February 2007 - Posts
Another useful link if you want to follow the debate - this time to Ipnosis, an online magazine.
What do you make of all this, by the way? given that you're reading this blog you've clearly got an interest in the world of counselling, and there's no doubt that that world is now going to change....
The Government White Paper "Trust, Assurance and Safety - the regulation of Health Professionals in the 21st Centruy" has now been published and, amongst other things, it makes clear the government's intent to place counselling and psychotherapy under the wing of the Health Professional's Council - not the outcome that UKCP or BACP were pressing for.
There will be a lot of discussion about this taking place over the next few months and, if you want to get up to date with what's happening, here are a couple of useful links for you -
BACP responseThe White Paper
Clients reporting suicidal feelings, clients turning up late, counsellors working towards accrediations or feeling drowsy with their clients - all topics for discussion on the Counsellors Anonymous blog. You might well find it worth a visit, and you can find it
here.
As you will probably know, the BACP offers membership to students on accredited courses at a preferential rate. We've always encouraged people to take up this offer both because it makes sense to belong to counselling's professional body and also because, at the very special rate they offer (£56 instead of £116 ), it would be worth it for the "Therapy Today" magazine alone.
From time to time, however, students applying for such membership have been told that our course doesn't qualify for this rate. This is simply not true. Both we and the BACP are trying to establish where the confusion is arising from because we all want you to be able to take up this offer. If you failed to get student membership in the past, or if you fail to in the future, please contact me - that way we can get to the bottom of this!
Sorry for the late notice but there's a programme on Channel 4 at 9pm tonight which might be worth watching - it's called "I told you I was ill" and, to quote from their web site,
"This compelling film follows these sufferers as they undergo an intensive period of cognitive behavioural therapy at a country retreat, administered by the Maudsley hospital's Dr Florian Ruths. Will it make them better, or will they remain uncured, destined to spend the rest of their lives in and out of their doctors' surgeries?"
You can find out more from -http://www.channel4.com/health/microsites/H/hypochondriacs/index.html
They've also provided some more information about CBT at -
http://www.channel4.com/health/microsites/0-9/4health/mind/tas_cbt.html
If you find yourself reading this after 9pm this evening, don't panic. Rob Hyde will be putting a copy of the programme in the library.
Counselling is an unregulated profession. As it stands at the moment anybody can set themselves up as a counsellor without having had any training whatsoever. Whether they'll get any clients is a different matter - most counsellors have noticed that clients are getting much more discriminating in their choice of counsellors - but it’s still not an ideal situation.
There are a number of professional bodies which counsellors belong to and they all have codes of ethics which the counsellor agrees to adhere to. The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy – the BACP – is one such body. However, if a counsellor transgresses that body’s ethical code the organisation has very little in the way of teeth. It can suggest what the counsellor might do in order to remedy the situation – further training, more supervision etc - but if the counsellor refuses to follow the suggestions then the organisation can only eject them from membership, it can’t stop them from practicing.
Happily there aren’t that many rogue counsellors and psychotherapists, but there are some, and the lack of professional regulation is obviously a cause for concern. Things will change. People have been saying that since I first started my own training some 21 years ago – but it doesn’t seem to happen.. It’s always going to be next year. Or the next one.
I may be sticking my neck out here, but I suspect that within the moderately near future – two or three years, say – regulation will start to become a reality. For the last six years or so wheels have been turning – incredibly slowly – and the government will shortly be bringing out a white paper as a result of a period of lengthy consultation with the profession. The sticking point now is what the regulatory body that would oversee counselling might be. The government has favoured the Health Professionals Council, while the professional bodies themselves – BACP, UKCP, BPS etc – favour the setting up of a new council specially for the “Talking Therapies.”. This was the subject of a debate in the House of Lords earlier this week, and if you follow this link, you’ll find a transcript of the debate. It makes for interesting reading, and should give you a very good idea of what the arguments are. If you’re reading this blog you’re obviously interested in counselling. Maybe you hope to become a counsellor one day, or already are one. If that’s the case then it might be worth finding out what’s likely to be happening to your profession.