Dr Dan O’Hare and Dr Louise Edgington call for commitment and action.
28 January 2026
We are living in an existential moment for children, society, and our profession.
This is a time of deep rupture. Climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, ecological collapse, accelerating inequality, the extreme concentration of wealth and power, geopolitical instability, and rapidly advancing technologies such as artificial intelligence are not distant threats or abstract concerns. They are interconnected, mutually reinforcing crises, a polycrisis, and they are reshaping the conditions of childhood, learning, development, safety, and mental health. This polycrisis threatens the conditions that sustain human life and wellbeing
We were prompted to write this piece following the recent publication of
the UK National Security Assessment that identifies ecological collapse as a major threat to national security. This was a frightening document to read. The National Security Assessment finds, with high confidence, that 'Every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse – irreversible loss of function beyond repair'. The evidence for the crisis we are in is no longer contested. What is now in question is how institutions, including our own, choose to respond.
As a profession, Educational Psychology has been largely silent.
This silence is not neutral, it is a choice. And in the context of foreseeable, escalating harm to children and young people, it is an ethically and professionally dangerous one.
Educational Psychologists are explicitly trained to understand development within context – a professional strength which is often espoused. We know that children's wellbeing is shaped not only by individual factors, but by social, economic, political, technological, and ecological systems. When those systems are destabilising, the impacts on children are profound and unavoidable.
From a children's rights perspective, continued inaction is indefensible.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child affirms children's rights to life, survival and development (Article 6), to the highest attainable standard of health (Article 24), to education (Article 28), and to have their best interests treated as a primary consideration in all decisions affecting them (Article 3). Climate and ecological breakdown threaten all of these rights. No meaningful engagement with this reality means we are failing to uphold the principles that underpin our work.
Educational Psychologists are duty bound to prevent harm, promote wellbeing, and attend to the wider contexts shaping development. When systemic and scientifically established threats to children's futures are repeatedly evidenced and accelerating, professional silence cannot be framed as caution or neutrality. It indicates that our professional ethical obligations are not being met in practice.
It is alarming that Educational Psychology has failed to meaningfully engage with mitigation and adaptation, despite their centrality to the climate and ecological crisis.Mitigation involves acting to reduce the drivers of harm, including challenging systems, practices, and policies that exacerbate environmental destruction, inequality, and intergenerational injustice.
Adaptation involves preparing children, schools, communities, and services to live in a profoundly altered world dominated by instability, supporting psychological, social, and systemic resilience in the face of unavoidable disruption, loss, and uncertainty.
As a profession we have not seriously interrogated what mitigation or adaptation mean for our theories, training, ethical frameworks, leadership, or day-to-day practice. We have not asked how Educational Psychology must change in a future marked by climate anxiety, displacement, ecological grief, disruption to education, and repeated systemic shocks. We have not sufficiently questioned how our current models risk pathologising children's entirely rational emotional responses to a world in crisis.
Critically, these challenges cannot be addressed at the individual level alone.
The polycrisis demands multi-level action:At the individual level, supporting children and young people without individualising or medicalising systemic harm.
At the group and school level, helping educational systems to adapt their cultures, curricula, and practices in psychologically informed ways.
At the community level, strengthening collective resilience and mutual care.
At the national and policy level, using psychological expertise to influence preventative, ethical, and rights-based responses to systemic risk.
To continue focusing predominantly on individual adjustment, while the wider conditions of childhood deteriorate, is not only inadequate, it is professionally obsolete.
History will not judge our profession on whether this work felt comfortable or aligned neatly with existing frameworks. It will judge whether we acted when the evidence was clear that the stakes were existential. We are at a crossroads: either Educational Psychology evolves to meet the realities children are inheriting, or it continues to operate as if those realities are peripheral to its remit, ushering in its own obsolescence.
We further recognise that in times of existential crisis, reliance on parliamentary or institutional processes alone have repeatedly proven insufficient. History shows that transformative change has been driven by collective resistance including grassroots struggle, community organising, and acts of civil disobedience that disrupt harmful norms. These are predictable and often necessary expressions of collective distress. Educational Psychology cannot meaningfully engage with the polycrisis while ignoring the psychological and social power of collective action as a route to change.
There are already good examples of educational psychologists taking the matter into their own hands and shifting the focus of their work to acknowledge and confront the realities of the polycrisis. EcoEdPsychs, a grassroots community group, has worked to ensure that there is explicit reference to the climate and ecological crisis in the accreditation standards for trainee educational psychologists. This work has at its core an explicit recognition of the interconnected nature of climate justice, social, political, health, technological and economic concerns. Individual EPs have contributed to work with the Department for Education to sharpen their focus and understanding of issues relating to climate breakdown, sustainability, inequality and the psychological effects this has on children and teachers. Individual EP work has also been used by the UK Health Security Agency to synthesise the evidence base relating to climate change and mental health. Educators and schools are increasingly seeking out climate-aware EPs to help them understand how to support young people with the challenges we face.
Work by individual EPs or small groups is essential, but the polycrisis is fundamentally systemic and cannot be solved through individual efforts alone. To find solutions to these interconnected problems at the level of individual practice obscures the scale of the challenge and the need for collective action. Organisational statements and commitments can often appear symbolic, but they are not inconsequential. Statements and commitments from our professional leadership bodies establish legitimacy, signal priorities, offer a starting point for accountability and determine what work is considered permissible and valued within the profession.
Organisational commitments that are not followed through, with actions that rest on proper resourcing, risk running counter to any efforts. We have both been part of the British Psychological Society's Climate and Environmental Action Coordinating Group for the past three years. The members of this group represent dedicated climate, environmental and psychological experts in their respective fields. We have experienced the passion, energy and commitment of those members in every meeting. We have also watched in dismay as resourcing for the already voluntary group has dwindled, creating what has felt like a purposeful organisational limbo. In the context of the polycrisis this seems confusing at best. Such a group needs increased status, organisational clout and firm resourcing commitments over a number of years.
We need, and would urge, our professional leadership bodies, The Association of Educational Psychologists, The British Psychological Society, The National Association of Principal EPs, The Health and Care Professions Council, and The Department for Education, to act urgently and decisively commensurate with this moment.
Specific actions that we would see as important in this context are:The immediate convening of emergency, cross-sector discussions and professional CPD addressing the implications of the polycrisis for children, education, mental health, and educational psychological practice.
A profession-wide re-evaluation of the role of Educational Psychologists, explicitly engaging with climate and ecological breakdown, inequality, technological risk, and global instability.
The development of ethical, practice, and policy frameworks that explicitly address mitigation and adaptation across individual, community, and systemic levels.
Clear public leadership and time-bound commitments, recognising that delay itself constitutes harm.
Silence is no longer tenable and incrementalism is not sufficient. The conditions of childhood are changing rapidly, and our profession must change with them.
Dr Dan O'Hare
Dr Louise Edgington
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