Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode 148: What is an Assistant Psychologist and What do they do?

In this episode of the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast, Dr. Marianne Trent is joined by assistant psychologist Luke Meakin to discuss the often ambiguous role of an assistant psychologist. They dive deep into the responsibilities, expectations, and realities of the role, offering valuable guidance for aspiring psychologists. This episode covers the history of the assistant psychologist role, its original purpose, and how it has evolved over time. Luke shares his journey as an older applicant and the challenges of balancing diverse responsibilities within the role.

Whether you’re already working as an assistant psychologist or considering the path, this episode provides a clear understanding of what the role entails, how it fits within the broader field of psychology, and the importance of supportive supervision.

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding the true purpose and responsibilities of assistant psychologists.
• Navigating the complexities and expectations of the role in various settings.
• The importance of supportive supervision and creating a safe learning environment

The Highlights:

• 00:00 - Introduction and Overview of Assistant Psychologist Roles
• 00:21 - Host Welcome and Episode Introduction
• 01:34 - Introducing Guest: Assistant Psychologist Luke Meakin
• 02:33 - Discussing the Ambiguity of the Role
• 05:09 - The Original Purpose of Assistant Psychologists
• 07:08 - Why AP Roles Are Not Training Roles
• 09:01 - Balancing Supervision and Clinical Responsibility
• 10:01 - The Importance of Feeling Safe and Valued in the Role
• 12:25 - Luke’s Journey as an Older Applicant in Psychology
• 14:21 - The Ambiguity of Assistant Roles Across Different Services
• 15:29 - Historical Context: The Evolution of the Role
• 18:35 - Challenges of Unpaid and Honorary Assistant Roles
• 21:00 - Reflecting on Personal Development and Supervision Experiences
• 25:05 - Reducing Competition Among Assistants: Celebrating Others
• 28:36 - Navigating Burnout and Maintaining a Work-Life Balance

Links:

📲 Connect with Luke here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luke-meakin/

🖥️ Check out my brand new short courses for aspiring psychologists and mental health professionals here: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/short-courses

🫶 To support me by donating to help cover my costs for the free resources I provide click here: https://the-aspiring-psychologist.captivate.fm/support

📚 To check out The Clinical Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3jOplx0

📖 To check out The Aspiring Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3CP2N97

💡 To check out or join the aspiring psychologist membership for just £30 per month head to: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/membership-interested

✍️ Get your Supervision Shaping Tool now: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/supervision

📱Connect socially with Marianne and check out ways to work with her, including the Aspiring Psychologist Book, Clinical Psychologist book and The Aspiring Psychologist Membership on her Link tree: https://linktr.ee/drmariannetrent

💬 To join my free Facebook group and discuss your thoughts on this episode and more: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aspiringpsychologistcommunity

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What is an assistant psychologist? What do they do and how should they be protected? With my guest, I'm answering all of these questions and more for this really brilliant and insightful podcast episode. I hope you find it so useful.

Welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. I am Dr. Marianne Trent, and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. Now, as I have spoken about before, my route into professional psychology was via a series of assistant psychologist roles, but that is by no means the only way into professional psychology. However, it is still a really common one. So as part of this series, looking at assistant psychologist, I'm bringing you a really brilliant, insightful, thoughtful, compassionate chat with my expert for today. Luke Kin, who is himself an assistant psychologist, he is also an older applicant, and so there are so many interesting areas for discussion. If you value this episode, please do take a moment to like, subscribe, follow, comment if watching on YouTube or Spotify or just get in contact with me on socials or in my free Facebook group, the Aspiring Psychologist community with Dr. Marianne Trent. Hope you find it as interesting as thought provoking as I did. I'll look forward to catching up with you on the other side. Hi, just want to welcome along our guest for today, Luke Meakin, who's an assistant psychologist. Welcome to the podcast, Luke.

Hi. Hi Marianne. Thanks for having me on. Really appreciate it.

Oh, well thank you for being so curious really. So we got connected on LinkedIn exchanged, some kind of voice notes and messages and we just thinking about what an assistant psychologist is, what are the responsibilities, and we thought it might make a really interesting podcast episode and certainly in preparation for this episode, which I will hands up say I haven't had time to do full justice to, which is probably part of the problem isn't it? Stuff we're going to talk about. But I've just found it a really interesting process. So thanks for kick-starting more of my thinking in this area already.

Yeah, that's fine. It's good to have someone else to riff off because I myself spend a lot of time wondering what an assistant psychologist does and is, even though I've been in it for two years now

And having been an assistant, I found it really interesting. So we're kind of referring within today to the guidance put together by the Association for Clinical Psychologists (ACP). And in case anyone hasn't heard of them before, they are not our professional body as clinical psychologists, you can join it as a qualified clinical psychologist or as a trainee clinical. I think it would be really lovely if they thought about opening that up to people in earlier stages of their career, but it isn't currently. So in the UK our professional body for clinical psychology is the Healthcare Professions Council, HCPC, and that's who we pay our registration to. And again, you can't join as an assistant psychologist, it's only for practitioner psychologists of which there are currently nine in the uk. I think I'm right in saying so. Yes, in case you've landed on this podcast and you're like, what is this? What is an assistant psychologist? What's your understanding of what an assistant psychologist is? Luke, if that's not too big a question to dump on you.

I suppose it can be quite broad. My big issue is the ambiguity of the role. I think that's why I reached out to you. However, my understanding I suppose would begin with the work that the psychologist, the qualified psychologist can give up and give someone else and for want of a better term potentially the grunt work of the profession. That's how I used to think of it anyway. And that would be extra research, some psychometric testing, probably say note taking letters, these sorts of things. At least that's what I used to think. And then when getting into the profession, I have had multiple maybe conflicting experiences and then talking to others, some have had much more pressure on them, essentially doing half of the psychologist work, quite a lot of clinical facing work with clients that maybe have too much risk for them because I suppose I would expect an assistant to have clinical facing work but be very, very managed and maintained in that work. So I suppose my original understanding was just the extra bits that the psychologist can afford to get rid of.

Yeah, exactly. And I guess I've always thought about it as allowing the full and optimal functioning and capabilities of a qualified clinical or forensic or occupational psychologist whilst optimising their function without them having to do some of the stuff that doesn't necessarily need to be done by a qualified psychologist. That could be done under supervision of a practitioner psychologist. And it's not make this purely about clinical, but a practitioner HCP psychologist. So for example, it's important that we make that distinction because actually I was an assistant clinical psychologist in a forensic service and primarily in my first service I was supervised by a clinical psychologist. But in my second assistant post still with me, I was supervised by a forensic psychologist and actually really valued the supervision from both of those practitioner psychologists. But it was very clear that I was working towards a clinical doctorate route. But the supervision should feel valued, it should feel appropriate, it should feel like it allows you to thrive as a junior member of the psychology team. And I know before we hit record, both of us were quite intrigued by the guidance that we read by a CP that said actually the stuff in between your psychology graduation and your getting on to professional doctorate is not a training role. Why did that resonate with you, Luke? I know why it resonated with me, but why did that resonate with you so much?

I suppose it was really strange to see it written down because logically it makes sense I suppose. But we are picking up so much extra experience in these roles that is psychologically informed whether it is direct or indirect. And by direct I mean through supervision and so on, indirect the things you pick up, maybe your own reflection reflective practise. But I suppose it was really poignant to me because there is, I'm trying to get on the doctorate myself. There is such a blood bath when it comes to applications and how difficult that period is and everyone's sort of competing against each other. We have these tonnes and tonnes of experience between many of us that on paper I suppose technically isn't counted, which seems like it's counterproductive for the profession because psychology is supposed to be able to take a bird's eye view above everything and sort of ask why.

What else? And the only way you can keep asking why is if you have professionals that have different experiences. I think because everyone should have the fundamental foundational knowledge, which the training would dictate and then your own experience should be able to take that in different ways and potentially like a creative avenue. So it was surprising to see it written down I suppose, because it seems like a disconnect with the application process for clinical and forensic. I have some friends who are on the forensic route as well. It seems quite similar in that sense. So what are we to do with this experience that we're told to be reflexive of and take supervision with? It's quite strange to me, quite conflicting

And I hope it didn't feel like a kick in the teeth that kind of said, you don't matter. I didn't necessarily read it that way. And all the stuff you're doing, it's just pointless. It doesn't matter. I almost took it as you don't hold clinical responsibility. You don't even hold that as a trainee. I signed for the first time as a qualified psychologist in my new band seven post. And I think there needs to be more done to help you really begin to think about that clinical responsibility. But that's a whole different podcast episode.

That's a really good point. Yeah, I suppose you are right. It should be used as sort of no, this is the sort of thing I need to be doing. I need to be training, I need to be doing X, Y, z. I didn't think of it as a kick in the teeth. I kind of see it. I kind of see it as once I am qualified, all my experience would be really helpful and it's already helpful in my life now, but it's just strange to see in that format. But you make a really great point. It should be used more of a shield for us. It

Should feel so safe.

It should feel like an opportunity to grow, learn, develop, reflect, be curious, have fun as well. You should be having fun within your psychology teams. It should hopefully feel like a safe place where you can be yourself and you can be valued as being yourself. And I have to say that my experience of being an assistant in both of my assistant settings, so I did do a split post across three wards when I was in my first assistant post, which was very varied and very diverse. But then my second one was just in one setting with youth offending population. But both times I felt really valued by the teams and I was invited on socials and stuff with the teams, both the psychology teams and the ward teams. And it's really nice to feel, I put a post out on my LinkedIn yesterday about the trainee room or the assistant room and people being introduced at meetings as this is my assistant, this is my trainee actually, no, this is Luke.

And he works with us. And as an assistant psychologist in the team, it's so different. And actually it's sick organisations that think about people, maybe it's burned out clinicians that think about people as replaceable, as interchangeable when actually I should be. If you are my assistant, even as my podcast guest, I'm curious, I'm thinking how can we help Luke to shape, to be developed, to learn to grow, to think about this as an opportunity for dissemination for his future career, for hopefully something that is useful for him as well as useful for the listeners and useful for me as a podcast host. And I think you'd be, even though you're having these curious existential professional qualifications, it's all a bit Dawson's Creek, isn't it? There's probably a very nineties reference, but I think you're obviously a great assistant psychologist. You've got great capabilities for doing this highly nuanced work that we do.

Thank you for that. The Dawson's Creek reference didn't go over my head. I'm a little bit older than your average ap, so no, thank you for that. And I think what you were just saying reminded me of why I sort of, or the question that I reached out to you with, which wasn't necessarily a question, but wondering about the ambiguity of the role that I personally struggle with at times. So I've come from throughout my twenties I worked in various different industries. I had the undergraduate and then a master's and I veered off and did a few other things. And I suppose that there was a lot of structure in those roles, very different industries. Some were construction, marketing and so on. There was a lot of structure that allowed for creativity because most of the end game was numbers. You had to produce numbers, you had to produce sales, and it was easy in that sense.

Whereas I suppose coming into psychology, I mean my second assistant post now, and I did some work as a healthcare assistant prior to that, I found that the written structure is there. So on your job application, your job spec and so forth, there is less creativity probably because you are working with individuals of risk to show. But there seems to be a barrier with assistance with where we can be creative in our work sometimes because I think some people expect us to be able to be a minis psychologist and be doing much more client work. And then I'd probably say in my own experience of other people who I've worked with, they may be the ones who are not the psychologists themselves. I think the psychologists tend to be quite aware of what we should and shouldn't be doing because like yourself, they've all been through it, which is really good.

They just might not be enough of them around for because of pressures as you've alluded to. That might be another podcast episode. But I suppose to bring it back, the ambiguity I struggle with is there can be such variance across posts. One post can be very research admin based, one can be very clinical facing and no research admin based. And from the document that we both just read prior to this, it seems to form the research and admin based stuff is what an assistant should technically be doing or what it was set up for originally. And that really struck me because to me that experience like the anomaly when I went into my perception was that the research and admin was kind of the anomaly side of things. It was extra skills and assistant can pick up for later on and it should be more clinical facing, whereas an actual fact it shouldn't be.

Yeah, I thought it was really interesting. The document kind of spoke about the historical beginnings of the assistant psychologist role, which was originally called something else, which escapes me.

I think it was a psychology technician I

Think. Yeah, that rings a bell. But it was originally put together as a role for inpatient services so that it could support the optimal functioning so that things that didn't need to necessarily be done by the qualified could be done by a graduate psychology person. So someone with a psychology undergraduate degree that knew about, I guess knew about the principles of clinical significance and if they were doing assessments or neuropsych that was appropriate to the role that they knew about important effects to do and not do and mindful considerations and could act under supervision without too much ad-lib or changing what was going on. But that was why they were created. And I guess even in my role now, the stuff that I have to do with the background stuff for the psychology podcast, it's really admin heavy. It's really boring at times. I have to say this is a labour of love people, so please do.

People kind takes me hours and hours and hours of my week, which is unpaid time, but sometimes I get people contacting me saying, could I do some assistant psychologist or honorary psychology work? And because I'm online only with my clinical practise these days, there's not really anything they can do that's clinical, so it doesn't feel like a fair use of their time to just come and do my boring admin. And I also believe in people being paid for their time as well. So I don't believe in honorary assistant posts. And there's a whole podcast episode, hopefully my lovely podcast editor will put on screen now about the ethical and practical considerations involved and inherent in honorary assistance psychologist roles. But yeah, it's interesting that in the guidance in the document that we read, really it's recommending that 50% of an assistant psychologist time ought to be admin, but it's ought to be relevant admin that needs to be done by someone with psychology training, psychology education I should say. It shouldn't just be photocopying. And I know that sometimes I've worked with people who have kind of felt like they've been duped into applying for an admin assistant role at perhaps band three, band four, maybe even band five that maybe they couldn't fill before. And it's been rebranded as assistant psychologist, suddenly they've got hundreds of applicants for this role. But when it comes about it's all admin and no psychology and very little supervision from a practitioner psychologist and it all just feels like a horrid scam.

Yeah, I definitely agree with the, it sounds like a horrid scam. It feels like a horrid scam to many people because where are you supposed to be picking up the experience of what a first trainee and then a clinical psychologist would be doing? Because I think it's really important if an AP is lucky enough to be in a service that has a trainee as well because they can sort of gauge the next step on regardless of whether it is clinical forensic, they can gauge the next step because I've heard of some people having supervision from very, very senior positions in their team and there's probably quite a wide disconnect between the assistant and the senior, whether it's responsibility or time away from being an assistant because it's been 10, 15 years since they've been one. So the scam thing sounds right and it's wrong that that's what we're dealing with at times. But I must go back to your original point that you made about spending all your time doing research for the podcast. I think speak for myself and many others, it's very important for the community. So thank you for that time of putting into research. We all benefit from it.

Oh, thanks Luke. That's really kind of you to say, I love this podcast, I love it. I feel get all misty eye, but I feel so proud of it. I would've loved to listen to this and to just be open to these experiences when I was an assistant psychologist. So I was part of my first assistant post. It was in a large psychiatric hospital, St. Andrew's Hospital, St. Andrew's Healthcare I should say in Northampton. And there was absolutely loads of assistance. And so we'd have assistant meetings and do presentations. But for me, I found there's a real value of listening to people at the similar stage of your career. But like you said, being able to think, well actually that was an interview with a trainee and I used to love going to ward meetings for example, when a trainee was presenting or present and hearing them formulate or hearing the way that they spoke about clients and clinical work so that I could see where I perhaps needed to be aiming for and where the gaps in my experience were.

And like you said, if I'm only ever working with HB or HC psychologists, I might feel like I'm coming up short all the time. But actually what we also need to be aware of is that you may be an absolute whiz at neuropsych and psychosis populations. I may never have done any of that and yet we might still be similarly ready and brilliant for clinical training. And I think that's something that was spoken about in an episode I did with Alistair Tega and one of his wonderful assistant psychologists a little while back and that was called how to get an assistant psychologist post. But Alistair was like, I don't want to know all the stuff you've done. I want to look at what your abilities are. Like I said, your ability to be able to be curious, to learn, to be reflective, to be a really wonderful assistant psychologist without necessarily you don't need to have this I ident experience.

Because actually when you do join any professional doctorate, whether that is forensic, whether that is clinical, whether that's counselling, I would like to look at that cohort and feel that probably across all of the cohort there's all of the key bits have been met, but no one person has all of that already at the beginning of training, otherwise they wouldn't be needing training would they that you kind of compliment each other. And so myself and one of my peers were the only people that had had any forensic experience. So if there was issues around risk and forensic, we'd be a natural first checking point. But people who, we had a qualified teacher on our cohort, so issues around education and the school setting, naturally he was someone that we would draw on and people that were parents on the cohort and people that had worked in services for people with intellectual disabilities.

This is the beauty of a cohort and seeing each other not as competition, which I know is really, really tricky when you are striving for places. But I used to go to those assistant meetings and to begin with I was like, well, I'm never going to get on training because Vicky, I'm going to name her Vicky who is on LinkedIn who is amazing, she's got a book as well about happiness and psychology and positive psychology. Dr. Vicki Barnes, I hope it's okay to name you Vicki, I remember watching you watching her present on DBT stuff and I was like, well, I'm never going to get to be a trainee because Vicky and other people like Vicky are much better than me and they are going to get all the places and I'm not good enough. But actually we ended up getting onto training exactly the same year, different universities, but then we applied to different universities and it's really thinking about the people that you are working with as people.

So the way I'd moved by the time we both got on training moved to really celebrate others and to try and champion other assistants and other people in upcoming, this is still what I do now rather than necessarily being threatened. What do we get when we build other people up rather than be threatened by them? And actually jealousy is a really important concept in itself because jealousy is often seeing someone who's got what you want and rather than saying, oh my god, amazing, well done. We can be wanting to tear people down, but that's our jealousy, which is a very complicated emotion, but I think it does come up in psychology.

Yeah, I think you make a great point that we shouldn't be trying to tear each other down because as you earlier said, no one has all the skills and the experience. We'd hope that again, everyone starts at some sort of baseline foundational skill that they're allowed to practise in the future for safety reasons and risk and just keeping everything sort of the same across the board, but then celebrating the backgrounds, the different experiences, whether that is particular posts you've worked in, like you mentioned, the forensic work would really help you with risk and probably also being less risk averse as well because in certain environments you've seen the worst of it, the most risky. So we can probably try this, we can try that where someone without that background may think that the risk they're dealing with is the maximum. And your story about Vicki resonated with me, but from a different point of view.

So when I was working with looking enough to have trainees in our service as well, that was kind of the moment for me where I said, oh, I can probably do this because I didn't see them too far away from me. Had talks, we'd had discussions and I was quite surprised that I was almost on a level with them about what we were discussing about. And they didn't feel like they were too far away from me in development perspective, which prior to meeting them, I kind of thought this mysterious doctorate route, they must be really hot shots in their own profession. And they had their own limitations and they were able to call them out and we were able to adapt and work together. And I think since then, and possibly because I'm a bit in my early thirties now, which is not typical for your aps, I've kind of had to continue to remind myself, what else do you bring?

I have academics behind me and I have the experience that I need. What else do I bring to the table? Because instead of looking at it like a competition, it's like what else can I naturally bring out of others? I have my own skills in a team, social and technical, but then as you rightly said, other people have those skills and how do you mesh them together and create the service that you need? Because I've also been supervised by very senior people and I've learned so much from them in how they manage services, how they run services, not that I'll need that skill now, but just how to deal with people conflicting points of view in the MDT and how to sit back and let people speak, which clinicians definitely need. We definitely need to be able to listen how to deal with conflicting opinions and make people feel empowered. So that's not necessarily a skill that I'm going to need in my client facing stuff as much in the immediate future long-term maybe after training and such. But it's really valuable to have the contrasting experiences from very senior and people just ahead of me. So it was definitely good to be able to work with the different professions and see what we can all bring different levels of the profession as opposed to seeing it as a competition.

Absolutely. And you make so many wonderful points. We should be in roles where we're being allowed to grow and develop and where we are, I guess having those regular check-in points more regularly than our appraisals people should be having appraisals every year where we're actually looking at Ks fs. So if I'm currently a band four, what do I need to be doing to be moving towards the responsibilities of a band five member of staff? So you're actually looking ahead at what the kfs are for Band five and your employer. Quite often people are like, oh, are they going to be annoyed when I had my notice in? Are they going to be disappointed that I've only been in this role for six months and now I'm on clinical training? And I was like, they should be delighted. They should be thrilled that you are developing that what you are doing in your service has helped you to advance.

I know it is a bit of a headache, it's an expensive laborious process, but they picked you because you are so amazing and you've demonstrated how amazing you are because you are now moving on to the next stage of your career. So I really hope people are met with celebration rather than dismay when they share their happy news. But you also made a really valid point about me and my forensic roles. I actually did need to spend time during my clinical training unlearning some of that risk for normal populations. So we always need to be thinking with a risk element to some extent, but the level of risk that I was used to working with, which is where someone might stab you in the eye with a pen at any point or that you might open a bedroom door and even an older adult would be crouched in the corner of the room ready to pounce. So that is not hugely typical in, for example, a general mental health setting, but it's not impossible. I'm always careful, I was always careful with my positioning of my chairs in the clinical rooms and stuff because that just makes sense. But there are certain levels of sitting with risk that you need to begin to be able to do in non forensic services. So that's a really, really good point.

It might have been that the trainee, I felt like I was able to go onto training or I felt like I was more ready since meeting them because they were so close as opposed to initially thinking they are these hot shop that are way ahead of me. I thought there's a few things which kind of alludes to your point, what should we be working towards?

Definitely, yeah, if you can see it, you can be it can't you. Whereas if you're only ever seeing the eight B Cs Ds, you might be like, well, I don't know where the next stage is. And yeah, really, really lovely stuff. And let's have a think then about what assistance should be doing according to the A CP guidance. So examples of responsibilities that may be delegated, and I think that's an important word in itself, can include dependent on experience and training, manualized group interventions, manualized one-to-one interventions, psychometric assessments, completing and inputting data under supervision. That doesn't mean like someone's sitting under or over your shoulder, just means that it should be reviewed under supervision. Semi-structured history, taking assessments, lit reviews and research including audit and service evaluation making and modifying resources approved by supervisor teamwork, reflective practise, engaging in not facilitating team meetings, networking, peer supervision and training letters and reports checked and signed under supervision of their clinical supervisor completing clinical observations and case formulation. aps should not be expected to carry out the duties of a healthcare assistant supporting personal care or excessive nonclinical admin tasks. I just thought that was really, really interesting.

Yeah, definitely. I would probably as it to say that it's not the norm, what we've just read across AP roles though many of those things might be included. I don't think that list is the norm unfortunately.

I know we've kind of spoke before we started recording that maybe actually that almost feels that old school and that it's not exciting enough to gain you a place for example on clinical training. But actually this is what the professional clinical psychologists believe makes for a robust, valid, safe experience, like almost a training experience, but it's not a training experience, it's a developmental experience that supports your own development but also is a benefit to the clients in the service. But like I said, helps, I mean what I read you're saying is exactly what I understood the role of assistant to be to allow the optimal functioning of a qualified psychologist by metering out tasks that don't necessarily need to be done by a qualified psychologist. But does it maybe not feel fruity enough? It doesn't feel exciting enough to not be burned out and doing all of the jobs of a qualified psychologist these days.

It definitely to me doesn't sound normal. And through speaking with others, I've heard of people doing roles that are pretty much that and that as you say technically is what assistant psychologists should be doing. But when discussing this with other aps or trainees who were aps, as you say, that sounds boring or more boring and they should be doing much more clinical stuff, they should be doing essentially like a filtered down version of trainees. What trainees do in a sense, discredits what trainees do because there is quite a big difference and they are towards the end of their time obviously expected to be picking up more and more clinical work, more and more important potentially risky contact with people. And I don't know where it's come from, but you being around the profession for a bit longer than me, maybe you understand where this has stemmed from with regards to why an assistant should be expected either of themselves or people in the departments to be picking up these more, as you say, juicy, fruity sort of parts of what a psychologist will eventually be doing because all these things are really, really important to be good at.

Psychometrics testing is really good research literature reviews. The clinical admin is, as you said, still is still a really important part of your job unfortunately, but it will always be a part of the job. So I don't know where this has come from and it is really refreshing to see it written down in this guideline that it is okay to be doing that. You don't have to think that you're missing out, that you are doing something more boring because it is really important skills you're learning.

Exactly. And actually the trainee role. So making that distinction that postgraduation you are not in a trainee role. This is where it's really relevant because actually when you become a trainee psychologist, you are then needing to learn all of the skills on all the capabilities to work within the K SFS of a qualified practitioner psychologist. And the same is not true. We are supporting the function as assistant psychologists and even placement students. They are below the level of expectation because they haven't yet got their psychology graduation, they haven't got that qualification. Whereas I think often placement students are just used as assistant psychologists and honorary assistant psychologists are used as assistant psychologists as well. And it's not ethical. It's not. Right. And I've remembered my other point was that you being a slightly older applicant, it's lovely to see in the profession also lovely to see someone who identifies as male because I know predominantly it is still a very female heavy profession. So lovely to see that on both of those. But it's not very affordable to be an assistant psychologist. And actually that affects the diversity as well. So when I was an assistant, I was getting paid 13,000 pounds a year.

It's not a lot of money. Not a lot money. I know it's better now. Band four and band five is better now, but still the cost of living has increased. And so in order to be, it's not my place to ask about your family and your situation, but in order to be in your thirties and an assistant, that's harder. There's probably people that you went to school with who are on double, maybe triple the salary that you are on and that's really hard.

Yeah, there are definitely people who are on double and triple. I myself have been on double the salary before a few years ago in a separate industry and would be on considerably more money now if I'd have stayed there. But the money isn't everything, but it is definitely important and it is getting to the point where the pressure is mounting for how long can I keep doing this because of the financial side effect that myself and many others are even in a worse position than myself will be feeling because you do feel like you give so much because you are trying to progress skill-wise for the personal development to get onto that training, but also trying to progress so that you can help the service users at the end of the day and your team and grow in that sense of a useful employee, a useful team member and so on and so forth.

But I think for the work that we do, and it's the same across pretty much all of the public sector, we are probably not financially rewarded as well as we could be or should be. And I'm not talking a huge jump because granted we're not qualified and there should be a big difference between the two or trainees and so on. But it definitely is a pressure. So thanks for pointing that out. And for myself and others in worse positions, I think we just have to try and remember why we're doing it. Hopefully what one day we will qualify and we'll be able to work with others and maybe make these changes in services on a higher level.

Absolutely. But I think you are very much ready for all the band six training role. I would be incredibly surprised if you don't have interviews in this next year, because I think you are what I would be looking for if I was on a panel I'm seeing within you. So I'm wishing you the very best if you do choose to apply next year. I have to say once I was a trainee, I was actually slightly better off financially than I was as a qualified member of staff because I then lost all of my, there was no jobs and I had to travel basically an hour each way for work, but that was on my own expense, so I wasn't getting any mileage for my home to base and then I had to start paying cancel tax as well. So I was worse off as a band seven than I was as a band six. So it's not always the holy grail that you're like, oh, I'm onto the big money now. Yes. But I would hope that if I went from band four to band six when I went from assistant to training and I loved it when I first looked at my payslip for what was basically month, month and a half, oh I felt like a millionaire.

It was incredible the difference of jumping two bands and getting paid basically for a month and a half. So I hope that you enjoy the enhanced salary when it comes, but people are often starting when they've already got mortgages, they've already got children, they've already got overheads, they've already got car payments. It's not easy. And these are highly skilled, qualified, and they're not professionally qualified, but they, they've often got undergraduate, well, they have to have an undergraduate good degree. They've often got master's. Some of them have even already got doctorates or PhDs. Like it's wild. The amount of skills and expertise. Now I'm really sorry because I'm very much enjoying chatting with you, but I am, as I say in the podcast, I am still a practising clinician and I have got a client in 15 minutes and we need to give some good time for this episode to upload. So I'm going to have to cut us a little bit shorter, but I have loved speaking with you. I, I'm excited for good things to come your way. Have you got any advice for reducing burnout in this profession of ours?

Yeah, it's probably quite cliche, but personally it's, to me it's exercise of some form or another. That's the top for me. It doesn't have to be intense. It can be just walking through nature and so on and so forth, especially in this beautiful weather. That would be the start. But then I would say to people, find your hobbies and lean into those hobbies, whether it's reading, writing, sports, walking the dog, whatever you want, you can tailor that because I think the stress really goes up. Commitments go up. Those parts of you are kind of what help keep your identity in the middle, which is really to keep yourself grounded and not lose yourself to work. So that's what I like. I try and do lots of things, which can be counterproductive sometimes, but I do try and keep myself very busy.

Good. Well done, well done to, and we haven't really had time to do justice to so much of this stuff. And I wanted to mention the workload of PWPs, which is sometimes like 60, 70, 80% face-to-face time. And it's like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. But sometimes assistants are doing similar stuff, but that is probably a conversation for another day. Thank you so much for your time, Luke.

Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. And I'll be keeping up to date and I dunno, maybe in the future we can have another chat.

That would be wonderful. Wishing you well.

Thank you. Thanks Marianne.

Thank you. What an amazing chat with Luke. How lucky are we to have had him join us for this episode? I am hopeful for good things to come for Luke after this episode was in the can. I contacted Luke to say that I'd seen some BPA been released and that maybe it would be a good idea for us to read and to come up with a part two of this episode. And so that is what is coming. This is now going to be an assistant psychologist season and you can catch the next episode, which will be coming along next week. There is no need to listen or watch in order those. So whichever order you've stumbled across these, please do dive in. If you have loved these chats, I think you probably would love the chats that I have with people and the support that is offered and the great sense of community in the Aspiring Psychologist membership, which you can join for just 30 pounds a month with no minimum term.

It gets really wonderful reviews and we are getting astounding results. I think you'll also really like the Aspiring Psychologist collective book and the Clinical Psychologist collective book too. Do come and connect with me on socials where I'm booked at Marianne Trent and come and join the free Facebook group, which is the unique and very special only home for Marianne's motivation and mindset sessions, which happen once a week in that group, absolutely free. And that is over on Facebook. If you do value this book, the way that you can help me and any podcaster that you appreciate for free is simply by subscribing, by liking, by interacting with their content. It absolutely means the world. Thank you for being part of my world and I will look forward to bringing you the next episode of the podcast, which will be released on YouTube, Dr. Marianne Trent from 10:00 AM on Saturday and wherever you get your podcast, six on

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