A conversation with Dr Maria Qureshi, a Clinical and Community Psychologist in West London and Senior Lecturer at the University of East London and visiting lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire. In this episode, Maria speaks about her use of community psychology approaches both within and outside of the NHS and shares some valuable reflections about the meaning of this work to her, as well as the barriers and facilitators of these approaches.

Maria explains how she has used community psychology approaches within her local and the wider Muslim community to support people’s wellbeing, coproducing a poster with women from the community as part of the earlier small scale mosque project on wellbeing. She also challenges the notion that psychology is a Western ideal, and increased its accessibility and take up of the support from these groups. Maria also reflects on her own journey and how discovering community psychology gave a name for the ways she had been working, enabling her to reconnect with her values.

Maria also talks about bringing community psychology ideas into an NHS Learning Disability team. She speaks about working alongside a charity using an approach known as Photo Voice, to enable people with learning disabilities to be seen as humans with unique likes, dislikes and strengths, like anyone else. Link to project: http://aldatoxleas.blogspot.com/2019/02/engaging-community-through-photography_5.html?m=1 and link to photovoice projects: https://photovoice.org/

Maria also reflects on the importance of building relationships and offering clarity to your hopes as a foundation for this type of work. The importance of finding allies in this work, that community psychology approaches can take time, perseverance and resilience to pushbacks of the system structures are all touched on in this episode. Maria reminds us of the importance of balancing reflection with action, not forgetting that collaboration is key.

Acknowledging the connections she has made, Maria recognises Angela Byrne, Romena Toki, Azimoth Shirin Mustafa, Neelam Ahmed, Lizette Notle and the BPS Community Psychology section, the Community Psychology festival and twitter as great places to find other like-minded individuals. Maria also recognises Kat Alcock for giving her her first introduction to community psychology during training.

Finally, Maria reflects on her hopes for community psychology approaches, explaining how the current NHS long term plan (https://www.longtermplan.nhs.uk/) could enable more community focussed ways of working. Maria finishes by talking about how psychology can look to the strength communities, particularly as we’ve seen during the Covid-19 pandemic, to move towards more empowering and sustainable ways of working.