Psychological Interventions with People with Persistent Physical Health Problems

Welcome to the competence framework for psychological interventions for people with persistent physical health conditions. This site gives open access to the framework, as well as background documentation that explains how to use the framework.

A brief description of the framework

The framework describes the various activities which need to be brought together in order to carry out effective clinical work for people with persistent physical health conditions. It is not intended to prescribe what a clinician should do: it makes suggestions about best practice in the light of our current knowledge of the effectiveness of approaches and interventions.

The framework locates competences across seven “domains”, each of which represents a broad area of practice. This helps users to see how the various activities associated with work in this area fit together.

It is important to read the background documentation, as this will help you to understand the principles underlying the construction of the framework and implement it to best effect. Although its primary audience will be clinicians, clinical managers and commissioners of services, service users will also find it useful. A document written specifically for service users will appear on this site shortly.

Access Background Document Here

How to access and download the competences

There are two ways of accessing the competences:

1. You can download them from the map of competences. This shows the ‘architecture’ of the framework - the ways in which the competences relate to each other. The map displays seven domains of competence, and the activities associated with each domain. Placing the cursor over any of the boxes in the map links you to the competences, so to see the competences associated with a specific activity, just click on the relevant box

2. If you want to see all the competences in the first five domains of the map you can get “one click’ access here: