(Un)Safe spaces

A thematic analysis of global majority trainees’ experience of a safe space group in clinical psychology training

Abstract

Clinical psychology is traditionally a profession that is dominated by White, socioeconomically middle-class women. It took worldwide protests, campaigns, and initiatives following the murder of George Floyd to convince the field of psychology to finally acknowledge and admit its historic and present role in the reproduction of institutional racism. As part of this, Health Education England developed an anti-racism action plan for all doctoral clinical psychology training organisations to prioritise addressing and redressing inequality, inequity, and oppression within the field. As one initiative, a Safe Space for global majority trainee clinical psychologists was developed on a clinical psychology training programme to provide these trainees a ‘safe’ community of support in an unsafe profession. Using thematic analysis, this study explores how global majority trainees experience the Safe Space as a feature of their clinical psychology training. Findings demonstrate the difficult, racialised experiences of these trainees, but also the importance of having groups like the Safe Space to create a sense of belonging and to provide material support and practices that enable them to navigate and challenge an oppressive training environment. It raises some questions for clinical psychology training programmes in how they are currently supporting marginalised groups, and the steps being taken to dismantle Whiteness.