I have chosen to stand in solidarity with the educational psychology workforce to save local authority (LA) services so that I and other EPs can be easily accessible to children, young people and their families.
EPs offer an essential service as a highly skilled workforce to enable children and young people to overcome mental health issues and barriers to learning, with support to meet their neurodiverse and complex medical difficulties.
There is a national shortage of EPs, which makes it incredibly difficult to meet high demands.
Within private practice, I often work with children and young people whom schools have not prioritised for reasons such as the demands exceeding the capacity of an LA EP. Not all families can afford to seek independent EP services, which means some children and young people’s needs will not be met.
Research shows that children from disadvantaged backgrounds are likely to have poorer educational and mental health outcomes, which is significantly detrimental to long-term life outcomes and society at large.
While working as a full-time LA EP, I felt restricted by the increase in caseload, and although I wanted to focus more on systemic work and ways to promote the betterment of society, it was challenging to achieve while working unacceptable hours.
Working within private practice has allowed me more opportunities to work systemically with families, schools and the community.
I have better control over the volume of caseload I take on, improving my work and personal wellbeing and allowing the opportunity for more long-term psychological support to children and young people.
Working within private practice has enabled flexibility and an increase in my engagement in early intervention, therapeutic interventions, and systemic work, such as offering training and workshops, providing parenting advice and training schools to understand how best to support children to progress in all developmental areas.
An increased workload (post-Covid) for EPs within LAs for no increment in pay is resulting in EPs leaving the workforce. Recruitment and retention problems mean that children and young people wait incredibly long to be seen, or do not get to be seen, by an EP.
I hope the strike will result in an increase in pay, more funded places for universities to train future EPs and reduced waiting times for children and young people to be supported.