From mid to late 2021, the Board changed its website statements on scopes of practice to be more prescriptive sounding. By the time we get to 2023, the Board had changed its website statements to say that the “Board has identified individual scopes that can be practised in New Zealand”, and that “each scope of practice for psychologists has a unique focus and requires specific qualifications and experience”, followed by a reference to section 8 of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act under which “health practitioners are not allowed to practise outside their scope of practice”. This wording appears to portray a siloed and non-overlapping approach to the psychology scopes of practice that is not consistent with how the Board developed and applied the scopes from 2004-2021.
Around mid-2023 the Psychologists Board held a series of roadshows on a range of topics, including new draft cultural competencies, the wording of the current scopes of practice, and plans to introduce a new registration pathway for overseas trained psychologists. An FAQs document it distributed for the purposes of the roadshows contained some potentially concerning statements on scopes of practice, especially the statement: “Psychologists must only provide psychology services that are included in the scope of practice they are registered in. If there are tasks, services or activities defined in another scope of practice, they must not do those things.” That statement might be consistent with the Act if the general scope which all fully registered psychologists have or are deemed to have were limited and not-all encompassing, and if the vocational scopes carved out exclusive areas of practice with no overlap, such that all scopes were essentially self-contained independent silos. However, that is not how the scopes were developed, and applied by the Board, from 2004 to 2021. As such, the statement was and remains incorrect.
In 2023, concerning statements were made by or on behalf of the Psychologists Board to a government agency that contracts the services of psychologists, and to psychologists and others who expressed their concerns to the Board. The statements have generated distress, and they were and remain problematic. It is not clear if the position has been clarified to the government agency.
The Board released its consultation paper on a proposed new framework for scopes of practice on 6 December 2023. Surprisingly, the paper and proposed framework are premised on an asserted need to rectify a situation for which previous iterations of the Board are said to have been responsible. The Board asserts that ‘historic comments’ by previous iterations of the Board resulted in many psychologists having expanded their practice beyond their registered scope of practice (which, if true, would mean they have been acting unlawfully). In approaching the consultation in this way, the Board is misleading people as to the nature, breadth and longevity of the Board’s ‘historic comments’, and perpetuating and exacerbating misrepresentations as to the nature and breadth of the current scopes of practice.