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Clinical psychologists should have experience of indirect working through carers (which includes both family carers as well as professional staff acting in this capacity).
Clinical Psychologists should understand the rationale for indirect work. The DCP (2006) notes that:
"In addition to children and adolescents, many people with severe and enduring mental Illness, people with learning disability, health problems or older adults already live with full time or part time carers. Carers can be family, relatives, or professionals and these people have the greatest contact with the client, but do not have the clinical psychologist's broad training in psychological methods and models".
As a result it is often helpful for clinical psychologists to assist carers to make use of psychological methods, rather than intervening directly. They should be able to demonstrate:
| An awareness that indirect clinical work aims to ensure that care is as psychologically informed as possible. |
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An ability to communicate with carers about the person for whom they are caring
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| An ability to provide general training on psychological approaches for carers adapted to the carer's levels of psychological understanding and aimed at helping to ensure that they can provide psychologically-informed good-quality care |
| An ability to adapt psychological ideas and formulations to help carers to develop strategies to manage their stress. |
Reference:
DCP briefing paper Clinical Psychology in Services for People with Severe and Enduring Mental Illness
http://www.bps.org.uk/document-download-area/document-download$.cfm?file_uuid=B392E2EE-1143-DFD0-7EDE-1290DB440E31
Consultancy is a related but separate issue and trainees should understand the contribution of consultancy models to clinical practice, but we do not necessarily expect that all trainees should have done consultancy work.