Now that September is here, Jocelyn Pryce, Deputy Head of Education at the IBMS, gives an update.
Those of you who regularly read our Here to Help articles will remember the article in May by Alan Wainwright, the Executive Head of Education, in which he described the changes that were being considered in order that we better meet the revised HCPC standards of education and training (SETs). He mentioned in the article that we would be implementing these changes in September 2019, and here we are – it’s September already!
Following consultation with groups, including our Service User and Patient/Carer Engagement Group, verifiers and examiners attending our training days and a dedicated working group of experienced trainers and verifiers from across the UK, as well as recent graduates, we have now developed a new version of the registration portfolio and guidance document.
Please don’t panic – we placed a heavy emphasis on looking at ways to allow us to meet the SETs but ones that meant minimal changes to evidence required, so I would like to stress that there should be no reason to make major changes to your training programmes or the type of evidence you produce. Alan described the various revised SETs in his article with ways that we might easily meet them; these include adding a contacts page
to the registration portfolio. Candidates must fill this out, demonstrating, for example, that they know how to raise concerns about well-being and safety of service users (SET 3.17 There must be an effective process in place to support and enable learners to raise concerns about the safety and wellbeing of service users.)
The questions embedded within the verifier’s report form have also been developed into open questions, rather than closed. Therefore, a revised verifier’s report form will be released alongside the new version of the portfolio.
We have only made a single, minor change to the actual evidence requirements and that is to expand the mandatory reflective statement on service-user interaction to include consideration of where candidates have learnt with and from other professionals. (SET 4.9 The programme must ensure that learners are able to learn with, and from professionals and learners in other relevant professions.)
These changes only affect those who enrol on the programmes from September 2019, i.e. applications from training officers for staff being trained from this date and students enrolling on integrated degrees. Students enrolled on degree programmes before September are not affected. However, as we believe they incorporate examples of best practice, you may want to embed them into your training across the board.
We will be sending verifiers information about these changes, promoting the new version of the portfolio on the website (don’t forget we have a dedicated training team page!) and running several sessions at Congress. The “mythbusting” session on Monday 23 September will look at common misconceptions related to the portfolios, the evidence and the requirements. We will also be facilitating a mini-verifiers session on Wednesday 25 September and this will cover the verification and examination processes, evidence in general and also incorporate information on the revisions. Attendance at this will fulfil the training criteria required to become a verifier/examiner. These are free events in Hall 4, so please do pop along if you can.
Image credit| iStock