out the required learning outcomes for clinical psychology doctoral courses across the UK. What clinical psychologists learn will affect how well they work with the vulnerable people in their care. On their website, the BPS encourage individuals to ‘send any feedback on the standards to ensure they are fit for purpose’. Yet, strangely, members of the public do not seem to know about this consultation.
This came to light just two days before the deadline for feedback on 30th March. The campaign group Save Mental Health was alerted and their supporters complained to the BPS who bowed to pressure and extended the deadline to Thursday 4th April. You can read the new standards and submit feedback here.
Why, you might ask, would the BPS be so coy about inviting the public to scrutinise its new standards? According to their website, these have already been through ‘stage one of the review process with input and feedback from 35 different groups who have significant involvement in Clinical Psychology Training and/or the profession of clinical psychology’. How reassuring. Yet, as we know at Critical Therapy Antidote, all is not well in Clinical Psychology Training programmes in the UK.
A trawl through the 98-page document reveals why the BPS may be reluctant to share this with the public. It starts reasonably enough, explaining what accreditation is and why it’s important. However, it’s not long before it becomes clear what is at the heart of the matter. An informative diagram on page five shows that a new standard has been created that underpins all others. This is the Foundational Programme Standard: Equality, Equity, Anti-discrimination, and Inclusion. Nothing escapes its influence everything it calls for ‘must be achieved by all accredited programmes’.
The Foundational Programme Standard (pp12-14) places Critical Social Justice ideology at the centre of clinical psychology training. A box at the top of the first page, warns courses of their duty to conform to the Equality Act 2010, but a note inserted above indicates that the BPS has other ideas:
‘Whilst equality is the standard legal term, we use the term equity throughout this document, acknowledging that an individual’s unique characteristics and circumstances may require differential supports and adjustments to achieve equal outcomes.’
Equity, in Critical Social Justice terminology, means adjusting for current and historical injustices, something that can lead to further injustices when certain favoured groups are given priority over less favoured groups.
The Foundational Standard puts additional pressure on training programme leaders and teams who, in addition to teaching future clinical psychologists how to help people with their mental health difficulties, are required to:
‘demonstrate that they have the skills and competencies to be able to challenge dominant and marginalising narratives within the NHS, training and commissioning’.
As if this is not enough of a burden, they also have to:
‘develop a curriculum, training experience and support mechanisms that ensures trainees understand and have the skills to attend to and address the impact of experiences of historic and current structural, institutional, and interpersonal racism and other forms of discrimination on the development of disparities in physical health, mental health and social care’
And so it goes on and on and on.
The remaining eight standards are a monstrous creation, of which Frankenstein would be immensely proud, loosely stitching together the scientific principles of clinical psychology with Critical Social Justice dogma. The end result is an incoherent and unwieldy document that, on the one hand, acknowledges evidence-based practice as a ‘cornerstone of clinical psychology’ and insists on the teaching of CBT, while on the other, criticises that same evidence-base for being ‘produced by a largely white, western, privileged, male population’ (p.8). These new standards place Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the heart of clinical psychology training. Critical Therapy Antidote believes that they will have a detrimental effect on the provision of mental healthcare in the UK.
If you live in the UK and care about the mental health professions and those we serve, please submit your feedback to the public consultation before Thursday 4th April. This is a rare chance to ensure that our voices are heard. You can submit your feedback here.
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