Public Servants Serving Our Society: Lead Psychologist
As a Cluster Lead Psychologist in the prison service, I manage the provision of psychology resource across the prisons in my cluster.
What I do day to day
Forensic psychologists have a lot of responsibilities, including legal responsibilities to parole boards and those as part of our work in the counterterrorism world. These are our main priorities, but we also work in interventions and group interventions. I offer individual therapy to those people in Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs), which were abolished in 2012 but have a legacy, with around 3000 people still left with the sentence. So, I’m the lead on IPPs in our group. I also do a lot of liaising and thinking around how we map and progress people and I’m involved in the supervision of trainees as well, which means supporting trainees through to qualification.
We provide an evidence based, psychological underpinning of how to work with and progress people. We can be involved face to face with those people themselves or we can be in a more supportive position helping governors, policymakers, or frontline staff to really work with people in crisis or with complex cases. During COVID we were quite heavily involved in a lot of areas with the primary purpose of keeping staff and prisoners safe.
Psychology is embedded in everything we do in the prison service. In my eyes, rehabilitation forms the primary function of the prison service. The Government highlights that HMPPS’s main goal is to reduce reoffending and improve people’s lives and psychologists are paramount in that and non-psychologist staff value the support and expertise that we can offer.
All of our work, whether that’s individual or group intervention, consultancy with staff or supervision staff, training or providing evidence to parole boards, is fundamentally there to help and protect the public.
Why being paid properly matters
It’s difficult but there are obviously other areas in which psychologists can work, where the pay is better. There are avenues through private practice, through the NHS or private health care companies. It seems that there are also more promotional opportunities to move up a pay scale in other organisations.
I don’t want to change or move from the prison service because I feel that people in prisons are those that need my help the most and that this is where I can make the most difference. If I can help those people then I’m also reducing the chance of there being a future victim, so there’s a longer-term consequence to what we can do. I think that a lot of psychologists in the prison service understand that they could earn more in other settings.
Why being in a trade union is important
I am not a risk taker, and union membership is like life-insurance. Prospect has different levels of power and influence, and I don’t know when I might need that. So, it provides peace of mind that if anything ever happened there would be someone in my corner who is an expert in employment law. I wouldn’t perform open heart surgery on myself, there are professionals for that, and it’s the same principle.
