Regional Groups | South Wales

Sarah Morgan
Resource Centre,
Tonna Hospital,
Neath,
SA11 3LX

Tel: 01639 862869

Report from the South Wales Representative to National PSIGE Committee 28 June 2006

We have seen many changes in our South Wales PSIGE Group over the past two years. Our committee has changed almost in its entirety so that we now have a new Chair, Clare Quinn, Vice Chair, Rosslyn Offord, Secretary, Helen Barker, Secretary and Geographical Representative, Sarah Morgan, working alongside, our Welsh representative, Janice Rees and Treasurer Jimmy Jones. Thank you to all who have and continue to provide their support and commitment to South Wales PSIGE.

We continue to meet every quarter in different locations across South Wales to discuss business issues for half of our meeting and a presentation topic from one of our members during the other half. The meetings have been well attended with sometimes up to thirty people coming. We have tried to make the meetings as open as possible involving trainees and assistants when they are on placement, in order to encourage interest in Older Adult Psychology.

Over the past year, the business section of our meetings, has involved collating responses to the NICE Guidance on Anti-dementia drugs and Dementia, the Welsh National Service Framework and Capacity Act. The National Service Framework for Wales has now been published on the 20th March 2006. Interestingly, it has been nicknamed ‘No significant funding’ in some quarters of the NHS as it doesn’t seem to be coming with any funding to help us to implement the standards. Several of our PSIGE members were actively involved in developing the framework, so the coming years will be an interesting time.

In terms of our CPD, some of the topics presented and discussed at our meetings have included, Caseload and Workload Management, Working with People with Memory Problems in groups, Story Telling with different groups of older adults and Capacity. Additional CPD events have also been organised outside our meetings and we have been fortunate to have Andrew Balfour come to talk to us about Psychodynamic issues in relation to older people, Claire Fisher on using CAT with older people, and Graham Stokes on Managing Challenging Behaviour in Dementia Care. These events have been held in conjunction with the South Wales Clinical Psychology Training Course who kindly provided a venue for us and some of the events have been open to trainees thereby fostering our close links with the course.

The training course has also been going through a period of transition in terms of re-structuring the way they organise placements for trainees. As a consequence to this we have had an increasing number of trainees on placement, and will ultimately have us providing a ‘rolling programme’ of placements, so that we will have a trainee on placement throughout the year. This has been challenging and refreshing in that it has provided us with a greater opportunity to supervise small pieces of research in our departments. Several of our members have also recently published papers, including Paul Elson, Julie Wilcox, Janice Rees and Rosslyn Offord. This influx of trainees will hopefully contribute to an expansion in Older Adult Psychologists if we can inspire them to specialise in our area and for us to find the funding for posts!

In terms of the number of posts in South Wales, member’s hard work in the development of services has paid off with a general increase in the number of posts, particularly in Pembrokeshire which has seen a threefold increase in established posts, Gwent and Cardiff localities have also recently advertised for five posts.

Our year has also been touched with a little sadness in terms of one of our most valued member’s retiring. Charles Twining OBE retired in November 2005. Charles had been a Clinical Psychologist for nearly 30 years and contributed massively to the development of the profession. To name but a few of his achievements, he was one of the founder members of PSIGE in 1980 and was the first Membership Secretary of PSIGE. Charles worked in Cardiff and developed work in the context of geriatric medicine in relation to Psychology and health. He was also very active with Age Concern, Wales and was the BPS Representative on the governing body of Age Concern. Charles also published two books – Helping Older People: A Psychological Approach ------ 1988 and The Memory Handbook, Windsor Press 1991. , In latter years he was a pivotal figure in developing the National Service Frameworks for England and Wales. He will be sadly missed but we wish him all the best for his future and retirement.

On a lighter note three of our members have had children, potential future PSIGE members we would like to think! We would like to wish them many congratulations and best wishes.

Dr Sarah Morgan, Tonna Hospital, Neath, June 2006