When I was hoping to get onto clinical training, getting an Assistant Psychologist post felt almost as hard as getting onto the doctorate itself. Vacancies were scarce, each one seemed to attract a crowd of well-qualified graduates, and it was easy to conclude that without that job title the route to training was closed.

Assistant Psychologist posts remain extremely popular, and in that respect not much has changed. What has changed is the landscape around them. The range of psychological professions in the NHS has broadened and multiplied, and psychology graduates now have far more options for recognised, supervised training and paid employment than they once did. Psychological Wellbeing Practitioners, Children’s Wellbeing Practitioners, Education Mental Health Practitioners, Mental Health and Wellbeing Practitioners, Youth Intensive Psychological Practitioners and Clinical Associates in Psychology are all now part of the NHS psychological professions workforce. Some are very recent additions: the Mental Health and Wellbeing Practitioner role was launched in 2022, and the first Youth Intensive Psychological Practitioner trainees started in March 2022. These are careers in their own right, and they can also give you exactly the kind of experience that clinical psychology courses value. The NHS Psychological Professions Network’s career map is a good place to see the full range. (There is one important catch about timing if you take one of these routes, which I cover below.)

So if you have applied for Assistant Psychologist post after Assistant Psychologist post without success, and are starting to suspect that everyone else knows something you do not, this post is for you. It is a concern that is often raised, and the anxiety behind it is usually the same: if I cannot get an Assistant Psychologist post, has my route closed?

The short answer is no. An Assistant Psychologist post is one useful route onto clinical training (I have written separately about how to land your first one). It is not the only route, and it is not required by every course. What matters is not the job title on your contract but what the job lets you do, and how well you can talk about it a year later in an interview room.

That second part is the bit almost nobody tells you, and it is where I want to spend most of this post.

Two things before we start

This post is about UK clinical psychology training and the Clearing House system. If you are applying elsewhere, the principles may transfer but the rules will not.

Course criteria also change, sometimes annually. Statements and sources were checked in October 2026. Before you accept a job on the strength of it, check the current pages for the courses you actually intend to apply to. And please hold the difference between two things in mind throughout: meeting a course’s minimum eligibility criteria is not the same as being competitive. Meeting the minimum requirements does not guarantee an interview or an offer.

Why the Assistant Psychologist post became the default

It is worth understanding how we got here, because it explains why the pressure feels so intense. A 2021 British Psychological Society survey of 426 Assistant Psychologists found that for 89 per cent of them, at least one reason for taking the role was to meet the requirements for applying to doctoral training. Only 16 per cent said that one reason was “to pursue a career as an [Assistant Psychologist]”. The BPS is candid about what that produces, describing in its 2024 employment standards an environment of “extremely high competition for paid and unpaid [Assistant Psychologist] roles due to high demand for these roles, and reported pressure to have been an [Assistant Psychologist] in order to access further professional training opportunities.”

That survey has real limits: it reached BPS members only, the response rate was not recorded, and not everyone answered every question. But the pattern it describes will be familiar to anyone who has applied for Assistant Psychologist posts. Meanwhile the doctorate itself has got slightly harder to get onto over the past few years. These are the Clearing House figures for NHS-funded places:

Places have been roughly flat while applications have risen by more than six hundred in two years. When I wrote Five new tips for aspiring psychologists in 2023, I was able to report that one in four applicants had been successful the previous year, and that felt like good news after one in six in 2018. That trend has since begun to reverse.

So the bottleneck is real, and you are not imagining it. But competition for places does not mean that every successful applicant took the same route. Courses accept a wide range of experience, and Surrey, for example, lists support work, healthcare assistant roles, PWP and CWP posts, teaching and research among the backgrounds of its successful applicants.

What actually counts

The Clearing House is less prescriptive than most applicants assume. Its guidance on relevant experience says experience can be gained “in the public, private or charitable sectors”, names “work as a Support Worker, or work as a Health Care Assistant” among the examples, and states that “quality of experience is valued alongside quantity”, with attention to what you have learnt. Research can count where it “involves direct contact with users of clinical psychology services, and/or the results of the research are clinically applicable.”

One important qualifier: the same guidance notes that courses “are likely to value paid work over voluntary work.” Do not build a plan around voluntary hours alone.

The courses do not agree with each other

Here is the part that most general advice articles skip, and it is the single most useful thing you can do before accepting a job. Courses set materially different criteria, and a role that satisfies one may not satisfy another.

Look at Surrey and King’s side by side. Surrey lists teacher, learning support assistant and teaching assistant roles among those held by successful applicants. King’s excludes teachers and Special Educational Needs assistants from its minimum requirement. Both positions are entirely defensible. But if you take a teaching or Special Educational Needs assistant job intending to apply to both, you have a problem you will not discover until the November application deadline. (For 2027 entry, applications close at 1 pm UK time on 18 November 2026.)

Build your own version of this table for the four courses you are most likely to apply to, covering paid versus voluntary, minimum FTE, recency, acceptable duties, supervision and research expectations. Then rebuild it in your application year, because these pages change.

Roles worth considering, and what each one gives you

Rather than ranking jobs, it helps to ask what each family of roles develops and what it tends to leave out.

Healthcare assistant, support worker, recovery worker, rehabilitation and positive behaviour support roles. Sustained contact with people who use the services clinical psychologists work in, and an education in how a service actually functions on a Tuesday afternoon. Support work can meet some courses’ minimum requirements: Leeds and Surrey both name it. On its own, though, it is unlikely to make you competitive, and some courses set the bar higher. Manchester does not consider support work alone sufficient unless psychological principles were central to the role, King’s excludes roles focused on physical care or daily activity support, and Sheffield requires supervised psychological intervention or complex assessment. Its main value is often as a stepping stone to Assistant Psychologist and similar posts. Ask at interview what psychological input the team receives and whether you would attend formulation meetings.

Research assistant and clinical research practitioner posts. Strong for the research competencies, and for the critical thinking that courses rate highly. Research experience can strengthen an application even without direct service-user contact: the Clearing House guidance recognises research whose results are clinically applicable. Meeting a course’s minimum clinical-experience requirement is a different matter. UCL and Surrey, for example, count research roles towards their minimum only where they involve direct work with clinically relevant groups, and UCL specifies that this must go beyond recruitment alone. Surrey wants “direct methods of assessment or testing”, so for courses like these a purely lab-based or data-only post will not meet the minimum. Ask whether you will be assessing or testing participants, conducting interviews or delivering an intervention yourself, rather than only consenting them.

Practitioner training roles: Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner (PWP), Children’s Wellbeing Practitioner (CWP), Education Mental Health Practitioner (EMHP), Mental Health and Wellbeing Practitioner (MHWP), Youth Intensive Psychological Practitioner (YIPP) and Clinical Associate in Psychology (CAP). These are the roles that have transformed the options open to psychology graduates. They are paid, structured and supervised, and they teach you to deliver an evidence-based intervention properly. But please read the section on funding rules below before applying, because it is the most consequential thing in this article. And take them only if you want to do the job. They are demanding roles in their own right, not a corridor.

Roles you may already have. If you are a nurse, social worker, occupational therapist or other registered health or social care professional, do not throw that away. Sheffield explicitly accepts work “as a qualified and registered health or social care professional with client groups directly relevant to clinical psychology”. Work out what is actually missing before you resign.

Private and third-sector posts. Assistant Psychologist and assistant-equivalent roles exist outside the NHS too, so it is worth widening your search beyond NHS vacancies. Which brings me to a small practical point that costs people vacancies: search under multiple job titles. The BPS notes that the same role can be advertised under other titles, including Psychology Assistant, Honorary Assistant Psychologist, Voluntary Assistant Psychologist and Assistant Educational Psychologist. If you have a saved search for “Assistant Psychologist” alone, you are not seeing everything.

My own route, and the thing I did not expect

I should be honest that my route was research-heavy. My PhD was on psychosis and suicidality, carried out with patient groups within the NHS, and it was relevant precisely because it was clinically grounded rather than because it was a doctorate. I have written elsewhere about why a PhD is not a sensible application tactic for most people, and do not recommend my own approach for everyone.

Alongside it I did two other things. I did some paid assistant psychologist work for a private clinical psychology company, mostly supporting assessments. I enjoyed this, it fitted in around my PhD, and it paid pretty well. I felt lucky to have that job, aside from any career development benefits it offered. I also did voluntary assistant psychologist work with an assertive outreach team, working with people in the community who were living with significant mental health difficulties. That second role is where I learnt to deliver CBT with people experiencing psychosis: assessment, formulation, intervention, and then evaluating whether the intervention had actually worked.

Here is what I did not anticipate at the time. I have no idea how much any of that helped me get shortlisted. Shortlisting is opaque and I would not claim to know. But I discussed the cases from that voluntary post at every single interview I attended, sometimes at considerable length. It has occurred to me since that I might well have reached interview without it, but I would have struggled with the interviews themselves.

Interview formats differ between courses. UCL, for example, currently describes an individual panel interview built around clinical and research vignettes and other professional scenarios, followed by a group discussion task (see its selection procedure). Whatever the format, expect to draw on your experience: what you actually did, what you contributed, what you learnt and where the limits of your role were. You do not need to have delivered therapy already. But questions like these are almost impossible to answer convincingly from experience you only observed, and very difficult to answer from experience you had but never reflected on.

So when you are weighing up a vacancy, ask the question in two parts. Will this get me shortlisted? And, separately, will this give me something I can still talk about in depth in eighteen months’ time? They are not the same question, and the second one is the one people neglect.

Dr Rebecca Yeates, Research Director on the Clinical Psychology Training Programme at the University of Leeds, puts it like this:

The DClin programme at Leeds welcome diverse clinical experiences, within the limits outlined in the Clearing House website. Once these minimum requirements have been met, I would encourage applicants to turn their attention to how these experiences have developed their psychological knowledge and skill-set. It’s really helpful to make links between what you have theoretically learnt about psychology at University with what you are seeing and experiencing in the clinical world. This forms the basis of a key Clinical Psychology skill, being a scientist-practitioner, a fundamental foundation to clinical training and working as a psychologist in the modern-day NHS

A necessary caveat about the voluntary post. I would not straightforwardly recommend the route I took, and it would be dishonest to present it as advice. The BPS position is now unambiguous: it “does not recommend the use of or the recruitment to Unpaid VAP roles under any circumstances”, citing coercion, exploitation, financial burden, and the fact that some people are better able to sustain unpaid work because of the privileges they hold. That is a fair criticism and it applies to my own history. The competency I gained was real. So was the privilege that let me work unpaid to gain it. If you are choosing between an unpaid post and no post, know that the profession’s own body thinks the option should not be on the table, and look first at whether a paid role can give you the same substance.

On which note: the SLaM Aspiring Clinical Psychologists Scheme exists precisely to address this. It offers paid Band 4 experience, three days a week for six months and sometimes extended to twelve, aimed at people who cannot absorb the cost of unpaid work, who have caring responsibilities, or who are the first in their family to go to university. Eligibility is narrower than that description suggests, though. Caring responsibilities or being the first in your family to go to university do not on their own make you eligible: applicants must also have graduated within the last 18 months, must not be studying for or have completed a master’s (other than a conversion course), and must not have held a substantial paid Assistant Psychologist or similar post. Places are limited too, so treat it as one additional door rather than a general solution, but it is worth knowing about.

Two traps

The funding rule that catches people out

This is the most expensive mistake available to you, so read it carefully. In England, if you start one of the affected NHS-funded psychological professions training programmes on or after 1 April 2022, you will not normally be eligible for NHS funding for another of those programmes (where it leads to a change of profession) until two years have passed. The two-year gap runs from the qualifying exam board of the first course to the start of teaching on the second. You can apply before the two years are up, as long as the new course starts after that point. Critically, NHS England’s guidance states that it applies to anyone who “starts and subsequently completes, withdraws or fails to complete” the programme. Dropping out does not reset the clock either: if you withdraw, the interval is normally still tied to the qualifying exam board you would have reached on the first programme, not to the date you left (see the NHS England FAQs). The list of affected programmes is longer than most people realise. It includes PWP, CWP, EMHP, MHWP, YIPP and the CAP apprenticeship, but also CBT, core counselling training, Counselling Psychology (listed, although not currently NHS-funded), Forensic Psychology, Health Psychology, adult and child psychotherapy, DBT, and family and systemic psychotherapy.

Scotland and Wales differ. In Scotland, funding is withheld for 18 months after the award is recommended by the qualifying exam board, or 24 months from the exit date where the programme was not completed. Wales is less uniform, so check the specific programme. Bangor (North Wales) currently says it is not implementing the general two-year rule, although anyone who has started or completed CAAP training in South Wales still needs a two-year gap under their contract. South Wales (Cardiff) applies the CAAP restriction too, and also states that applicants who trained with funding from NHS training bodies in England need at least two years between that training’s final exam board and applying, not starting. That is a stricter test. If you have done any NHS-funded training, confirm with each Welsh programme how it calculates the interval. Check the Clearing House page on previous NHS-funded training for the current position.

None of this means avoid these roles. It means go in with your eyes open about timing.

Buying a qualification instead of diagnosing the gap

A master’s is sometimes the right answer. It is very rarely the automatic one, and it will not make an Assistant Psychologist post appear. I have written separately on how to choose a master’s course here. In general, before choosing any master’s, I would advise you to first work out what is actually missing from your application. Frequently the honest answer is not a qualification at all but sustained, supervised, reflective clinical contact, which is the one thing a taught master’s is least able to provide.

A final word

Not getting an Assistant Psychologist post does not close your route. The job title that felt like the only way in when I was applying is now one option among many, and people start clinical training every year from a wide range of backgrounds.

But the reverse claim is not true either. Not every mental health adjacent job counts, and some of the most commonly recommended roles are explicitly excluded by some courses. The work is to stop asking “will this look good” and start asking two sharper questions: does this meet the stated criteria of the specific courses I will apply to, and will it give me something substantial to say when somebody asks me? Rules change, courses revise their pages, and I cannot advise on individual circumstances. But that second question is worth careful consideration.

In the UK, clinical psychologists register with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC). To make things a little confusing, they don’t register as a ‘clinical psychologist’, but as a ‘practitioner psychologist’. This category also includes other types of psychologists, such as forensic psychologists and health psychologists. ‘Clinical psychologist’ is then referred to as a ‘modality’ within the category.

How many overseas applicants are successful?

Overseas clinical psychologists can apply to the HCPC for registration in the UK as a ‘practitioner psychologist’ with a ‘clinical psychologist’ modality. If successful, this then opens doors for a range of UK jobs which require HCPC registration. I requested information from the HCPC about the number of overseas psychologists who have applied to the UK register in the past 3 years, and the number which have been successful, via a ‘Freedom of Information Act request’. You can download the excel file they sent me by clicking here. On the first tab, it lists the number of applicants over the past 3 years according to country and year. On the second, it shows the number of successful registrations, also by country and year. This data show that in the past 3 years, 1190 international psychologists have applied to be registered as a practitioner psychologist and 703 have been successful. This is only a 59% success rate.

The data also show that success rates vary between countries. For example, of 57 Australian applicants, 52 were successful, which is an impressive 91% success rate. However, of 30 Nigerian applicants, only 6 were successful, which is a concerning 20% success rate. For this blog post, I offer some advice for international psychologists considering a UK registration. I spoke with two prospective applicants, Olivia* from India, where success rates stand at 45% and Jane* from Greece, where there is a 41% success rate in applicants. I also contacted the HCPC for comment on the Freedom of Information Act request results. All quoted information from the HCPC in this post comes from an email I received from them.

What to know before you apply

1. The HCPC will most likely expect you to hold a PhD or other doctorate level qualification in psychology. In the UK, the required clinical psychology training pathway involves the completion of a doctorate. While the HCPC does not explicitly require a doctorate, applicants will need to be able to demonstrate that their previous education and training is equivalent to this. In their email to me, the HCPC said, ‘In the UK application route, where we approve the educational course, many are trained at PhD level, or another post graduate level… Many (most) international Practitioner Psychologist applicants applying for registration have BSc, MSc, Ph.D plus numerous other courses that they quote in their applications.’ Olivia was not aware of this when she began completing her application, stating ‘I looked at the website and they really offered no information. I gave them a call and explained I had a masters, not a PhD. I asked if it was an issue and they said it was fine, it shouldn’t be an issue’. It is possible that this lack of clarity is linked with the variation between practitioner psychology courses in the UK. For example, UK forensic psychologists are not required to have a doctorate, and so this is less likely to be an expectation for overseas psychologists looking to register in that psychology discipline. However, the difference in success rates between Australia (where clinical psychology is also a doctorate model) and other countries where it is not, leads me to conclude that all overseas clinical psychologists should be aware that this might be an expectation for them when looking to register in the UK.

2. The time investment to apply is significant. The application is long and completing it is time consuming. It’s important to weigh up what this will cost you personally compared with both your chances of success, and what the registration could gain for you. ‘I realised I would need to fill out this huge form with all my previous modules listed and described. A transcript wasn’t going to be good enough, they also said it needed to be a stamped or sealed document!’ Jane said. Olivia also had this experience, explaining ‘I had to go back to my educational institution from 10 years ago in India. They wanted all the information from my undergraduate syllabus. I invested literally days in trying to sort this out’.
3. The fee is non-refundable. In 2023, the application fee for international applicants was £539.65, which is non-refundable. Olivia explained how she saved for this, but then found out she would also need to pay for an English language test. ‘This was going to be about another £200’ she said. ‘I did one two years ago and then followed this with a UK masters degree, but that wasn’t good enough. They wanted me to do it again’. The extra fee was more than Olivia had prepared for and caused her to pause her application. When I asked the HCPC about the fee being non-refundable, they said: “This is so existing registrants do not subsidise applicants. The application fee reflects the costs of assessing the application, which includes a review by two assessors in the same profession”.

4. You will receive feedback if you are unsuccessful. In their email to me, the HCPC said: ‘Any apparent shortfalls in the equivalence to a newly qualified UK applicant that registers will be listed in the response to the international applicant, but a particular course will not be recommended to make up the shortfall. It is up to the applicant to find the appropriate additional training or experience’. This could mean that an initially unsuccessful application could pass when resubmitted if further training or experience is gained. However, the training and experience required in their feedback may be unfeasible for you and it is also possible that it might therefore not be practically useful information.
5. There are other options for prospective psychotherapists in the UK. It is worth developing a broad understanding of the landscape of psychological therapies in the UK. For example, while ‘clinical psychologist’ is a protected title which can only be used if you are HCPC registered, ‘psychologist’ and ‘psychotherapist’ are not protected, and there are other routes to professional recognition in psychological therapies. You may find my previous blog post on alternative routes to training as a psychological therapist helpful. For example, it is possible to train and work as a counsellor through training courses and diplomas which are not degree-level and can be completed part-time. These options may be more accessible when a doctorate-level education is not possible.

6. Learn about GBC: Graduate Basis for Chartership with the British Psychological Society. The UK clinical psychology training pathway begins with completing an undergraduate psychology degree which offers ‘GBC’. This form of professional recognition is required by a range of psychology-related jobs, including some assistant psychologist posts, psychological wellbeing practitioner roles and others. If you already have an undergraduate degree which did not provide you with GBC (few outside the UK do), you can also gain GBC through some psychology masters courses, which are known as ‘conversion courses’. For more information on these, see my previous blog post. If registering with the HCPC seems unfeasible for you, gaining GBC through a masters conversion course could help make you eligible for a number of other roles which could then help you progress your psychology career in the UK.

Final thoughts

A final word

The job of the HCPC is to ensure high standards are upheld in the UK. Ensuring this may mean that some applicants are rejected if they do not have the relevant qualifications or experience. However, the figures revealed by the Freedom of Information Act request suggest that work could be done to communicate what is required more clearly to overseas clinical psychologists. If greater clarity was offered, more applicants would be able to self-assess their likelihood of success and make an informed choice regarding whether they should apply. This could save them time, money and emotional energy, which are all important commodities in the current climate. It might also be more effective to include an active evaluation of ability, such as an academic and/or practical exam as part of the process. At present registration can be regarded largely as a feat of form-filling; assessing ability in other ways might reduce this pressure while simultaneously increasing confidence that the assessment processes measures relevant skills.

Please note that unfortunately I am not able to respond to individual requests for career advice.

*not her real name

If psychology was an industry, it would be booming. In the UK in 2021, 140,000 undergraduates were studying psychology, equivalent to 5% of all UK university students. It’s a growing area for jobs, too. Between 2018 and 2022, the number of places on the government-funded Clinical Psychology Doctorate doubled, and a range of new psychology professions have been created and supported by government funding. Alongside this, there have been an increasing number and range of psychology masters courses. A quick search on findamasters.com suggests they are currently advertising 1183 masters degrees in psychology in the UK alone. These focus on a range of areas such as health psychology, organisational psychology and forensic psychology. It’s a bewildering array of options for undergraduates to get their heads around.

I want to be a Clinical Psychologist, which masters should I do?

As a government-funded course, and the only way to qualify as a UK Clinical Psychologist, the clinical psychology doctorate is competitive. A number of students now look to complete a masters after their undergraduate degree to enhance their CV and improve their chances of success. I am often asked which masters course is best, but I always struggle to find an answer. Of course, the answer is that the best masters course is the one which clinical psychology doctorate courses rate the most highly; but no such masters course exists. Some clinical psychology doctorates operate a point-scoring system which will award a point for a masters degree, and possibly more points for higher grades on a masters degree. Others operate less clear selection systems, which may recognise the value of a masters but not necessarily award it a point. I am not aware of any system which formally rates specific types of psychology masters degrees more highly than others. Instead, it could be worth considering the following issues to identify which masters might be more suitable for you.

1. Which skills do you want to learn?

As specialist courses, masters degrees aim to equip their students with specific skills which can be useful later. For example, at the University of Leeds, our psychology masters courses train students in how to conduct systematic reviews. For students considering a career in research or looking to prepare themselves for the academic elements of the clinical psychology doctorate, this is a valuable skill. At the University of Sheffield, the Psychological Research Methods masters course features training in questionnaire design, an important skill for anyone considering career options in research or management consultancy.

2. Are you looking for clinical experience?

Graduates can sometimes find themselves stuck in the vicious cycle of ‘experience’: jobs want you to have it prior to employment, but how can you get it if you can’t get a job? To help students work round this, some undergraduate courses now offer industrial placement years, which can provide a year of clinical experience. However, if your undergraduate course didn’t offer that, you can now also find a masters which offers the same benefit. Universities currently offering this include the University of Reading and Bournemouth University.

3. Check out who’s who

The masters research project represents a significant opportunity for gaining important experience and skills. For example, if your chosen course doesn’t offer a placement, but there are active clinicians offering clinically-focused research projects, you can gain important clinical experience through doing your project with them. Psychology departments will often specialise in certain areas. For example, at the University of Leeds where I am based, there is a strong emphasis on health psychology. Other departments may specialise in forensic, clinical or developmental psychology and employ several academics offering projects on those topics. It’s worth checking out who exactly the academics are in the department you are considering, and whether you would be able to do your research project with them.

4. Institutional reputation

Most clinical course selection processes will not make a distinction between a masters from a more academically respected, research-intensive university and one from a lower-ranking university. However, this distinction could be important when considering your own specific interests. That is – will the academics working on your chosen masters course be able to supervise you to complete a research project which is potentially publishable? This could be important if you are considering continuing with a research career, or gaining a published paper to further strengthen your clinical psychology doctorate application. Alternatively, are you considering walking away from psychology to pursue a corporate career? Again, in this case, you might find that a masters from a higher ranking university helps give your CV the edge it needs.

5. Accreditation with the British Psychological Society

If you have completed your undergraduate psychology degree at a British university, you will most likely have a degree which is recognised and accredited with the British Psychological Society. This is important, because you need it to apply for the clinical psychology doctorate, and for many roles and training courses which are linked with psychology. If you did your undergraduate degree elsewhere, or in another subject, you may want to do a masters ‘conversion’ course, which is accredited with the British Psychological Society. See my previous blog for more on this.

6. Need flexibility?

Alongside the growth in psychology masters courses has been an increasing availability of online courses. At the time of writing, there are 206 UK online only psychology masters being advertised on findamasters.com. These courses can have drawbacks. Not being on campus can limit the social experience of university and lead to feelings of isolation. However, if you’re a part-time learner, or unable to move to study, distance learning may be the flexible option you need to progress your career.

7. Study the handbook

While the huge array of options can be bewildering, it’s important not to jump to any decisions. Masters courses are often expensive, academically intensive and will take one to two years of your life to complete. Before finalising any decisions, be sure to study the handbook and the module options, to be confident that what you’ll be studying is right for you. If the modules sound dull, or the assessment approaches don’t appeal, pause. There is likely another course available elsewhere that will suit you better.

2023 is a great time to be planning a career as a psychological professional! I first published my ten top tips for aspiring Clinical Psychologists in 2019, but the landscape has vastly improved since then. In fact, it is twice as good. In 2018, there were 593 places to train as a Clinical Psychologist in the UK, and 1 in 6 applicants were successful. In 2022, this number had nearly doubled to 1155 places. That year, 1 in 4 applicants were successful! While my previous top tips still stand, I wanted to add on some updates for 2023.

1. Consider training opportunities within NHS Talking Therapies (previously known as IAPT, the Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies Initiative). NHS Talking Therapies employs two core roles, Psychological Wellbeing Practitioners (PWPs) and the High Intensity Therapists (HITs). These professionals are paid to train and have good employment prospects after qualifying. Their work also equips them with the skills and experiences which can make them competitive for the Clinical Psychology Doctorate.

I suggested NHS Talking Therapies in my previous top tips blog, but I think it is an even better prospect in 2023. This is because the range of opportunities within NHS Talking Therapies has expanded. They are now piloting the funded training and employment of counsellors, and planning to train existing PWPs and HITs in more evidence-based interventions. These include treatments for people with long covid and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) Therapy for PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). I always encourage aspiring psychologists to continuously expand their skillset, and in 2023, NHS Talking Therapies looks like a great context in which to do this.

2. Consider training as a psychological practitioner. For a long time, the Assistant Psychologist role was pretty much the only job which sat in the gap between undergraduate psychology degrees and the Clinical Psychology Doctorate course. This first changed with the introduction of the NHS Talking Therapies and the PWP and HIT roles. However, this whole landscape has now changed for the better. In 2019, Health Education England laid out plans to expand the psychological professions workforce by 60% by 2024. An important part of this was the creation of several psychological practitioner roles. These are roles for graduates which pay them to train and provide them with a qualification.

Five of these roles train candidates on a Band 4 and offer qualified roles at a Band 5. One of these roles, the Clinical Associate Psychologist (CAP), trains candidates on a Band 5 and offers qualified roles at a Band 6. The CAP role is specifically for psychology graduates and sits between the Assistant Psychologist role and the Clinical Psychology Doctorate. I provide some info about each of these roles below in bullet points and you can also use the Psychological Professions Network map to find out more. Keep an eye on NHS jobs for opportunities to train in all these roles.

• Mental Health and Wellbeing Practitioner. Involves care planning and delivering psychologically informed interventions to people with severe mental health problems. Open to all graduates, provides training on a Band 4 and qualified roles at Band 5.
• Associate Psychological Practitioners. Delivers psychologically informed interventions in adult community teams and primary care. Open to psychology graduates only, provides training on a Band 4 and qualified roles at Band 5.
• Graduate Mental Health Practitioners. Provides care co-ordination and brief psychologically informed interventions. Open to all graduates, provides training on a Band 4 and qualified roles at Band 5.
• Education Mental Health Practitioners. Provides psychologically informed interventions in schools and college and helps support whole school approaches to mental wellbeing. Open to all graduates, provides training on a Band 4 and qualified roles at Band 5.
• Children’s Wellbeing Practitioner. Provides psychologically informed interventions in mental health services for children and young people. Open to all graduates, provides training on a Band 4 and qualified roles at Band 5.
• Clinical Associate in Psychology. Delivers formulations, psychologically informed interventions and service-based research. Open to psychology graduates only, provides training on a Band 5 and qualified roles at Band 6.

3. Know about the new rules on funding. Training opportunities for aspiring psychologists have proliferated, but rules around funding have tightened. Since April 2022, anyone taking one of these opportunities will be unable to take further funded training opportunities until two years after they have graduated from their previous opportunity. What this means is that if you train and qualify as a psychological practitioner in either NHS Talking Therapies or any other role, you will need to work in that role (or elsewhere!) for 2 years before you can start the Clinical Psychology Doctorate. In practice, you will only need to work for about a year before you can apply to the doctorate, since the application process lasts a year in itself! However, it’s important for any aspiring psychologist to factor this into their career planning.

4. Do the maths on self-funding. At this point, you may be wondering about whether you can self-fund your training. As I write, there are seven Clinical Psychology Doctorate courses which provide self-funded places for international students, and only one which offers self-funded places to UK students. These places are expensive, coming in at £20k+ per year in fees, with placement fees and travel expenses on top. An alternative self-funded option is the ForenClinPsyD at the University of Birmingham, a four-year Doctorate Course which qualifies graduates to register as both Forensic and Clinical Psychologists. The fees are currently £14.5k per year for UK students and £24k per year for international students.

It is also important to note that all Counselling Psychology Doctorate places are self-funded, and Counselling Psychology opens up similar opportunities in adult mental health to Clinical Psychology. The fees for some of these courses are slightly lower. For example, the University of Manchester currently charges UK students £8.5k per year and international students £20k per year. With all these courses, I would strongly encourage applicants to consider the cost in real terms. It may be hard to maintain any kind of part-time job alongside a full-time doctorate. How much debt will be accrued to fund this training, and what is your likely income in the years after qualifying? How much of this income will you be able to set aside to pay off loans? It is important that the numbers add up.

It also now possible to self-fund CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) training, which is shorter, at one year. At Surrey, the fees are currently £10k for the whole course. This also qualifies candidates to work in the NHS at a Band 7, the same as qualifying psychology doctorate professionals, and may be a good option for self-funders.

5. Beware the issue of accreditation. Many mental health roles now require registration with a professional organisation. For example, High Intensity Therapists (HITs) need to be registered as CBT therapists with the BABCP. Psychological Wellbeing Practitioners (PWPs) also need to be registered with the BABCP. All Practitioner Psychologists (Clinical, Forensic, Counselling, Health) need to be registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and Counsellors need to be registered with the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). If you are self-funding training in any of these professions, check that your course is accredited by the relevant body and will enable you to register with them afterwards. Many of the new psychology practitioner roles are not yet accredited and do not need to be registered, but this issue may arise over time as roles become more established. Before you launch into any training, be sure to check whether the role you are expecting to work in requires registration and if it does, make sure your course is accredited.

This update is not all-inclusive and is designed to be an add-on to my previous top tips blog. There is much good news for aspiring psychologists in 2023: there are now more jobs and more opportunities! Navigating this landscape can be bewildering, but I hope these tips help you on your next steps. Life is a journey, and life in psychology can be exciting. Enjoy your adventure!

Please note, I cannot provide individualised career advice.