Money Matters for training success

Sinking money into your training - photo "Pound Sinking in Sea" by Stuart Miles courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Since starting to blog on my experiences as a Forensic Phsychologist in Training Stage 2, I have had numerous comments and interactions from readers who are either at various stages of the training or are considering embarking on the training, and are concerned about funding.  Of course, how you organise the financing of this professional training is crucial not just to attaining Chartership, but also to avoid an additional stress when in the depths of carrying out the work necessary, arranging supervision and so on.  So I decided to summarise what I had to do to pay for the training.

I have to admit I have not fully kept tabs on all the costs.  Perhaps if I had, the enormity of it would have had me abandon ship.  But, with an eye firmly on the final goal, which I am certain will amply recompense for the work, effort and budgeting of the last few years, I embarked on making sure that I could make ends meet.

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Firstly there is an annual cost of enrollment of £1500.  This covers all your submissions and any resubmissions of that year and of course, is the first cost you must be sure to be able to meet.  You might want to think about how much time it will take for you to complete the training.  5 - 6 years seems to be a standard sort of time frame for this and worth keeping in mind, because this is not a short term commitment.

Next there is the cost of supervision.  This is typically around £80 per hour for face to face contact and around £40 per hour for non-contact time, such as reading through and assessing your work.  The training requires you to ensure that you demonstrate a minimum of 4 hours per month of supervision spread out between your designated supervisor and your co-ordinating supervisor.  If you are in a position at your work to be able to complete any expemplars, it is possible for your manager in your work place to also be your designated supervisor, and this would certainly reduce the cost.  If you are in a particularly advantageous position, you may find that your work place will also be able to supply you with a co-ordinating supervisor and in this way you will have no supervision costs..  I was fortunate enough to have one out of the two and so my supervision costs were not as great as they might have been.  The costs will vary from month to month - some months you will need more face to face time, some months less, and the same for non-contact time.

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So how to meet those costs.  Work is the obvious answer, but not just because it will supply you with a regular income.  Where you work may be crucial to keeping costs down.  Not only could your work place provide you with some if not all supervision opportunnities, but there may be numerous projects or work products that could provide material for exemplars, and your work place may want your developing skills enough to susidise the cost.  Another obvious usefulness of the work place will be whether you are able to work overtime at least on some occasions to add to the income that you can dedicate to meet those costs.

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It is possible to borrow money - perhaps through a personal loan, or possibly a professional development loan, both of these from banks and the usual lending institutions.  It may also be possible to obtain funding from bursaries or research or charitable institutions that want to invest in chartering psychologists, although in general I found that these believed that  having reached Masters level, the career had been achieved.

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One of the ways I found it possible to boost my income enough to meet my commitment to pay for my training was by tutoring students during after work hours.  Having attained masters degree level you can tutor students who are on undergraduate courses.  However, I find that the greatest demand for private tutoring is from A level students - or rather, their parents.  Tutoring is not reliable regular income, and most interest comes in the period January to June (from the time of the mocks to the actual A level!), but it certainly helps tremendously.  This is a tough option, because not only are you working and preparing your submissions, but you are  having to include time for tutoring as well as your own life, relationships, families etc.  This option calls for strong time management and I would strongly recommend builidng in a series of breaks to avoid burn out.

Financing the training is as much of a challenge as meeting the requirements of the course.  It involves reasearch, analysis and good time management skills, not to mention skills of persuasion and the sharpness of wit to spot an opportunity for funding or for saving on costs when it comes your way.  

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