North Wales Clinical Psychology Doctoral Programme (DClinPsy)

Entry requirements

The Job Description and Person Specification of a trainee Clinical Psychologist position for the North Wales Clinical Psychology Programme is available here.

All of the criteria below are used in the shortlisting process. Required information is obtained from the Clearing House application form and your academic transcript. Criteria identified with an * refer to the minimum criteria that all candidates need to meet. These criteria are assessed by NHS Clinical Psychologists and programme staff. Please note: Due to the funding arrangements of Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) for places on the Programme, we cannot consider applications who do not qualify for home fee status.

Only the information mentioned below is downloaded from your application during the shortlisting process, we do not know your name, age, address etc. We only download the entire application form once we have decided who to invite for interview, when we review the application in its entirety using safe recruitment principles.

• Before applying you should have already obtained a single or joint honours first or upper second-class psychology degree (or a conversion degree)* and you should be eligible for Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership* (GBC). We apply similar criteria to a psychology conversion degree, as an undergraduate psychology degree (www.bps.org.uk/membership/eligibility) with the British Psychological Society.
• We require a transcript of your undergraduate degree or other qualifications, which have given you eligibility for GBC.
• We review the marks of your final year modules on your transcript and calculate an average, without applying any weighting. Your average score needs to be 60% or above. For courses using different marking systems, we apply the guidance provided to us by the Clearing House on how to interpret other degree classifications. For a conversion course, all your modules will be used to calculate this average.
• Applicants with 2.2 psychology undergraduate degree will only be considered if they have completed a PhD. We do not award points to non-psychology degrees.
• You need to have completed the degree that gives you eligibility for GBC at the time you are applying, so that would either be your undergraduate or conversion degree.
• It is expected that you will have at least one year’s relevant paid clinical/ research experience*. Clinically relevant experience should give you the opportunity for substantial interaction with people with significant health or psychological difficulties, ideally under the supervision of a clinical psychologist. Experience obtained in other paid employment working with a clinical population will also be relevant (e.g., mental health worker, care assistant, advocate). Research experience should involve the investigation of psychological phenomena within a clinical population. We credit a maximum of two years full time equivalent paid relevant experience.
• Clinical experience obtained and required as part of another training/education, rather than paid employment, is not considered as relevant clinical experience.
• While voluntary work is not considered relevant paid clinical experience, points are awarded for this.
• In addition to the above you are expected to submit a good quality application form*, which will be assessed by two clinical psychologists. They will be looking for grammar and spelling, as well as your psychological mindedness and your value base. In order to demonstrate this, you have to ensure that you fully answer the open-ended questions.
• Your application must include two satisfactory statements of suitability. Candidates are expected to have good and supportive academic and clinical statements of suitability*. One statement of suitability needs to be from a person who can comment on your academic and research abilities. This is usually a university lecturer or tutor. The other statement of suitability relates to your clinical skills and is preferably provided by the employer or supervisor from your most recent post, unless you have only been working with the referee for a relatively short period. In that case you could consider asking the person you worked with before and who has known you for a longer period. Two clinical psychologists assess the statement. If they consider the statement not to be supportive, your application will not proceed. We strongly advise that you talk to the people who provide your statement of suitability to ensure that they can whole heartedly support your application.
• We also acknowledge your motivation and commitment by awarding points for any presentations at conferences, publications in journals or newsletters and voluntary work that you have undertaken. There are no minimum criteria attached to this section.
• We are committed to increasing the diversity of the profession and we are using contextual information in our selection process. Please see the Contextual Selection section for further details.

We strongly encourage Welsh speakers to apply for this programme and we award additional points in the shortlisting phase, for your ability to speak Welsh: either fluently or as a learner. The legal status of the Welsh language in all areas of life in Wales (including health), and the very significant proportion of the population in North and West Wales who speak Welsh as their first language, means that the programme welcomes the opportunity to train people to fulfil a very real need for delivering the best quality psychological care in the Welsh language. This commitment was recognised during the Bangor University re-validation visit in 2019. Please indicate on the application form your level of Welsh proficiency.

We can provide a range of facilities to support Welsh speaking trainees to develop their clinical practice skills in the Welsh language, including placements and, where practicable supervision, as well as presenting written and other work in Welsh. We can also support trainees who wish to learn Welsh, wish to refresh their skills, or simply develop more confidence in using their Welsh language skills in practice.

As the number of bilingual Welsh-English speaking applicants remains low (1% of all applicants in the UK, as per Clearing House equal opportunity data), the majority of trainees in each cohort are English speaking. We offer mentorship sessions to candidates who are Welsh speaking. For more information, please see the Diversity and Social Inclusion section of our website, or alternatively contact Carolien Lamers (Selection and Recruitment Director) c.lamers@bangor.ac.uk).

Training in a bilingual cohort and community, often rural, provides excellent opportunities for you to enhance your cultural appreciation and skills within clinical practice.

If English is not your first language, you will be required to provide evidence that you possess an adequate level of English competence. You need to have obtained level 8 on the IELTS scheme*, with no elements below 7.5. This does not apply to Welsh/English bilingual candidates. Having completed an academic psychology programme in the UK through the medium of English, will be considered evidence of your English language competence.

The Programme is an Equal Opportunities Employer and welcomes candidates from all backgrounds and ages. The Programme operates the Disability Confident Scheme.

Universities will not usually allow you to enrol on a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology if you are currently enrolled on any other degree, e.g., a PhD or master's programme. If you have any outstanding requirements from another programme, you may be required to withdraw from that programme to take up a place or to continue your studies on a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology. Being in the final stages of any such programme, i.e., submission of thesis has occurred or is imminent at the time of applying, your application might be considered.

In line with training programmes in England, the Welsh clinical psychology programmes will not be able to consider applications from candidates who have received and/ or completed a training programme funded by NHS training bodies in any of the devolved nations within the last two years. We look forward to welcoming your application two years post completion of the original programme in line with guidance published by NHS England.

Months of entry

October

Course content

We would like to give you a flavour of what North Wales is like as a place to live and work. Should you end up here, you will spend three years working in one of the most beautiful parts of Great Britain. The School of Psychology and Sport Sciences at Bangor University is renowned for its academic excellence, and our DClinPsy programme is fully accredited by the Health and Care Professions Council, the British Psychological Society and Bangor University.

Fees and funding

Trainees are full time employees of the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board and have annual leave and other benefits in line with usual NHS entitlements. On entry to the Programme, you are paid on the first spine point of Band 6 of the Agenda for Change pay scales (www.healthcareers.nhs.uk) and you will move to the second and third pay points annually, dependent upon successful progression through the Programme.

Trainee posts are funded by the Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW), who will also pay the university fees. There are currently fourteen training places per annum.

Due to funding regulations and restrictions of Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW), we cannot accept applications from candidates who do not have the EU Settlement Scheme (settled and pre-settled status) or Settled/Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) in the UK.

You can also find information about fee status regulations on the UKCISA website.

Travel costs will be paid from an agreed clinical base. Payment for overnight accommodation, either during placement or academic teaching blocks, will be available where this would be more cost effective than daily travel.