Updates from Alice Plummer, PPN SE Clinical Programme Manager

Dear Members,

I am delighted to welcome you to this special #PsychologicalProfessionsWeek newsletter edition of the PPN South East, and express a very warm welcome to all new members who have joined us!

The PPN connects all psychological professionals, those in training or aspiring to train in one of the 12 psychological professions, and anyone who is interested in shaping psychological healthcare or making the NHS more psychologically informed - in partnership with experts by experience – within a community of practice.

Given the circumstances we find ourselves in this year and not being able to host a regional in person conference, all the PPNs in England joined up this year in one big collaborative effort to host the first ever national PPN Conference! Ambitious as we are, we turned into a whole week of online events, which you can continue to access for up to six months by registering and logging in here.

At the conference I was delighted to present on how we set in motion the wheels for the professional movement that we now have #PsychologicalProfessionsIntoAction #PPsIntoAction! It all started with my very own idea when I took up my post to develop this regional PPN, that we needed to do something to create a more unifying, cohesive narrative together as psychological professionals. This observation and conversations that unfolded, culminated in the national campaign and the 3 online workshops we held across England in the first half of 2020. The rich data that emerged, informed the first ever national Vision for the Psychological Professions that was unveiled by Adrian Whittington at the conference.

There are 5 visionary planets, which you can access here (for full infographic), and is a resource for you to use, share with your colleagues and managers, and we invite you to put your commitments into action! Very soon this will develop into an interactive component on our website. Meanwhile I am proud to say that here in the South East, our PPN workstreams align to these visionary planets quite seamlessly:

• Put people first: From the outset we have involved experts by experience in our PPN, and co-produced an engagement strategy. We are logging all involvement and regularly review the impact that this has made on our work with our experts by experience as well as our Board and community of practice.
• Make all health and care psychological: We have produced a discussion paper – ‘maximising psychological practice in physical healthcare’ (please see here) and would like to invite you to discuss this with your colleagues, managers, professional bodies, etc. on how to promote what psychological professionals can offer to provide more integrated care that is bio-psycho-social and multi-professional. If you would like to submit blogs for future newsletter editions in this area, we would love to showcase your work!
• Help our communities thrive: I am proud to announce our most recent publication – ‘psychological professionals and community wellbeing’ which you can access here. The paper references some of the great work in this area within our region. Again, we would love to hear from you here if you would like us to showcase any work that psychological professionals are involved in, and also like to hear from community partners!
• Unite and increase diversity in the psychological professions: Developing an electronic career map (see here) has marked an important milestone to make explicit how you can enter and train in the 12 psychological professions, and brought them all into one unique resource for the first time! We are now working on new workstreams around widening participation into the 6 Health Education England funded roles, as well as developing a foundation programme that enables more diverse access into PWP apprenticeships. I would also like to encourage you to look into the discussion paper ‘leadership and management in the psychological professions’ which we produced, and has a set of interesting recommendations that you can read about here. Having regional PPN subnetworks are another way that we commit to this visionary planet. Currently we have one for PWPs, Health Psychologists and Aspiring Psychological Professionals, which joins up these groups across the region and gives the chairs a seat at our Board to shape our work together. We welcome any further expressions of interest to form subnetworks within the PPN South East!
• Transform and innovate: I feel very proud to be part of an organisation where I have been enabled to be bold and put my ideas forward, and work collaboratively on the ideas that others have put forward, and greatly enjoy the co-creative process within our PPN SE Team, the PPN SE Community of Practice and our sibling PPNs across the country in PPN England. This has resulted in some amazing and inspiring outputs in all of our workstream. Who would have ever dreamt at the start that we would be co-creating a professional movement together #PPsIntoAction (!), be guided by 5 visionary planets (!), and that I would now put out a casting call (see here) where you can express your interest to be filmed for the 12 psychological professions as we are now creating video content for our electronic career map.

I think there is nothing else for me to say but to thank everyone who has been and is involved in our workstreams and community of practice in 2020, and, the hard work of our very own Senior Assistant Psychologists Amy Pound and Brad Powell!

Last not least, in these very unpredictable times, I do hope our conference and our resources have brought some inspiration into your life. With all my heart, I wish you all the very best for the forthcoming festive season in whatever way you are able to engage with it.  Here’s to a new year 2021.

With my very best wishes

Alice

Alice Plummer

Clinical Programme Manager, PPN South East