Postgraduate Guidelines

How to activate the PSI Accreditation Process

The Society invites institutions of higher education who are providing or seek to provide postgraduate education in professional psychology to submit their courses for accreditation by the Society. Through its accreditation procedures, the Society wishes to support courses in a period of self-study and peer review, thus enabling them to maintain the highest standards of postgraduate education and training in professional psychology. Accreditation procedures consists of examining documentation associated with the course and an on-site visit to meet with appropriate teaching staff and students.

Institutions who wish to have their courses accredited should take the following steps:

• Write to the Director of Professional Development giving a brief description of the course that they wish to have accredited. Formal document listing the accreditation criteria appropriate to the course will be forwarded to the institution and the accreditation process will be activated.

• The course team should follow the guidelines for ‘Submitting an accreditation application to the Psychological Society of Ireland’ (Appendix 1 below)

The Society will set up a Visiting Accreditation Panel (Appendix 2 below) of suitably qualified people who may subsequently request other documentation, either before or after the accreditation visit.

At a date suitable to all parties, the Visiting Panel will arrange an onsite visit to meet the

• Course team
• Head of Department
• Representatives of the University management
• Representatives of employers/sponsors
• Trainees/Students from each year of the course
• Representatives of recent graduates from the course
• Placement supervisors

Based on the information in the documentation from the visit, the team will prepare an initial report which will be forwarded (within three months) to the course organiser to check for factual accuracy. At this stage the report will not include recommendations.

A final report, including any requirements and recommendations will be forwarded to Council for decision. The Council’s decision will be formally communicated by the CEO of PSI to the Head of the Department from which the course was accredited within six months of the onsite visit.

Accreditation procedures can have the following outcomes:

• Full accreditation for a three year period (with recommendations to strengthen the course)
• Provisional accreditation with major and/or minor requirements to be met within a set period and recommendations to strengthen the course
• No accreditation

A fee will be set which will be met by the institution. The current fee is €4,000.

APPENDIX 1
APPENDIX 2

The following documents outline the guidelines for accreditation of postgraduate courses. These documents are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

• Clinical
  
  
• Counselling
  
  
• Educational
  
  
• Forensic
  
  
• Health
  
  
• Work and Organisational

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