“Each and every psychological professional makes a significant contribution to the lives of the people we work with”

Hello my name is Tracey and I am the chief psychological professions officer for South West Yorkshire Partnership Foundation Trust.

Psychological professionals play a hugely important role within the Trust, driven by their dedication to improving the psychological wellbeing of service users, carers and staff. Psychological professionals include all practitioner psychologists (e.g., clinical, forensic, counselling, occupational, health), psychological therapists (e.g., family and systemic psychotherapists, cognitive behavioural therapists) and psychological practitioners (e.g., children’s wellbeing practitioners, psychological wellbeing practitioners).

Each and every psychological professional makes a significant contribution to the lives of the people we work with to help them to reach their potential.

I’m a clinical psychologist by background and have worked predominantly in child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) and child development. I spent 11 years training clinical psychologists at the University of Leeds alongside various clinical roles; most recently in secure CAMHS as clinical lead at Adel Beck Secure Children’s Home and Wetherby Young Offender Institution.

Over the past two and a half years I have been also worked as the clinical lead for our Trust’s trauma informed organisation programme, which involves embedding psychological understanding and ways of working throughout everything we do for all our staff, service users and carers.  Peer support and co-production are key to achieving this.

I’m passionate about working collaboratively with service users and carers to ensure that their views and vision are central to the services we provide and have worked nationally with different professional bodies to look at different models to ensure that we provide the best possible outcomes. Working to provide services that provide equity of access and focus on decreasing health inequalities is really important to me and how the psychological professions workforce meets these agendas.

It’s fantastic to work for a Trust that recognises the value of psychological professions.  As chief psychological professions officer I have been working with senior colleagues from across the organisation to hear from our workforce about what is important to them. Looking after staff wellbeing and ensuring they have a positive experience is key to making the Trust a great place to work. We are also looking at how our psychological professions can progress and develop their careers which is really important for retention; this includes attracting people to train as psychological professionals. We are looking to develop a shared understanding of the newer roles and how they can add value to services and teams.

Working collaboratively with colleagues from all professional backgrounds is really important to ensure that we provide the best multi-disciplinary care for our service users and carers. It is important for me to continue to raise the profile of the psychological professions and encourage services to consider the skill mix within their teams and where psychological professionals might be able to add value.

Psychological professionals contribute to the wellbeing of service users by delivering specialist assessments and interventions while also collaborating with colleagues through training, supervision, and consultation to foster a deeper understanding of psychological practices across pathways. Psychological practitioners are also skilled in areas such as service development, service evaluation, clinical audits, research, leadership, management and strategic roles.

Our team in the psychological professions is a passionate group of professionals dedicated to delivering exceptional psychological care which supports the recovery of our service users and those who care for them.

Since starting in role as chief psychological professions officer in our Trust I have been able to see our Trust values embedded as part of our culture and lived through each interaction. I am proud to work for the Trust and to see the difference our psychological professions make to the lives of our service users, carers and their communities every day.