DCP London and South East Branch – May 2025 newsletter

This is the first edition of the newsletter for the newly formed London and South East branch of the Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP). 

At a time when professional connections, knowledge exchange and support are more important than ever for the profession, our Chair, Annabel Poate-Joyner, begins the newsletter with an important overview of the way in which the new branch has been designed to meet the needs of clinical psychologists across the South East of England and London. 

Patrick Adrian Chan, our new joint newsletter editor, provides a flavour of the new branch launch event, 'Connecting and collaborating with clinical psychologists at all stages of our career paths'. This featured a stellar range of speakers including Roman Raczka, Ryan Kemp and Adrian Whittington who spoke cogently about the opportunities and challenges facing clinical psychologists today. The event was well attended and provided a valuable opportunity for colleagues to meet face to face.

Annabel then outlines future plans for the branch and invites you to get involved, either by attending events, joining our new communication channel or participating in the branch committee which includes experienced and newly qualified psychologists and provides a great vehicle for your own professional development.   

Keith Miller, Patrick Adrian Chan and Ray Cuffe

Joint Newsletter Editors

Chair's introduction

Annabel Poate-Joyner, Consultant Clinical & Coaching Psychologist in independent practice 

Welcome to the newly merged DCP London and South East Branch of the DCP!

The London and South East Branch aims to foster the personal and professional growth of its members through the provision of supportive CPD and networking events, which contribute to the positive development of clinical psychologists, clinical psychology services and delivery of psychological leadership and approaches across all sectors.

The London Branch has always been a fairly active whilst the South East Branch which covers Kent, East and West Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and the southern areas of London had struggled to keep a committee together, and as a result, they hadn't been able to organise any events in recent years.

The previous London Branch Chair, Alison Beck, and myself as South East Chair had discussed the ongoing situation as we were very keen to galvanise the two branches into co-ordinated action. We therefore discussed a potential merger with our respective committee members. 

Our vision was to create a joint committee with the enthusiasm and expertise needed to organise events to bring clinical psychologists together from across London and the South of England. We really do hope this will create a much more connected and collaborative network of clinical psychologists at all stages of their professional career paths. All clinical psychologists who work, train or live in our area are very welcome to join us, receive our newsletters and updates and attend our events.

This newly merged network will work to connect clinical psychology colleagues working across London and the South East counties, whether training and working in the NHS and local training courses with clinical psychologists working in the private sector, independent clinical practice and other specialist professional fields including expert witness and medico-legal practice.

And so finally, the newly merged BPS DCP London and South East Branch has been created, which we intend will offer new opportunities for those of you who live, work and study in our wonderful part of England! 

We hope the new network will help you feel part of a community of clinical psychologists who actually know each other and who are keen to work, learn and share professional interests and to support each other in order to better meet the exciting challenges of being clinical psychologists in 2025 and beyond!

Branch launch event: Connecting and collaborating with clinical psychologists at all stages of our career paths

Patrick Adrian Chan, Annabel Poate-Joyner, and Keith Miller describe the day.

Our inaugural in-person event was held on 3 April 2025 at the BPS London offices with around 40 people attending. It was structured to enable time for networking and re-establishing professional links both before and after the formal presentations. 

The speaker presentations featured a range of senior members of our profession. They included:

• Dr Roman Raczka, President of the BPS
• Dr Ryan Kemp, Director of Therapies for NHS Central and North West London and current DCP England Chair
• Dr Adrian Whittington, National Clinical Lead for Psychological Professions of NHS England and Psychological Professions Network (PPN).

 Additional speakers also included:

• Estelle Moore, Chair, London Psychological Professions Network, Director of Psychological Professionals; West London NHS Trust
• Tony Lavender, Chair of the BPS Practice Board; Professor Emeritus, Canterbury Christ Church University
• Helen Pote, Director of Programmes and Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Royal Holloway.

Roman Raczka, a past Chair of the London branch, began the event by discussing his roles and activities as current president of the BPS. He talked about the work he has carried out during his tenure, his implementation of the BPS strategic vision and activities undertaken so far as president.

He emphasised his work implementing the BPS's Psychology Matters programme, which aims to showcase the power of psychology and help influence government policy and increase information dissemination demonstrating why psychology is so important in political contexts. He also highlighted his focus on staff wellbeing, the work on Research Matters, and ended by reflecting on the importance of leadership both within and outside the BPS.

The second talk by Ryan Kemp discussed Compassionate Leadership and the key qualities which contribute to effective leadership. He discussed how the most effective leaders focus on compassion, trust, and joy rather than anxiety-driven attempts to exert control by fear. The concept of psychological safety was also emphasised along with a need to base this on effective teamwork and a shared goal for the purpose and mission of an organisation.

The third presenter, Adrian Whittington, discussed the Psychological Professions Network (PPN), and the networks that the PPN shares with other psychological professional bodies, as well as their unique contributions. He also discussed the vision for expanding psychological professions to make contributions to the whole of health and social care.

The shifts of the NHS 10-year plan were also discussed as it moves towards prevention, community, and digital forms of work. Estelle Moore also spoke about the current work of the PPN across the 33 Trusts in London and outlined its future strategic development plans in the capital.

The final talk by Tony Lavender and Helen Pote discussed the current landscape of the clinical psychology training programmes across London and the South East, particularly focusing on Canterbury Christ Church University and Royal Holloway University. They described the current advances on inclusivity and diversity within the admissions process and embedded within the training programme as a whole. 

The event also included poster presentations prepared by psychologists at the pre-qualification stage of clinical training who presented their research work for dissemination. There were five participants:

• Lucy Cadell, Goldsmiths, University of London
• Elisa Silva, Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Trust
• Maxime Levasseur, CNTW NHS Trust
• Maddison White, Kent and Medway NHS Trust)
• Alexis Gott (CNWL NHS Trust)

The winner of the best poster award was Maxime Levasseur for her research, 'Questioning the Sex Education Cis-tem: LGBTQIA+ Sex Education and the Safety of First Consensual Sexual Encounters'. The award was judged by Annabel Poate-Joyner and Roman Raczka.

Future plans and getting involved with the new Branch

Annabel Poate-Joyner writes:

We are in the process of planning a number of exciting CPD events over the coming months, including prevention and public health across the population, positive psychology, assisted dying, and coaching and mentoring. The emphasis is going to be on face-to-face events in order to provide opportunities for interesting, exciting debates with the speakers and to enable professional networking between clinical psychologists.

These events will be run jointly by the DCP London and South East Branch and other specific groups including London NHS Trusts, local PPNs, and Strategic Clinical Network for Psychologists in London (SCNPL). While the primary focus will be on clinical psychologists, we will also be including colleagues from other disciplines such as health psychologists, child and family, specialist neuropsychologists and research psychologists as appropriate. We welcome suggestions from colleagues about topics for future events.

The committee is a lively and interesting group and we would welcome more applications to join. If you are interested, you can contact me at [email protected] to discuss joining us and the formal and less formal ways you can get involved in our work.

The list of current committee members and the link to the application form is on our microsite.

DCP LinkedIn groups

The DCP has launched a LinkedIn page so that clinical psychologists can directly communicate, discuss issues and share articles of interests in the same way that many of us already do individually through this platform. The link for this is available here.

We hope that you will join this group as part of building your increased contacts with other colleagues. 

There is also a DCP Pre-Qualification Group LinkedIn, which will be of particular interest to early career stage psychology graduates and post-graduates as well as those in clinical psychology training. 

I look forward to taking forward these important professional developments with your input in the coming months.