Welsh Branch

Andrew Watt (Chair, Welsh Branch)

The work of the Committee Members of the Welsh Branch is given freely and it is important that they should be thanked for their continuing commitment to the Branch and the Society. The Welsh Branch has several long-serving members and their continuing support is much appreciated, few of the following activities of the Branch could have been achieved without contributions from Paul Byers, John Boddy, Kim Williams, Wynford Bellin, Neil Frude and Robert Kidd.

The Branch has continued to increase levels of activity in a number of areas, including Scientific and CPD meetings, local support for Divisions, support for Special Interest Groups within Wales and engagement with political consultation.

We have delivered a full and varied programme of Scientific & CPD meetings. The topics of the meetings this year included, amongst others, the effects of choice overload on consumer engagement (Professor Sheena Iyengar); evaluating the driving ability of people who have suffered brain damage (Dr Patricia McKenna); street drunkenness in Cardiff (The Lion’s Breath Project; Dr Nick Perham). I should take this opportunity to thank our administrator (Helen Taylor) and our guest speakers for making these meetings such a great success.

Our political activities over the past and coming 12 months have been many. The Branch is currently engaged in an evaluation of the views of psychologists working in the NHS in Wales on the implementation of the Agenda For Change policy. Our Welsh Assembly Liaison Officer is currently organizing a collaborative event including practitioners and policy makers who will be affected by implementation of New Ways of Working in Wales. We again had a presence at the most important cultural event of the Welsh calendar, The National Eisteddfod (thanks again to Wynford Bellin).

As well as providing services to our graduate members the Branch also organizes an annual student conference. This year the event was held at Swansea University and was well attended by students from all of the Universities providing accredited Psychology undergraduate programmes in Wales. Many thanks are due to the Psychology teaching team at Swansea for helping us make this event a continuing success. We all look forward to this year’s event which will be held at Bangor University.

I wish to thank all who have helped us make this another successful year for the Welsh Branch of the Society.