Hello to all and welcome to May’s network update,

Please take a read through to hear more about developments in what we have been working on as a committee with support from ACP-UK and how we would love for you to get involved.

1. Webinars

We have started our series of lunchtime webinars back in March with planned events for May and June. These fall on a Wednesday lunchtime for an hour. Invitations for future planned events have been circulated and include-

May 25^th– Major Trauma Standards

Following the ACP-UK endorsement of standards for psychological rehabilitation in Major Trauma Services we welcome one of the contributors to that piece of work- Dr Louise Johnson to lead a webinar to discuss ‘Standards for clinical psychology in major trauma centres’.

Standards for Psychological Rehabilitation in Major Trauma – ACP UK

June 22^nd –Transition between child and adult services in physical health psychology – with an example of on gastro- intestinal services. Dr Rachel McGowan

If you have not received invites for these events and would like to attend, please contact Naomi Johnson [email protected]

2. Dissociation Guidelines – Our colleagues in ACP-UK Complex Mental Health Network have set up a working party to develop professional guidelines for working with Dissociation and would like to invite any of you who work with dissociation and physical health symptoms/ presentations – FND, Dissociative Seizures etc to contribute to this.

This looks to be an incredibly useful piece of work and you would have a good group of colleagues to work with- Phase 1 of the authoring is now underway with 6 core chapter groups.  Phase 2 will have a range of topics to address including overlaps with Physical Health presentations

If you have expertise/ interest to share or just want to find out a bit more please get in touch directly with Helena Crockford- Consultant Clinical Psychologist at Norfolk & Suffolk Foundation Trust who is one of the leads for this piece of work. Email: [email protected]

3. Supporting those who are Clinically Extremely Vulnerable

We know that those who identify as Clinically Extremely Vulnerable face challenges with arduous treatment and continued shielding as Covid restrictions lift. We are seeking a network member to pull together some practical ideas for managing drawn-out isolation.  There is a lot of good evidence-based advice out there that we think would be great summarised into a simple easy read ‘plan on a page’ type format. Drop us a line if you’re interested!

4. Please join our committee – we all do this as volunteers and alongside our day jobs and the more of us we can get involved the more we can achieve! You don’t need to be an expert, you’ll make lots of useful contacts and get great experience in discussing national and strategic professional issues with support from other committee colleagues and only need to commit 2-3 hours a month on a regular basis. We have the following roles available-

i. Media/Comms and website
ii. Webinar Series
iii. Equality Diversity and Inclusion
iv. Trainees
v. 4 Nations
vi. Cross-network links
vii. Rapid Responder roles to current affairs/events

Please drop us a line if you are interested in getting involved with our committee or have any ideas for future webinars or other events or actions we can consider.

Best wishes

Rachel Holt

Co-Chair on behalf of

ACP-UK CHP network

[email protected]

Twitter @ACP_UKCHPN