Currently, there is no clear consensus about the best ways to measure outcomes and change, and gain meaningful feedback from children and young people with learning disabilities and their families.  

Research shows children and young people with learning disabilities experience higher rates of emotional and behavioural challenges, have less access to services and are underrepresented in research.  

This emphasises the importance of this British Psychological Society’s (BPS) Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP) funded project, in collaboration with the Child Outcomes Research Consortium (CORC).  

As practitioners and citizens, the Equality Act gives us all responsibility to not discriminate and to make reasonable adjustments for children and young people with learning disabilities.  

This project reports on what works and what gets in the way in measuring outcomes and gaining feedback (described in this project as ‘Hearing the Voice’) for, with and from children and young people with learning disabilities, their families and networks.  

The project recognises that we need to measure outcomes and hear the voices across different levels, from individual support, service-level and communities, and across different kinds of activities. Hence, the project’s learning is contextual and developmental rather than focusing narrowly on specialist services.   

The project aims to advance and grow ‘best practice’ in gathering feedback and using outcome measures with children and young people with learning disabilities (CYP-LD), their families and networks. 

CORC hosted and participated across all project activities.  Jeni McElwee, Neil Phillips and Ro Rossiter, from the DCP’s Children, Young People and their Families Faculty LD Network, and Professor Eric Emerson, led project streams.  

We gathered, analysed and integrated information from surveys, databases, literature, networking, consultations and workshops across practitioners and organisations (voluntary sector and professional), and directly from children and young people with learning disabilities, and some broader neuro-diversities, their parents and carers on measuring outcomes and change, and gathering feedback/hearing their voice.  

The project also needed to consider and include pandemic-related issues, as well as the need for more focus and action on equalities, diversity and inclusivity, particularly racism and more consideration of intersectionalities.   

The project materials, learning and revised guidance are now live on the CORC website. They include a project summary and revised guidance, reports on survey findings on measures in use, the Hearing the Voice/gathering feedback good practice examples, thematic analysis and guidelines, tables signposting organisations and resources for ‘Hearing the Voice’ and for measures particularly for PMLD and service-level evaluation. 

Lucy Marks MBE, Independent Consultant Clinical Psychologist

I have had over 30 years’ experience developing primary care psychology services in East London and I am delighted to have started a piece of work for the DCP to:

1. Develop a position paper on best practice in clinical psychology in primary care, which can be used by commissioners, provider trusts and psychologists to develop high quality work in this area
2. Develop a new network for Clinical Psychologists with an interest in working in primary care.

The work will cover the lifespan and is not just limited to adults. There has been considerable interest from a variety of Clinical Psychologists who have started to get involved.

This is a good time for this work because GPs are particularly interested in developing their capacity to manage mental health issues given the impact of Covid-19 and there are opportunities for innovation with the development of Primary Care Networks.

If you would like to:

• Find out more about best practice in primary care clinical psychology
• Contribute to or comment on the position paper on primary care clinical psychology
• Join the network of Psychologists in Primary Care

Please contact [email protected]

We have had our first meeting of the Core Advisory Group, which was well attended.

Annette Schlosser and Lawrence Moulin are jointly chairing and the work is supported by Andrew Baldwin from the BPS.

Key clinical psychologists whose work was evaluated in the Centre for Mental health report are attending, as well as clinical psychologists from the Primary Care Mental Health team in Islington.

The Nation chairs, Branch chairs and Faculty chairs have been contacted about this work and I am keen to hear from more Clinical Psychologists who might be interested in being involved in this project.

I will be having conversations with some of the psychologists from the 12 new community mental health pilot sites. It would be helpful to have a range of clinical psychologists across the UK and experts by experience involved.

I am working with the DCP, the NHS Confederation and the Centre for Mental Health to jointly put on a series of 1 hour webinars for GPs, Psychologists and Commissioners to promote clinical psychologists working in primary care, based on the evaluation carried out by the Centre for Mental Health.

I have been working with Andrew Baldwin from the BPS, Lawrence Moulin, Annette Schlosser, Suzanne Heywood-Everett and Laura Fisk on this work.

We are delighted that the Chair of the NHS confederation’s clinical commissioning committee, Dr. Phil Moore, who is a

GP is now involved. We plan to have the first webinar in April and will start promoting it once we have confirmed the date.

‘Primary Care Clinical Psychology: Creating opportunities for Innovative developments to meet the needs of GPs and their patients’

Two Clinical Psychologists Suzanne Heywood-Everett and Cathy Byard will showcase their services in Bradford and Catterick that were evaluated by the Centre for Mental Health, demonstrating the value that Clinical Psychologists can bring and showing how primary care can provide opportunities for innovation.

Do come along!

This webinar looked at new ways to support people with physical and mental health needs in primary care, leading to improved patient outcomes, creation of savings and reduced stress for clinicians.

You can view a recording of the webinar, an animation that was shown at the event and get a patient's perspective by visiting the NHS Confederation website.

The last 20 years has seen the role of clinical psychologists in the NHS diversify from expert therapist to consultancy and service development, linked to the ‘new ways of working’ initiative led by the DCP.

In many ways, it feels as if we are entering a similar phase of development in which clinical psychologists review and expand on our roles, and again there is a need for the DCP to take a lead on this.

At the 2018 DCP conference a nominal group exercise generated a number of ideas about expanding the roles that clinical psychologists occupy, working in different settings (e.g. primary care, community bases), with new responsibilities (e.g. non-medical responsible clinician) and new aims (e.g. preventing hospital admissions, influencing local and national policy).

What also became apparent is that many psychologists are already in such roles.

Currently, however, there has been no systematic investigation of these roles and the services they have developed, or how effective they are in helping the public.

This project aims to fill this gap by scoping out new developments in the roles played by clinical psychologists, and assessing their impact.

Understanding Depression follows on from Understanding Psychosis in increasing the public’s awareness of psychological approaches to mental health difficulties.

It highlights the social factors that can cause and maintain depression and looks at social conditions likely to reduce or prevent it.

Understanding Depression has been published and is available to read on the BPS website.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence (APPG for PDD) is a cross-party parliamentary group dedicated to persuading government, government departments and relevant public and medical bodies to reduce the individual and social harms associated with the injudicious and overuse of prescribed psychoactive medications (e.g. antidepressants. benzodiazepines, antipsychotics, stimulants and painkillers).

There is growing evidence that long-term use of psychiatric and other medications has worse outcomes. Individual and social harms range from mild to moderate distress, to cognitive impairment, loss of functioning, suicidal ideation and suicide.