Previous issues will be available to download from the education section of our website:

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1 Education update May 2010 Issue 4 Introduction Welcome to the first anniversary edition of Education update. Launched in May 2009 it has been developed to be a channel of communication from the Education Department of the Health Professions Council (HPC) to education stakeholders across the UK. The update distils all major HPC communications to education stakeholders into a single communication distributed at three key times during the year: May, October and January. The update is normally distributed in an electronic format. But, if there is supporting documentation you need, we will also send a hard copy to appropriate contacts. Previous issues will be available to download from the education section of our website: If you have any questions relating to the articles or views and comments on the update please contact us at: education@hpc-uk.org Must reads in this issue: Approval visits in the academic year p 3 The Vetting and Barring Scheme p 4 Education seminars p 6 Consultation on changes to the generic standards of proficiency p 9

2 Contents - Issue 4 Education... 3 Approval visits in the academic year...3 Approval visits in for practitioner psychologist programmes...3 Hearing aid dispenser update...4 The Vetting and Barring Scheme...4 Education workshops and practitioner psychologist seminars...5 Education seminars Education Department staff changes...6 Changes to the register of approved programmes and education providers...6 Consultations, Committees and Council... 7 Regulation of psychotherapists and counsellors...7 Consultation on changes to the generic standards of proficiency...8 Consultation on the standards of proficiency for health psychologists...8 Consultation on draft Welsh language scheme...9 Hearing aid dispenser appointment to Council...9 Next issue October

3 Education Approval visits in the academic year We are now planning our approval visit schedule for the academic year including visits to new programmes which are currently not approved by us and approved programmes that are planning changes. If a currently approved programme is undergoing changes then a major change notification form must be completed before a visit can be considered. In light of the changes, an education provider may want us to a attend a periodic review / revalidation event they are intending to hold. However as we operate a system of open ended approval there is no requirement for us to do so. We may decide changes to a programme can be assessed using our major change process and decide not to visit. Please note, we require six months notice to adequately plan a visit. A visit must also take place no less than three months before a cohort starts a programme. Therefore we are currently planning visits between December 2010 and June 2011, for programmes which intend to commence in September However we can also accept requests for visit dates in July 2011 onwards. We expect shortly to reach our visit capacity for the period of March 2011 May Dates for visits will be allocated to education providers on a first come first served basis. With this in mind, please ensure there is liaison within your institution before you suggest dates to HPC as it may be difficult to re-arrange dates at a later stage. If you wish to arrange an approval visit, please download a visit request form from our website: Approval visits in for practitioner psychologist programmes All practitioner psychologist programmes were contacted in July 2009 to confirm in which academic year they can expect to be subject to an HPC approval visit. If you are due to be visited in the academic year and have not yet returned your completed visit request form, please do so as soon as possible. Please refer to the information outlined above regarding notice periods and availability of visit dates. 3

4 Hearing aid dispenser update On 1 April 2010 the HPC opened its Register to hearing aid dispensers. This means that hearing aid dispensers are now independently and statutorily regulated by the Health Professions Council and no longer by the Hearing Aid Council. Hearing aid dispensers are health professionals working in the private sector and are legally allowed to prescribe and dispense a hearing aid. The 18 hearing aid dispenser programmes previously accredited by the Hearing Aid Council have now been granted open ended approval by the HPC and we also approved two historical programmes which are closed, but still provide eligibility to apply to the Register. The programmes granted open ended approval will now be subject to an approval visit which will take place sometime in the next two academic years. The process of prioritising each visit and producing a schedule is currently underway and we will communicate with education providers in the near future to let them know which year we would like to visit. We will then expect to receive proposals for specific dates from each education provider on a visit request form. For further information about the work we are doing in relation to hearing aid dispenser programmes please visit our website: The Vetting and Barring Scheme The Government is currently introducing the Vetting and Barring Scheme to ensure that everyone working or volunteering with children or vulnerable adults is suitable to do so by being checked and registered. There is one vetting and barring scheme to cover England, Wales and Northern Ireland, which is jointly administered by the Criminal Records Bureau and the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA). There is a separate scheme for Scotland, which is administered by Disclosure Scotland. Individuals who either volunteer with or are employed to work with children or vulnerable adults (the Scottish scheme refers to protected adults ) on a regular basis will need to register with the scheme. The activities incorporated within the scheme include the provision of care, advice and treatment. The definition of a vulnerable or protected adult includes any adult receiving healthcare or health services. As a result, the majority of HPC registrants will need to be registered with the vetting and barring scheme. 4

5 Education providers will need to make sure that their students on placements with children or vulnerable adults are registered with the relevant vetting and barring scheme. However, this does not replace the requirement for education providers to ensure there are appropriate selection and entry criteria in place for admissions to a programme. Students and employees will be able to register with the ISA from 26 July Registration will be phased, with individuals who are new to working or volunteering with children or vulnerable adults being the priority. From November 2010, new entrants to the workforce, including students must be ISA registered before undertaking work with children or vulnerable adults. It is likely that the scheme in Scotland will be phased in from late Registration with one of the vetting and barring schemes does not replace registration with the HPC. The HPC will continue to set the standards for practising in all of the professions it regulates and professionals will still need to be registered with the HPC if they use one of the titles we protect. The HPC can t give advice about or whether individuals need to be registered with the schemes. Further information about vetting and barring is available on our website: Education workshops and practitioner psychologist seminars Following on from the successful completion of the practitioner psychologist seminars and the education workshops held during 2009, we have collated the questions and answers received from all the events. This resource is now available on our website: Education seminars We will once again be going on the road in the next academic year ( ) to speak with stakeholders interested in learning more about our department and our processes. We will be running 3 types of seminars with each focussing on one of the following themes: Hearing aid dispensers Standards of education and training: proposed changes to the level of qualification for entry to the Register General education information focus on standards of conduct, performance and ethics. 5

6 These seminars are free to attend and will be open to anyone who has or will have involvement in the delivery of HPC approved programmes. These seminars will be delivered in autumn 2010 (October December) and you will have the opportunity to register for one of these from August The dates of these seminars, the locations where they will be held across the UK and the information you need to register will be made available online. We will be in contact with you in the near future with further information on the seminars. In the meantime, please keep checking our website for updated information: Education Department staff changes Whilst Abigail Gorringe, Director of Education, is on maternity leave until 31 December 2010 an interim structure for the Education Department is in effect with Education Managers Osama Ammar and Tracey Samuel-Smith managing the department. Osama is now 'Acting Director of Education' and Tracey is 'Acting Head of Education' reflecting Osama s external focus in managing and leading the department and Tracey s similar but internally focused role. To support Tracey and Osama, two education officers, Paula Lescott and Brendon Edmonds, are now Acting Education Managers. In their new roles Paula has a line management focus whilst Brendon has a work-plan delivery focus. The reorganisation of the department has also seen the creation of a new administrative role with Liz Craig joining as Team PA/Administrator, supporting the management team. Two new education officers, Lewis Roberts and Benjamin Potter joined the department with Benjamin joining the South of England and Scotland (SES) team and Lewis joining the North of England, Northern Ireland and Wales (NNIW) team. In addition a temporary administrator position has been created to assist with the department s project work for , with Victoria Adenugba joining the department to take on this role. Changes to the register of approved programmes and education providers The register of programmes which are approved by the HPC can be found on our website for the 15 professions we regulate. Traditionally this list was static and it was not very easy to find the information you may have needed. The Education Department has recently completed the development of a search function for the register of approved programmes. This will make it easier for any visitors to our website to find an approved programme relating to a particular profession, education provider or to find a of list approved programmes within a particular region. 6

7 You will also find a searchable register of education providers and the relevant contact details for each. If you have any feedback regarding the new searchable register of approved programmes or education providers, please contact us. Please use the following link to access these new registers on our website: Consultations, Committees and Council Regulation of psychotherapists and counsellors The Government stated in the 2007 White Paper Trust Assurance and Safety The Regulation of Health Professionals in the 21st Century that it intends to introduce statutory regulation for psychotherapists and counsellors. We set up a working group of stakeholders, known as a Professional Liaison Group (PLG) to consider and make recommendations to the Council about how psychotherapists and counsellors might be regulated, in light of the conclusions made in the White Paper. We held a public consultation on the PLG recommendations which ran for three months in The consultation received more than 1,000 responses, the majority from individual practitioners in the field as well as from service users, charities and professional bodies. The responses revealed a range of different views to be taken into account in considering the most appropriate way forward. We are confident that, as a multi-professional regulator and given our experience and approach to regulation, we are well placed to regulate psychotherapists and counsellors should we be instructed to do so. We have a strong track record of bringing new professions into regulation and we currently regulate arts therapists, including arts psychotherapists. We also recently took on practitioner psychologists and have successfully integrated them onto our Register. We agree with Government that the regulation of psychotherapists and counsellors is important for the protection of the public. However, the final decision about the statutory regulation of these groups ultimately rests with Government. The PLG met again on 12 May 2010 to discuss the progress made in drawing conclusions about the potential statutory regulation of psychotherapists and counsellors and to help inform the delivery of the remainder of this work. Further information about this work please visit our website: 7

8 Consultation on changes to the generic standards of proficiency In September 2009, we set up a group comprised of Council members to review the generic standards of proficiency and to recommend to the Council whether any changes needed to be made. As part of the review we considered feedback that had been submitted by external stakeholders, including the professional bodies of the professions regulated by the HPC. Some of the comments we received included concerns that some standards aren t applicable to all the professions we regulate because of the terminology used. We concluded that generic standards of proficiency should be retained as they recognise important commonalities shared by the professions regulated by the HPC. We also agreed that changes to the structure and wording of the generic standards are needed to address the concerns raised by stakeholders and to ensure that the generic standards are applicable to the all professions we regulate. We will be holding a public consultation on our proposals to change the structure and wording of the generic standards. We expect the consultation to begin in July and run for a period of three months. If the new generic standards are agreed, they would be implemented on a rolling basis alongside new profession specific standards which would be developed following the completion of the review of the generic standards. Consultation on the standards of proficiency for health psychologists We are currently consulting on a minor amendment to the standards of proficiency for health psychologists. Health psychologists were regulated alongside other domains of psychology in July The title practitioner psychologist is given to the seven domains of psychology practice regulated by the HPC which set standards of proficiency for practitioner psychologists. The standards of proficiency are divided into generic standards which apply across all the professions the HPC regulates, profession specific standards for practitioner psychologists and domain specific standards. We are proposing a minor change to one of the domain specific standards for health psychologists. The standard to be changed can be found under 2b.4 be able to conduct appropriate diagnostic or monitoring procedures, treatment, therapy or other actions safely and skilfully. Currently the domain specific standard reads: be able to integrate and implement therapeutic interventions based on a range of evidence-based models of formal psychological therapy, including the use of cognitive behavioural therapy We have received feedback which suggests that this standard as worded may not be appropriate and proposes that the phrase including the use of cognitive behavioural therapy should be removed. Once the consultation is over, we will 8

9 analyse the responses we receive. We will also publish a document which details the comments we receive and explains the decisions we have taken as a result. The consultation will put the proposed changes before a wide range of stakeholders, including education providers and relevant professional bodies and will run until 12 July Consultation on draft Welsh language scheme As the HPC is a UK wide regulator we provide services to people in every one of the home countries which means that the services we provide have to be suitable for the needs of the public in each country. Therefore we are currently consulting on our draft Welsh language scheme. The scheme sets out how we propose to deliver services to stakeholders in Wales. We invite Welsh-speaking and other members of the public who may be affected by the scheme to offer comments. The Welsh Language Act 1993 established the principle that in the conduct of public business and administration of justice in Wales, the English and Welsh languages should be treated on a basis of equality. The Act also made provisions for the preparation and approval of Welsh language schemes. Our draft scheme explains the steps that we will take in order to meet our duties under the Welsh Language Act. We would welcome your comments on the scheme, in whatever format is convenient for you. In particular, we are interested in whether the proposals outlined in the scheme will enable Welsh speakers to engage with us in our work. The consultation on our draft Welsh language scheme will run until 1 September Consultation documents in an alternative format or in Welsh are available upon request. If you have any queries about any of our consultations you can consultation@hpc-uk.org or alternatively for more information please visit our website: Hearing aid dispenser appointment to Council As the hearing aid dispenser profession has now transferred to the HPC register we have been working to recruit a hearing aid dispenser member to the HPC Education and Training Committee. The Education and Training Committee is a statutory committee of the Council that advises the Council on matters relating to education, training and registration. Panels drawn from the Committee also consider visitors reports for our approval, annual monitoring and major change processes and approve programmes for the HPC. The Committee comprises of at least one member 9

10 from each HPC regulated profession, and when hearing aid dispensers joined the register it created an opportunity for a registrant from that profession to join the Committee. Interviews were held at the end of April, and an appointment is due to be made by the Council at the end of May. For further details visit our website: Next issue October 2010 Please provide any feedback or comments regarding this newsletter to: education@hpc-uk.org If you would like a hard copy of any supplementary information referred to in this newsletter, please the education inbox at the address listed above, with you name, organisation and postal address. This document is available in alternative formats on request 10