A move towards a culture of involvement: involving service users and carers in the selection of future clinical psychologists

Abstract

National policies suggest that service users and carers should be involved in health care planning and delivery. Initiatives to involve service users and carers within the education of mental health professionals have been reported. However, there has been no initiative to involve such individuals in the selection of clinical psychologists. This study examines the experiences of service users, carers and members of the Doctorate of Clinical Psychology programme in the implementation of a new interview task for the selection of trainee clinical psychologists at the University of Surrey. This new initiative involves service users, carers and staff members working collaboratively to assess candidates in a discussion based task. The study employed two focus groups, one pre‐selection and one post‐selection, and used interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to evaluate participants' expectations and experiences of the task. The findings suggest that there was genuine collaboration between service users, carers and programme team members that was deeply engrained in the programme ethos and was a step forward in normalising and empowering service users and their carers. Interviewers felt that this task helped select a different calibre of applicants who had an awareness of the perspective of service users and carers and were able to communicate effectively. Interviewers viewed applicants who were able to disclose and take ownership of their views favourably. The introduction of a successful new interview task at Surrey has set a marker for future collaboration with service users and carers in selection, which will have implications for other doctorate programmes in clinical psychology and the broader health care training community.