If you are an educational psychologist, registered as a Practitioner Psychologist with the HCPC, legally allowed to work in the UK and have a valid DBS and professional indemnity insurance, you are welcome to contact us to discuss registering with EdPsychs.
EdPsychs was formed in 2008 with the aim of providing outstanding educational psychology services to schools. We work closely with schools to meet the needs of the whole academic community and as a service we are committed to the development and promotion of ethical, evidence based and impactful educational psychology in society.
We work hard to find schools that fully respect the independent integrity of professional psychologists and are willing to invest time and energy in embedding psychological thinking, recommendations and programmes more deeply into their school community for the greater benefit of all. We find that schools welcome this approach as it helps them use their existing resources more effectively.
At EdPsychs, we take great pride in the fact that virtually every school we’ve ever worked with has renewed and/or extended their educational psychology contracts year-on-year.
The high demand for our services means we virtually always have a waiting list of schools looking to commission us, and as stated, most schools commission us year on year. As such, many of the psychologists supporting EdPsychs have done so for years. They support a number of schools and frequently recommend our services to colleagues.
Our strong industry reputation for professional integrity means that schools understand that we will deliver a fair and ethical opinion based on our professional guidelines, expertise and desire to support children and society rather than being an ‘in house service’ or employees of the school. Psychologists enjoy working within this framework and schools really value the service.
Schools often commission our assessments, as they are clear, thorough, evidence based and insightful, and we work across all sections of society providing a ‘psychology for all’ service model. We also complete assessments in the private sector as we have many students under our long term care, and some psychologists offer their own training packages across our schools.
The psychologists who support EdPsychs are independent consultants rather than employees of EdPsychs. We believe this model allows EPs to exercise their full independent professional judgement and expertise within HCPC and BPS guidelines.
Furthermore, it provides EPs with the flexibility to work when they want and in the environments they feel most comfortable in without the risk of their professional opinion and expertise being lost within company or organisational processes and procedures.
A key element of EdPsychs’ philosophy is a commitment to quality and expertise.
We invest heavily in CPD and provide ongoing opportunities for psychologists to meet colleagues, share good practice and refine their working models.
We have a very high level of expertise available to the company. Many of the psychologists who support EdPsychs are national authorities in their area, course tutors or directors, professors or former principal psychologists. They enjoy meeting up and providing ongoing peer training and support for other psychologists, and spend a lot of time looking at HCPC and BPS guidelines, discussing professional requirements with peers, arranging peer supervision of reports if requested and ensuring psychologists can access structures to check if their work is ethical and compliant.
Upcoming CPD sessions for Psychologists
We also have an open invitation for psychologists registered with EdPsychs to attend and contribute to our AP training sessions.
Working together to keep professionals safe is a key part of being a successful educational psychologist. As such, as part of this process all EPs complete at least two practise cases in EdPsychs’ schools before beginning work on an EdPsychs’ school contract. This enables us to confidentially and supportively work with you to ensure that your reports meet HCPC and BPS guidelines - especially around content, use of reporting terminology, accuracy and consistency.
EdPsychs provides free guidance and support to help you ensure you are as safe and compliant as possible in your work in our schools from the outset.
EPs also have ongoing opportunities, at their own request, to send an anonymised copies of their reports to colleagues for a professional opinion if they so desire. The feedback from EPs is that this 'safety first' approach is one of the most valuable aspects of being part of the EdPsychs’ model.
We expect a minimum EP commitment to EdPsychs averaging one day a week (or 40 days a year across a financial or academic year). EPs negotiate the days they complete directly with the EdPsychs’ school. Some do one day a week or fortnight, others offer two and three day blocks of time to a school. We limit EPs to only providing four days a week during term time (we have all school holidays off) to allow EPs time for opportunities to learn, reflect and complete their own CPD.
All EPs must have their own professional liability insurance, and naturally have a personal responsibility to be compliant with HCPC and BPS guidelines at all times. All EPs are professionally required to maintain an ongoing CPD log to meet HCPC expectations and so they can continually develop their skills and expertise.
EPs need to have excellent written, social and spoken communication skills and possess a warm, friendly and professional manner. EPs should also be able to show assertiveness as needed while showing respect and sensitivity to others as appropriate.
Crucially, EPs must firmly follow professional guidelines even if a school or client would prefer otherwise.
All EPs supporting EdPsychs’ schools need to be skilled at completing cognitive and curriculum based assessments as a baseline. This is a core skill of our profession and links directly to the ‘Cognition and Learning’ sections of EHCP requests for assessment.
EPs are required to be skilled at advancing or not advancing educational psychology diagnoses against accepted definitions to ensure clients access appropriate opportunities in society. This is an area that EPs often request training and supervisory support on, which is why there are so many CPD and supervision opportunities in these areas.
Many EPs supporting EdPsychs’ schools develop their diagnostic skills during the practise cases and via supervision in the early days of EdPsychs’ school contracts.
EdPsychs can provide advice on maintaining an accurate and up-to-date HCPC CPD logs to meet HCPC criteria. It’s all very clear and straightforward and our optional training and support sessions are also directly linked to HCPC CPD criteria. EPs have already requested and completed sessions in this area and additional sessions can be requested in the future.
This really depends on the needs of the school and the skills and expertise of the individual psychologist. All school contracts are different.
Although a significant proportion of EdPsychs’ work in schools is assessment and consultation based (and it’s up to the school and individual EP to negotiate this between themselves), most EPs like to offer a wider service to schools.
John Hepburn, Company Director, will work on your behalf to introduce you to schools that are a best fit for your skills base.
Recent examples of EP work in EdPsychs’ schools include:
Many of our schools have full time assistant psychologist support. Our assistant psychologists work full-time in a school to implement EP recommendations and support schools better. A proportion of their time is aimed at researching good practice and evidence bases that EPs can access, evaluate and make their own professional judgements about.
If you feel that you have the skills and expertise to support an AP in a school and you would like to do so, you are welcome to let us know and we can then offer school contracts where there is an attached AP.
If you would like to discuss offering EP services to schools in more detail, you are welcome to contact us at your own convenience.
Once we receive your request, John Hepburn, Company Director will invite you for a meeting in Harley Street, where we are based. John will discuss your professional skills and expertise and the type of work you’d like to offer schools. If you would like to go forward with school contract work, John can then organise some practise cases for you and we can proceed from there.
We look forward to hearing from you.
