Richard Boyd Barrett: Warns of clinical psychology training bottleneck
Richard Boyd Barrett addressed the Taoiseach about shortages in services for children with special needs and mental health, urging rapid recruitment of qualified psychologists and allied health professionals. He said the government has offered lip service but has not expanded training places or clinical placements sufficiently, citing 370 applications for nine clinical psychology doctoral places as a dramatic example.
Recruitment shortfall
The speaker argued that recruitment, not funding, is the central obstacle to expanding mental health and special needs services. He said places in third-level courses have been increased over two decades, but many graduates do not join health services, with some going abroad or into other sectors, so new training places have not reliably become frontline staff.
Training competition and capacity
He described intense competition for clinical psychology training, noting there were 370 applications for nine clinical psychology doctorate places and around 14 places in educational psychology. He said applicants often met the minimum academic standard and many held masters degrees and experience, yet only a small number secure training slots.
Clinical placements and sanctioned expansion
The speaker warned that course numbers cannot be expanded overnight because of downstream constraints such as college capacity and clinical placements needed to train clinicians. He reported that this morning the minister received further sanction for additional places across third-level colleges for medicine and allied health care professionals, and said he will raise the shortfall in clinical psychology places with the Minister for higher education.
Multidisciplinary teams and workforce use
He urged better use of the large applicant talent pool and called for more multidisciplinary teams in mental health, saying the historical absence of such teams has been a problem in psychiatry. He stressed the need to convert students into a sustainable workforce through improved training pathways and placements.
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Taoiseach, if we are going to provide for children with special needs, for the mental health of young people and mental health services generally, we need to recruit rapidly more people with the qualifications necessary to provide assessments and services. We're not doing it. Despite lip service being played by the government to the fact that they are, they're not actually doing it. And I just want to give you a dramatic example. I happen to know somebody who has a master's and a BA in psychology and applied to UCD to do a doctorate. There were 370 applications for nine places in clinical psychology. Everybody had to have a minimum of 2.1 in a BA. Most of them had master's and most of them had experience, but only nine got places in clinical psychology. There were 14 places in educational, I think, and a similar number, right? Why are there not more places to allow the people who want to work in areas like psychology and allied health professions to actually get qualified and provide the services we need in our health services? I think we began with Richard Boybar, well done. In terms of special needs, mental health and basically the recruitment issue. And yes, recruitment is the issue. We have allocated resources and what has stimied our endeavour to expand capacity has been actual recruitment itself. In fact, if you go back over the last two decades, we've increased places fairly significantly in allied health care professionals, particularly in the therapists, for example. But if you look at those who graduate, not all go into health services. Many go elsewhere. Some go abroad, some go into different services. So there's an issue there in terms of those additional places that we are creating in third level and have expanded places. Even in Northern Ireland, we've procured places from the third level colleges there. There's been challenges in transforming that student cohort then into workforce subsequently. That's just reality. That's just reality. And there's no point in that in your head. That is it. The other key issue, the other key challenge has been clinical placements in terms of people pursuing various disciplines. Now, we are expanding that too. This morning, the Minister received further sanctioned for additional places in all the third level colleges in respect to medicine and in respect to allied health care professionals. And in terms of, you had a specific query in terms of clinical psychology. And the short number of places. Again, you can't overnight turn nine into 25 or 30 because you need lots of capacities downstream to facilitate in terms of both within the college, in terms of clinical placements and so on. But I will raise the issue with the Minister for higher education in respect to clinical psychology itself. And also how we can, to a certain extent, if there's that many applying, we should see how best we can use that talent pool for the disciplines because we need more and more people and we need more multidisciplinary. Part of the issue with psychiatry, Gary was the absence of multidisciplinary teams historically in the mental health arena. So I'm very open to that and I talked to the Minister in respect of that.
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