Amanda Williamson Coaching and Counselling Service in Exeter, Devon

[UPDATE: the resolution did not receive enough support to go forward, thankfully]

A resolution has been put forward to the entire membership of the BACP as follows:

"We are asking members to vote that the title of 'BACP registered' is changed to 'BACP Accredited' for all counsellors in recognition of their qualified status, commitment to professional and ethical standards and in line with other PSA accredited registers."

The closing date has been extended to lunchtime Monday 15th October.  If there is enough support for this resolution then it will go to a vote at the BACP AGM on 16th November 2018.

I oppose this movement as I believe it has been done with inadequate consultation with service users and other members.

There is some confusion in the profession as the National Counselling Society, a much smaller and more recently formed professional body, automatically grant their registered members Accredited status without the experience and criteria that the BACP require of their Accredited members. The UKCP,  another professional body for therapists who have a PSA Accredited Register, has a completely different membership system. I believe that it is only the NCS who award "Accredited member" status to newly qualified therapists. This NCS anomaly has been very useful for therapists who wish to call themselves Accredited without going through the procedures and criteria required by the BACP who have had a system in place for many years to allow qualified therapists to demonstrate and provide proof of their extensive experience and self-reflection.  I have questioned this confusion for several years. I do not see that this resolution is the answer and I believe that the main factor for people behind this proposal is to be able to attain BACP Accredited status without going through the Accreditation process. 

If the resolution goes through it will be in part due to many Registered members enjoying this leg-up where all they have to do is click a button.

I know of some Registered Members who oppose this because they value the BACP Accreditaiton scheme and would like to apply as and when they feel ready to do so. I know many Registered members who are very experienced and skilled at their job. In fact, I regularly refer clients to three excellent therapists I know who are BACP Registered but not BACP Accred. This is because I know them personally and am familiar with how they work. They are consistently busy and have no commercial need to attain Accredited status. Outside of this familiarity I would advise clients to select an Accredited member because there will have been a proven level of experience and self-reflection. Although I had a consistently busy private practice I personally went for Accreditation for professional development and found it an extremely valuable process. I wrote about that here.

There is a need for some kind of evolution however this movement seems to be focused solely on a goal of helping newly qualified counsellors get jobs rather than looking at the needs of service users. The issues of jobs for therapists needs to be approached from a completely different angle. That is about government policy and looking at the culture within counselling organisations.

It is claimed by the movement that is discriminatory that those that have undergone the Accreditation process might be more likely to find work than newly qualified. It also continually asserted that only privileged therapists can afford to apply for BACP Accreditation. It is not from a position of privilege that I gained my Accreditation. I had a cleaning job and worked at weekends to supplement my low income when starting out. If you can do a decent counselling qualification you can do BACP Accreditation.

Many Accredited counsellors are understandably concerned that their hard-earned status will be devalued. Moreover, if the BACP are being pressurised to make huge adjustments to be more like the NCS, some are concerned that they will be devalued as an organisation.


Fundamentally, I am all for a wider discussion on the confusion caused by the NCS and Professional Standards Agency now being important participants in the profession. However, I am fundamentally opposed to this particular movement which I believe to be ill-conceived and bullish. The therapists behind this resolution would do well not to be posting in public spaces such disparaging things about other BACP members. I find it highly unsavoury, disrespectful and unprofessional to openly refer to people opposing this resolution in such terms as “losing their shit”, and having “hot flushes” and “clearly needing therapy” (a rather inappropriate insult) and that they are “passing round the popcorn”, in relation to reading the forum, and describing therapists as “willy waving their accreditation”. Further, accusations of people respectfully opposing the resolution as “gaslighting”  and“abhorrent” are undermining of the work we do with people who are genuinely abused.

What many of us are wondering is, if the BACP Accreditation system is unfair, and the NCS is a supportive and according to some, such better organisation, perhaps the answer is for those who are angry with the BACP membership tiers system to resign their BACP membership and join the NCS. I do not see it as problematic if the membership of the BACP is reduced and it continues to represent therapists with similar intrinsic values and principles. 

One of the worst things about this debate has been the way in which it has been argued. I am deeply concerned about how this reflects on the entire profession. The BACP Ethical Framework for Good Practice is not some flimsy document that pays lip service to integrity. It should be the underpinning for how we represent the profession, inside and out of the therapy room, as members of the BACP.

I do not believe the BACP to be a perfect organisation. It would make me rather weird if I did. There are flaws and I believe that it is appropriate to challenge and try and change things for the better, but with respect, integrity and dignity. My colleague Roslyn Byfield campaigned for the inclusion of the necessity for therapists to have Clinical Wills in the Ethical Framework. She did this respectfully and appropriately. It worked.

If/when this has all gone away perhaps we can have an adult debate about the many issues that this resolution is attempting to address.

I have come to realise that many members of the general public are not aware that counsellors and psychotherapists are in an unregulated profession. I think that may partially be because we supposedly live in an age of litigation and accountability, and it is taken for granted that those with whom we entrust our deepest, darkest secrets would have somebody to answer to if they acted in an unethical way towards their clients.

Look at this typical response from somebody when I tell them that therapists aren't accountable:

"Lack of regulation seems like a recipe for a lot of abuse and misconduct. Who couldn't recognize all the potential hazards considering how vulnerable people are when they seek treatment?"

I CHOOSE TO BE ACCOUNTABLE. I am a member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy - the UK's largest professional body for counsellors. I attended a BACP accredited course because it made sense to me to start off my career as I meant to go on. The Iron Mill Institute's counselling courses are accredited by the BACP which means, according to the BACP website:

"...that (the course) has been assessed by BACP against the criteria for course accreditation as detailed by the BACP public Accreditation of Training Courses (BACP 2002) and awarded accreditation...that they can offer quality training to a high standard, which is recognised by employers, colleagues and prospective clients."

So it was part of the training from Certificate level (the preliminary training) that we were made aware of the BACP Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling. This is actually a very well written document and far from constraining the profession, I think that it gives a lot of leeway for creativity. Note that it is framework, not a list of rules and regulations. It is very sensible and really, I would be worried if anybody counselling out there had a problem with adhering to the principles set therein as they correlate with the qualities and ethics of any decent person.

I could see from the start the clear advantages to being a member of a professional body, for the therapist and for the client. I have struggled to understand the opposing view - that regulation would restrict the profession such that the service we supply would be impaired. This struggle has increased as a result of my falling victim to unethical practice. I am unable to divulge much about the actual situation and have been threatened with being "put in a cardboard box" (yes by another counsellor, who has recently resigned from the BACP...) if I publish details of who this person is.

I'm happy with that, not the cardboard box bit, but I do understand that official procedures are needed at times like this. It's all very well when counselling and psychotherapy goes well, and everybody behaves and acts professionally, but like doctors, policemen, teachers, priests...every single profession in fact, there are a few rotten apples. So we have the inconvenient issue of, how do we deal with those rotten apples? Well, if they have acted in an illegal way then it is a matter for the police. We all know that this is not foolproof and without overwhelming evidence, and because of the stress of going through the legal system, many people don't bother or give up part of the way through.

Now, unfortunately, the therapist whom I fell victim to chooses not to be a member of a regulatory organisation so, apart from complaining against the organisation which he owns and works for, he is personally unaccountable. He can hide behind the organisation and carry on his private, unethical practice. I assume it will continue to be unethical because he refuses to see that anything he has done is wrong. I think he knows it must be wrong because he is completely denying the truth and is attacking from as many angles as possible anybody who is trying to raise awareness of his behaviour.

If this therapist were a member of a professional body then a formal complaints process could be had and he and the victims would have the opportunity to provide evidence and cross-examine and the body could make a decision on whether it was unethical or not. I know in theory that at least 18 paragraphs of the BACP Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling have been contravened, in my case. It would just be a case of proving it, and given that there are several women who are prepared to write statements of their experiences it should be fairly cut and dry. Except that he isn't accountable. So he can carry on, and the public need not know anything.

I want potential clients to know that this is what can happen if you choose to see a therapist who chooses NOT to be accountable.

Of course no system is faultless and there is the risk of therapists slipping through and of being falsely accused. This is part of parcel of the medical profession so why not the therapy industry? Do we throw the baby out with the bathwater because there might be an unfair sanction? Shall we abolish the whole justice system so that we don't make the mistake of incarcerating an innocent? Of course not. Surely it's possible to have a system that protects clients from unethical practice, and no it won't stop it completely (Harold Shipman keeps getting mentioned in these arguments), but it will provide a process, a safety net, for those that would like to raise awareness of potential unethical practice because they have been on the receiving end of it. And maybe, just maybe, they will receive the validation they need in the face of having had their trust abused.

I would not like to have to go through the complaints process myself, but in doing so, I would be confident that I do run my counselling by the guidelines suggested, I do check out my own motives and my own blindspots regularly, and if it was ever found that I had acted unethically I would want to do the right thing, alter my practice if needs be, and apologise to the person who was on the receiving end of it. This is the very opposite of what I am getting. I do not want anybody else to be in this position.

Here's what the BACP say on this matter: http://www.bacp.co.uk/media/index.php?newsId=1769

Lately I have been embroiled in an incredibly difficult ethical dilemma, the nature of which I am not currently at liberty to reveal.  Unfortunately there are a few therapists out there that risk tarnishing the profession and may cause clients harm.

One of the BACP's roles is to protect clients. I would not consider being a counsellor without being part of a professional body. 

"The British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) is a membership organisation and a registered charity that sets standards for therapeutic practice and provides information for therapists, clients of therapy, and the general public. As the largest professional body representing counselling and psychotherapy in the UK, BACP aim to increase public understanding of the benefits of counselling and psychotherapy, raise awareness of what can be expected from the process of therapy and promote education and/or training for counsellors and psychotherapists."

The point of this blogpost is to urge those seeking a counsellor or psychotherapist, or those helping others find a counsellor or psychotherapist, to make sure that the person they choose to go with, or the organisation they seek counselling with is a member of the BACP or the UKCP (a similar organisation with similar aims). Without this, in the event of a complaint there is no recourse or accountability. Seeing a member of either the BACP or UKCP offers some protection, as if you feel that your counsellor/psychotherapist has acted unethically towards you then there is a complaints procedure whereby you can make an official complaint and it will be investigated. If there is a serious breach of ethics then the practitioner may be struck off the register.

The sad thing is, anybody can set up to become a counsellor without insurance or membership of a regulatory organisation. Hopefully, government policy will change on this, because as it stands, there is nothing to stop unethical practitioners from abusing vulnerable clients or acting unethically.