Katie Baxter

Assistant Psychologist at STSFT / PhD Researcher with Sunderland University / Ella and Freya 👩‍👧‍👧 / 🐱🍷📚

[Katie Baxter @KatieBPsych]

Another DClin cycle complete, after unsuccessful outcomes throughout! Facing the uncertainty of what the next year and application cycle is going to look like🥲

[Katie Baxter @KatieBPsych]

Half marathon number 7 confirmed ❤️
A helpful distraction amongst the interview chaos and uncertainty 📚

[Katie Baxter @KatieBPsych]

@madsclinpsy I saw this and now dont think I can apply there despite interviewing and being reserve this year. I really struggle with that test so seems a waste of choice! Really hope others don’t do the same in time 😔

[Katie Baxter @KatieBPsych]

Great North Run number 6 completed in 2hrs 10mins, felt really good today💖

[Heidi @heidipsychology]

Attachment System Hierarchy of Needs ✍️🏼
#psychology #mentalhealth #relationships

[Katie Baxter @KatieBPsych]

Interview 2/2 I was not surprised to receive a no from Newcastle today after really struggling through the interview! Unless I am called for a Leeds interview next month, that closes the prep for this year thankfully! Ready for a break before application time starts again

[Katie Baxter @KatieBPsych]

@historyinmemes @michaelbaxter9 😂

[Katie Baxter @KatieBPsych]

Interview 1/2 is reserve list at Sheffield (though very far down the list so won’t be an offer this time!), still happy with that outcome for my first ever DClinPsy interview🥰

[Katie Baxter @KatieBPsych]

@mollylpsych @BangorUni Congratulations!! 🥰

[Katie Baxter @KatieBPsych]

DClinPsy outcome 4/4 is being on the reserve list for Leeds! Glad that is over for another year!

[Katie Baxter @KatieBPsych]

DClinPsy - Outcome 3/4 is an invite to interview😭❤️

[Nicola Flynn @Nicfgbm]

I often just sit in the silence, in absolute disbelief that they have died. Never to exist again. Just completely gone from this world. It's simply amazing how death, the only guarantee in life, is just so unfathomable. I miss them so much.

[Katie Baxter @KatieBPsych]

Are there are any Sheffield #DClinPsy trainees who I could possibly ask a few questions to please? ���

[Katie Baxter @KatieBPsych]

@PsychwithFreya Thank you very much! 💕

[Katie Baxter @KatieBPsych]

DClinPsy round 2 has started with 1 rejection and also receiving my first invite to interview! Feeling all of the emotions with 2 results to go 💕🙈

[Katie Baxter @KatieBPsych]

Just finished #BREATHTAKING - such a powerful watch and a reminder of a challenging time working within all of that for me! Shows such a reality of the fears faced by patients and staff💕

[UoM ClinPsy @uom_clinpsy]

A great new article by Naomi E. Thrower @naomit_thrower in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology:
"The key components of a clinical psychology formulation: A consensus study"
Congratulations!
https://t.co/3BzpftoIaP
#consensus #ClinicalPsychologists #Formulationtraining

[Naomi Fisher @naomicfisher]

Today I heard from a parent that their son was terribly upset when he got covid, because it would ruin his 100% attendance record. At the end of the year, those with 100% get book tokens & certificates in assembly. She mentioned it in passing, she obviously didn’t think it was a big deal. It was just how school worked, and last year her son had got the award.

Here’s why policies like that should stop.

What’s the problem, you might think, with rewarding those who turn up day after day? Surely it’s just a nice little treat to recognise their commitment? And book tokens! How worthy. What’s the problem with free books for kids who take school seriously enough to make it in every day?

As with all reward systems, however, we don’t think enough about those who don’t get the reward and the effect on them.

Who are these kids? Well, it’s the children with serious illness - the mum then went on to tell me that one girl in his class has leukaemia, for example. Or the disabled child. Or the child with overwhelming anxiety. Or the child who became homeless with their mum due to domestic violence and has to go to the shelter in the night, and then doesn’t make it to school the next day. Or even the child whose dad died and who had a day off to attend the funeral.

It’s the kids who find school most difficult and who have the most challenges who struggle to attend.

What happens to them when everyone else goes up to get their book tokens? They sit in assembly watching, and they are punished. They are punished because the absence of a reward acts as a punishment for them. It’s a public punishment too, everyone knows that they didn’t make the grade. No free books for them. Tough.

Whenever there are rewards, the flip side is punishment. When we reward one person, the others are punished by the absence. When we reward someone one year, and then not the next, that again the absence acts as a punishment. It makes them feel bad.

Of course, we know this. We know that children feel bad when they don’t get something and others do. This is in fact pretty well how rewards are meant to work. They are meant to motivate. The idea is that children will try harder to get the reward.

So what’s the problem? The problem is that 100% attendance isn’t about trying harder. It’s largely about luck, particularly at primary school. Luck not to get ill, luck to have a stable family, luck to be the kind of person who doesn’t find school overwhelmingly stressful. Luck to be the sort of person for whom life is a bit easier, in fact.

Rewards for 100% attendance reward the lucky, and by doing so punish the unlucky. The lucky feel good and the unlucky feel bad. And that has other consequences. Because making those who find school attendance hard feel bad is very unlikely to make them more able to attend. They are already struggling, and now they’re being punished for it.

It contributes to anxiety, because children are aware of the consequences of not getting 100%, and some of them will become really anxious about it. For others, it will contribute to their anger and their feelings that they aren’t valued as much as others.

So yes, the proud children up the front of assembly can’t see a problem, and their parents think it’s ‘just a nice gesture’, but it’s so easy to ignore the effect on the least advantaged. We celebrate the winners and the losers are invisible, shamed into silence. The winners assume that the losers deserved to lose - they say that they worked hard for their awards, and the losers couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed and so why should they get book tokens?

This happens again and again in our education system, and that’s why I keep on banging this drum. Every intervention should be evaluated for its impact on losers as well as winners. It’s not enough to pretend they could all be winners if they just tried hard enough.

Sometimes people tell me that the attendance awards helped them learn that everyone is good at different things, because whilst they didn’t get attendance awards, they did well at other things and got awards for music or creative writing. Which is nice for them, but again, let’s think about the losers. For it’s not true that in a school context everyone is good at something. It’s not true that everyone gets awards somewhere. Some children learn that they aren’t good at anything. Not even turning up.

These reward systems come up often when I talk to young people who are disillusioned and burnt out by school. The significance of book tokens goes beyond the money. That’s why it doesn’t work when parents say they’ll buy the book tokens instead, to try and lessen the pain of not getting the reward. Those book tokens, awarded in public in assembly, signify approval, status, validation - and to those who don’t get them, they signify the opposite

[Psychology Today @PsychToday]

Do you feel the need to control as much as possible in your life? It might be an underrecognized sign of anxiety. Here’s what you need to know. https://t.co/YXWCfE38aK

[Ciara O'Connor @Ciara_576]

Me everytime Fred comes for Sam #ImACeleb