Volunteering as experience for clinical psychology PhD

Faith

I'm currently doing a psychology conversion course, and hoping to eventually do clinical psychology. Having spoken to one, she advised me to do plenty of volunteer work through this course, because I'll greatly increase my chances of getting a place on a PhD course. So can anyone recommend some good organisations to look into volunteering with, with clinical psychology in mind? Thanks.

The Black Oil

This is a difficult one because clinical is very broad and competitive to get into. I think the main thing is to try and gain diverse experience. If you get skills in one area move onto somewhere else to get new ones or work with different potential client groups. You could try helpline work, support group facilitation, intellectual disability, autism...there are so many possible areas. From college, a few volunteered people with Bodywhys, the Simon Community, Focus Ireland, etc. They're generally all doing or have completed Masters now, including Social Work so they've not all stuck with psychology.

Your careers officer might be able to give you some idea of organisations they've had good feedback about or is there a psych soc in your college? People there might know.

Odysseus

Generally community based addiction treatment programmes are usually willing to avail of volunteers, maybe try a few months of that, in addition to the above.

The Black Oil

This link might be worth keeping an eye on.

Myksyk

The four core competency areas in Clinical are Adult Mental health, Child and Adolescent services, Learning Disability and Older Adult services. Any experience, voluntary or otherwise, in these areas is relevant and will be taken into consideration. Your best bet is through Learning disability services as they generally have better developed volunteer services.

JuliusCaesar

Ocdireland and other organisations sometimes train suitably qualified volunteers to facilitate groups.