Clinical Associate in Psychology (CAP) Programme

The Clinical Associate in Psychology Programme in EPUT is an 18 month Masters (Level 7) qualification offered as both a Direct Entry route and as a Degree Apprenticeship. The programme is validated by the University of Essex, who confer the MSc upon successful completion of the course.

The course began in 2021 and has since welcomed 5 cohorts of CAP students, with graduates of the programme now working in local NHS services or progressed on to further training.

The EPUT programme is unique in England as the only CAP course delivered by an NHS Trust, partnered by a university. This allows the programme to be closely in tune with the employers of our CAPs, ensuring the programme is aligned and responsive to workplace needs.

We are also one of the only courses offering two specific MSc workplace pathways:

• Adult Mental Health Pathway training CAPs working across all adult mental health services, including inpatient services and specialist services such as early intervention and personality disorder services, as well as adult community mental health teams.
• Health, Ageing and Disability Pathway training CAPs working in clinical health psychology services, services for older people, learning disability services and neurodevelopmental services including with autistic people and their families.

The EPUT-Essex course is accredited by the British Psychological Society (BPS). This means that the programme complies with the training standards set out by the BPS and that graduates of the programme are eligible to join the BPS Wider Workforce Register as a qualified CAP. 

Critieria to apply

You will need to have a minimum of an upper second-class Honours degree in Psychology (or in some cases a 2.2 will be accepted with appropriate additional experience, or contextual information, demonstrating academic potential).

You may also be eligible if you have completed a Psychology Conversion degree.

Whatever Psychology degree you have, you need to be eligible for Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership (GBC) of the British Psychological Society (BPS). You can find more information about GBC on the BPS website: https://www.bps.org.uk/

How we train:

As is typical of the apprenticeship model, the majority of the practical learning takes places in students' workplaces, with students released for a day each week to attend the academic programme. A blended Learning approach is taken here, with both in-person and remote teaching and workshops. The in-person sessions every month allow students to come together as a cohort and get to know each other, which supports their work across the group assignments as well as providing them with a supportive network during their training. The remote sessions allow students in disparate workplaces to easily and efficiently join the taught programme without a lengthy journey to start and end each teaching day. 

We embrace and Adult learner model in which the students are at the centre of their own training, each with their own individual learning plan to tailor the programme to their particular learning needs. The students learn in a combination of full cohort and smaller learning set formats, with learning using a wide range of approaches to appeal to different learning styles, including didactic teaching, workshops and simulations. Workplace application is critical to the students learning, and they have guided learning time each week that is designed to support their application.

We keep in close contact with our students workplace supervisors and line managers, with supervision groups, staff-employer liaison meetings and post-qualification groups to ensure we maintain a truly 'joined up' approach to the MSc.