Take learning into your own hands with an apprenticeship
The traditional university route isn’t the only entry route into the world of clinical psychology. Although working as a clinical psychologist currently requires a degree and relevant doctorate qualifications, there is an apprenticeship route in psychology as a clinical associate. With a mix of of academic and practical learning, apprenticeships benefit from the best of both worlds. With psychology being such a desired career area, there’s now a new entry route that will help you take your first steps in a career in psychology.
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Clinical associate in psychology - a new way of providing support
Clinical associates is a relatively new role in psychology which has been designed to provide psychological interventions under the supervision of a fully qualified practitioner psychologist. Working alongside a range of psychological professionals, clinical associates help to provide people with access to psychological informed mental health and wellbeing services. The pathway is considered as an integrated degree apprenticeship, which is an apprenticeship qualification that on completion, results in a degree. This route enables students to achieve the qualifications they need to succeed whilst gaining plenty of work experience as a result.
What’s it really like?
This route was introduced to provide people with greater access to psychologically informed mental health services, filling the gap between assistant pyschologists and qualified clinical psychologist. The role is intended to provide high quality, evidence-based psychological interventions, working with people from all sorts of backgrounds in a variety of settings - from their homes, communities, hospitals, or in specialist settings.
During the apprenticeship, it’s likely that apprentices would interact with many different healthcare professionals, in addition to professionals working in schools, probation services, the police, and the legal system.
There are some similarities between typical university degrees and degree apprenticeships. Whereas students on nursing degrees split their time evenly between academic and clinical settings, students on the degree apprenticeship will spend roughly 80% of their time in clinical settings and the rest at university This pathway typically takes 18 months to complete,and the qualification received on completion would be the equivalent of a master’s degree (Level 7)..
FAQS
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