Youth intensive psychological practitioners provide psychological assessment and psychologically informed interventions support for young people (13–17 years old) with severe mental health problems.
You need a willingness to work in a hopeful and productive way with young people with severe and complex mental health needs. For a place on the programme, you need to either have a first degree in psychology or have completed a course that confers graduate membership of the British Psychological Society.
While training, you’ll typically spend one day a week remote studying at university (45 days in total) and the rest of your time (four days a week) working in or undertaking specific training tasks in your placement setting.
You’ll want to work closely with children, young people, their families and carers at some of the most difficult times in their lives. You’ll have a resilient character, excellent interpersonal skills and the ability to build trusting and productive relationships with a wide range of people. You'll work well within a multidisciplinary team and be able to work independently where appropriate.
You could progress to a specialist role in the psychological professions, for example in clinical psychology or cognitive behavioural therapy, or retrain in another mental healthcare professional role such as nursing or the allied health professions.