Following events within the training community, the profession, the murder of George Floyd and the work of the Black Lives Matter movement, the last 12 months have seen the Lancaster DClinPsy begin to focus on addressing structural, and individual, experiences of racism within the programme and clinical psychology as a profession. We acknowledge this work is overdue, and we recognise the work of many people who have been highlighting institutional racism for many, many years.

Our intentions and hopes for our work on anti-racist practice:

We acknowledge and commit to the importance of facilitating on-going conversations about race and racism.

We acknowledge systemic racism within the programme and commit to action to end this.

We commit to making our course safer for people of colour so that we can work to diversify the profession and the decolonisation of psychological practice.

We commit to this on a programme level and hope to share learning and ideas within the wider training community.

Our actions to date have included:

• Replicating the trainee racism survey with Lancaster trainees
• A consultation with trainees from minority ethnic backgrounds on the programme, which resulted in regular protected reflective space meetings
• Cross-cohort trainee meetings to share ideas and good practice
• The development of a tool for decolonising the curriculum by trainees as part of a service development assignment
• A staff member joining the Faculty Race Equality Task & Finish group
• Stakeholder consultation sessions for teachers, supervisors, markers, selectors and experts by experience – more details below
• Staff undertaking their own CPD
• The development of an Anti-Racism Group with a strategic function within our organisational structures to hold the course to account.
• A request for a funding stream specifically to support this work
• Liaising with other programmes to learn what has worked well

We are currently in the process of exploring staff reflective training on Whiteness in clinical psychology and the programme, and developing a new additional day focused on anti-racist practice within our Introductory Supervisor Training offer.

This is the start of what will be productive conversations and action within our programme and the wider profession.