Volunteering

There are lots of agencies across the country that interact at different levels of intensity with offenders from befriending and prison visits to mentoring, acting as an appropriate adult, accompanying offenders to court and youth offender panels.  Although these are not strictly psychological placements, they are a way to gain face to face experience with offenders, with the settings and with the multi-agency environment that surrounds an offender. 

My first of these volunteering posts was with a charity that mentored ex-offenders, helping them to find work and get into education or training.  I found the induction and training invaluable.  I felt that this training was readiness to begin work with offenders and a step away from the theory behind offending behaviour, assessment and treatment that you receive on a Masters course.  Training from charities that work in this way with offenders, if presented well, should prepare you to hold your boundaries, to consider your personal safety, to be aware of offending behaviours, to be aware of the offence someone may have committed and to talk to ex-offenders as fellow people not just 'offenders'.

Volunteering in this way also gives you the opportunity to learn from the offender.  As someone on the independent route and not working in a prison, I learnt so much volunteering about how difficult things are for prisoners on 6-12 month sentences and can now understand why they are the group of offenders most likely to re-offend.  Working in this way also gave me the opportunity to understand how the offence they have committed can effect the training and work opportunities they can access.  For example one ex-offender I worked with had a drugs conviction and wanted to become a youth worker so that he could pass on his first hand experience of the system and keep young males away from drugs and prison.  As expected, no course would accept him to work with young people with this conviction, however this is sad because he is probably the best person to be sharing the experience and consequences of his actions with young people.

Charities also have many needs that you as a psychologist can offer to help with especially if you are enrolled on the Stage 2 Chartership route.  For example, two of the Stage 2 Core Roles are training and consultancy.  Charities and third sector organisations will often be grateful of the opportunity to have someone come and deliver FREE training and consultancy to them.  This is something that I have definitely experienced as I am completing one of my exemplars as a consultant to a London based charity working with offenders and another exemplar offering training to an organisation.  The key of course is to have built a good rapport with the charity or organisation, perhaps by having volunteered for them in the past and then to really sell your proposal to them. 

The benefit of having volunteered with the charity first is not only the development of a rapport but also that you will have been able to see what possible needs there are that you could help with and you will have an insight into the structure, nature and politics of the organisation and can therefore present an idea that fits within those three areas or is able to answer the questions that those three areas of an organisation will raise.  If you are going to propose an core role idea to a charity that you are volunteering with you need to make sure that it is going to be relevant to both the charity and your Stage 2 and that it fits within the politics of the organisation i.e. you are not stepping on anyone's toes or suggesting something that deviates from the charity's mission statement.  Anything you do as a trainee and for a core role will need to be offered for free and you will also need to be able to explain to the organisation what Stage 2 is and arrange for one of them to be your Designated Supervisor and what that will entail for them.  It sounds like a lot but it can be successful.

As always I will include some words of caution:
1. Do nothing without the support of your supervisor.  There can be lots of politics and issues arising through completing a core role, your role within the organisation depending on which core role you are completing (training instruction or consultant) and the demands of colleagues working for the organisations (they are under pressure often too!).  Sometimes you can feel pulled in different directions; a great learning experience but it is really important to have your supervisor's support.

2. Be prepared for constant change and for the work to be stop-start.  Charities often have a high turnover of staff, are dependent on funding and often under-staffed and overworked.  There may be times when you aren't updated on progress as often as you would like, people don't respond to your calls and emails and you generally feel isolated.  If you have previously volunteered with the charity these feelings should be moderated as you will have experienced first hand the nature of the organisation and the pressure they are under and will be more empathic when things like this happen.  Make sure you mention it in your practice diary, how you cope with it and your strategies for improving the situation.

I don't want anyone to feel put off by this, working with a charity can be fantastic experience and can offer brilliant opportunities to complete core roles.

Until next time........

Publishing Your Research and Book Reviews

Ciara Wild MBPsS, Forensic Psychologist in Training

For many of us, getting published is one of the hardest parts of psychology training.  Publications of research are what reflect psychology as a science and us as scientist-practitioners.  This being said, achieving publication through the rigorous critique of our research can be the hardest part.  It is important to understand that published research must be of as high a standard as possible to maintain the quality of the outcomes in psychology, however this does not mean that your work is impossible to publish and doesn't mean that you cannot get your name in print attached to an article or otherwise.  We all have to do a research dissertation for our masters. There is a great deal of work that goes into to it from us and our research supervisors so why not publish it?  Many universities will offer to publish what they see as the best reports but there is no reason why you can’t go to journals yourself.

I chose to publish my masters dissertation and to try to get my name in as many relevant publications as possible through book reviews and articles.  My particular experience of this has been quite successful. Initially I chose to publish my masters dissertation.  I felt that I had worked hard on it and that it was currently relevant in the forensic psychology field, however I was also afraid that journals such as those by Sage or Wiley would not accept my dissertation so I decided to send it to the Division of Forensic Psychology (DFP) instead to be published in Forensic Update.  This was a very tense time for me, would they accept my research for publication or wouldn't they?  Luckily my report was accepted with the caveat that some changes needed to be made to the content to ensure the explanations were appropriate and to remove sections that were needed by the examiners of the masters course and not by readers. 

It was harder than anticipated to cut my dissertation down to publishable size especially after all the time writing, sweating and crying over it; I felt that everything was relevant!  All reports will need to be amended for publication if not for size then to answer the questions of the peer reviewers and to address the issues suggested by the editors however, the benefits of having your name in print makes it all worth it.  Having something published not only looks great on your CV to potential employers and placements but should make it easier in the future for you to publish again as you will have some experience of the process and what is needed for a successful publication. A word of caution with regards to publishing; publishers will consider whether your research is current and relevant to issues either happening now or topics where there is not enough information, these are the ones most likely to be selected for publication.  You may have to consider whether your research will need updating to make it more current and whether this will be viable.

In the case of book reviews. Lots of magazines and journals have a back log of books that need reviewing and this can be an alternative way of getting your name into print and practising analytic and concise writing skills. Book reviews are also a great way to learn about an area from a book you may not necessarily choose to buy for yourself. If you have the time to read the book and write a short piece about it then this might be a great starting point for you.  Alternatively, you could submit a non-research article to a magazine such as the Psychologist.  Perhaps you have been on work experience, helped with a particularly interesting project or done some volunteering and the charity or company are happy for you to write an article about your experiences there and an evaluative piece on its impact and outcomes.  These are all possibilities for starting the process of submitting for publication.  Other more mainstream magazines also often look for articles to be submitted and sometimes pay a small fee for the articles they receive.

I hope this has been of some help to all.  Please feel free to leave any comments or ask any questions.

Until the next instalment......