This week (November 15 – 19) we are celebrating and showcasing our amazing psychological professionals as part of the national Psychological Professionals Network (PPN) week.
We have over 250 psychological professionals working in Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust including Clinical psychologists, Counsellors, Counselling psychologists, Child psychotherapists, CBT therapists, Psychological Wellbeing Practitioners and Assistant Psychologists.
Psychological professionals work with service users, families, carers and staff within many different services. In GHC there are psychological practitioners working with people across the lifespan – from children and young people to older adults and people with dementia. They input into primary and secondary care services, community and inpatient contexts, and also work within specialist teams such as early intervention in psychosis, eating disorders, perinatal and autism
The majority of psychological professionals in the Trust are found in our mental health and learning disabilities teams but we do have colleagues in some physical health services including Sexual Health, Paediatrics and the Post Covid Service. The recent merger presents an exciting opportunity to further develop psychological work in our physical health services and to highlight the connections between physical and psychological wellbeing.
Psychological professionals provide direct therapy and interventions but also support the wider organisation by offering supervision, reflective practice and teaching to colleagues. Psychological practitioners are also involved in quality improvement, audit and research projects.
Throughout the pandemic, psychological professionals have also played an important role in supporting staff, offering individual and team wellbeing support to GHC colleagues. Trust staff have had access to our primary care psychological therapies service (Let’s Talk) and counselling via our Working Well team. GHC also now hosts the recently established ICS staff mental health and wellbeing hub and psychological professionals are core members of this team.
Dr Liz Curtis, Head of Psychological Services said: “We’re really pleased to join regional and national colleagues from the PPN to collectively highlight and celebrate the work that psychological professionals do. This is an exciting time for us, with new psychological roles emerging as part of the Long-Term Plan, and I hope we can use this opportunity to extend our ability to support the development of psychologically informed services across GHC. I am hugely proud of the difference that psychological professionals make to the people that use our services and of the support that they provide to colleagues across the organisation. Working as a psychological professional is both challenging and hugely rewarding and I am always happy to talk with anyone who is interested in working in this field.”
