Update December 2019

Introducing ‘Partners for Counselling and Psychotherapy’ (PCP) :

see https://youtu.be/4VG1ukvvfuI

We are a partnership of eleven counselling and psychotherapy organisations holding open a space to support the diverse range of good practice in the field. This video provides an introduction to our partnership, and our shared aims.

Alliance for Counselling & Psychotherapy Newsletter – October 2019

Blog: https://allianceblogs.wordpress.com/about/,  (@Alliance4CP)

Contact: info@allianceforcandp.org

REQUEST: Please circulate to relevant contacts and to your current constituency MP, adding your own note. Thank you.

 

SCoPEd (Scope of Practice & Education) – an update

The BACP, BPC and UKCP (the Big 3) describe SCoPEd as a framework for counselling and psychotherapy which is a ground-breaking project to set out the training requirements and practice standards for counselling and psychotherapy. In fact, it is a naked power grab to control all counselling and psychotherapy training and practice. In so doing they promise the impossible – to safeguard the health and wellbeing of all recipients, in reality as an independent legislature. As well as attracting all power and control to the top of their hierarchies, they exclude from practising anyone who does not comply.

The benefit for them is to secure all government-funded work for their members, and thus keep a large headquarters’ staff in paid jobs. The Big 3 place their premise on being able to provide safe practitioners from their position of mastery and use their membership numbers to bully their way through.

Key points: 

• The SCoPEd expert reference group. This was balanced in favour of the BPC. Following criticism, four non-BPC psychoanalysts have now been included. Despite this change, it is still not balanced between modalities or within psychoanalysis itself.
• The failure of a resolution against SCoPEd to get to the BACP AGM. This needed 5 per cent of the membership to vote in favour, but only got 3.5 per cent.  It is remarkable that so many felt so strongly as to vote, but disappointing that this will not now formally register.
• Accountability. There is an absence of accountability with regard to regulation by the Big 3. Once you have gained your certificate, there is no need to engage with your own development, supervision or with colleagues. This is different to processes elsewhere.
• Mediation. This is used in IPN for disputes between practitioners and clients. There is provision for its use within the Big 3. Why is it not used, with all cases going straight into a legalistic process? Why is mediation not working within the Big 3?
• Safeguarding and unsafe spaces. There is continued fear being spread about unsafe practitioners being allowed to continue to practise having been struck off the Big 3’s register. This is a small number of cases – probably six in all – but unless it is tackled it will continue to be the pivotal argument for SR. There is a consistent drip of media coverage – see File on 4, The therapy business – BBC Radio 4 – which uses bad experiences to vilify all practitioners. The Big 3 are using ‘unsafe’ practitioners to force Parliament into legislating that they be sole suppliers. How to address these concerns is a key point in opposing the Big 3’s moves.

This project is still live, see BACP’s chair Andrew Reeves explain the aim of ScoPEd here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpnf3nvlPF8

Also recommended:

Cemil Egeli,  (2019). Counselling and psychotherapy. Hierarchies, epistemicide and bad medicine. Clinical Psychology Forum, 318, 17–20; re-tweeted at #ScrapSCoPEd pic.twitter.com/nlBvkvv5H0

Three leading professional regulatory bodies create a new competence framework.

Maps, Languages & Lost Continents: Person-Centred Therapy and the SCoPEd Project

Joint letter to BACP, UKCP and BPC on the SCoPEd consultation results

SCoPEd Consultation: Methodologically Challenged

SCoPEd: Butchering Psychopractice

Against SCoPEd: actions and materials

A Deeper Look at SCoPEd: So, What is an ‘Advanced Counsellor’ Anyway?

The Medicalisation of Therapy – What can we infer from the language of SCoPEd?

A New APPG (All-Party Parliamentary Group)

The Alliance has seen documents showing that the Big 3 are actively trying to form an APPG to represent them exclusively within Parliament. A Record of Correspondence between PCP and Relevant Parties Concerning the Proposed APPG – PCP is available here  The Alliance’s information is that though soundings have been made, it has not been formed as yet. This activity is denied by the Big 3. In forming a new APPG, the Big 3 seek to be the only contact within Parliament. The Big 3 act to exclude everyone else, whether registered with the PSA or not.

To learn about the kind of influence that APPGs have, see the Mental Health one at Royal College of Psychiatrists/ rcpsych-in-parliament. The APPG on Mental Health is a group of MPs and peers from all political parties who are interested in mental health. Rethink Mental Illness and the Royal College of Psychiatrists provide the secretariat for the APPG. Together, they help to shape the group’s agenda and organise events with government ministers, NHS organisations, health professionals, research bodies and people with experience of mental illness.

The PCP

(Partners for Counselling and Psychotherapy)

The Alliance has joined forces with seven other progressive counselling and psychotherapy organisations, seeking to challenge the dominant discourse from the BACP, BPC and UKCP. The PCP  has together in excess of 18,000 members. They are asking for a meeting with these three membership bodies to discuss their proposed APPG, championing the values the PCP espouse and aiming to gain a seat at the table. As yet, the Big 3 have not agreed to meet with representatives of the PCP organisations.

The eight organisations represented in the PCP  are:

1  The National Counselling Society (NCS): https://www.nationalcounsellingsociety.org/

2  Psychotherapy and Counselling Union (PCU): https://www.psychotherapyandcounsellingunion.co.uk/

3  Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility (PCSR): http://www.pcsr.org.uk/

4  Counsellors Together UK: https://ukcounsellors.co.uk/

5  The Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy:  https://allianceblogs.wordpress.com/

6  The Person Centred Association (TPCA):  https://www.the-pca.org.uk/

7  The College of Psychoanalysts: http://www.psychoanalysis-cpuk.org/

8  UK Person-Centred Experiential (UKPCE):  https://twitter.com/ukpce

__________________________________________-

Conference – for your diary:

 

People Not Pathology: Humanising Counselling and Psychotherapy

A Two Day Conference, 2-3 May 2020 in Birmingham

Organised by Psychotherapy and Counselling for Social Responsibility and the Free Psychotherapy Network

Psychotherapy and counselling in the UK are alive and well. The demand for therapy and the supply of therapists have been growing steadily for decades. At the same time, for the last two decades at least, the heart and soul of the profession have been under attack from the neoliberal policies of the state and our own professional bodies.

It’s time to take a stand and start to turn the tide. How do we stand together to humanise our profession and play our part in transforming neoliberal narratives about mental health into a vision of society organised around people’s needs?

We want the conference to be as participatory and “bottom up” as possible, prioritising small-group discussion in workshops. Some themes:

 

Conference Day 1: The Problem

Medical model of mental health (MH) and its treatment via CBT and psychotropic drugs; individual responsibility and the denial of the politico-social model of MH; colonisation by short-term evidence-based therapy; IAPT; professional bodies as state regulators of therapy, gatekeepers of training and employability; SCoPEd; Dept Work and Pensions’ use of psycho-compulsion; unpaid work by counsellors, psychotherapists, art therapists and group therapists; underpaid, overworked, deskilled gig economy for psy workers.

 

Conference Day 2: What Are We Going To Do about It?

How do we campaign for the social model of MH?; what kinds of collective political action will challenge neoliberal attacks on relational therapy?; how do we build alliances with service users, and support user-led initiatives?; campaigning against unpaid work; boycotting DWP psy work; organising our own bottom-up democratic professional organisations and trainings; working as therapists in communities; respecting and facilitating the psy-commons; open-ended relational therapy for everyone, not just the well off.

Contact here

____________________________________________________

Newsletter compiled by Julia Evans (www.LacanianWorks.net )

____________________________________________________

Additional texts

Julia Evans : ‘Psychotherapy is imposed :  Psycho-analysis© works : Psychoanalysis operates’ : 15^th December 2010 : Information here

Against UK political moves towards Statutory Legislation & locking out the clinics of all practitioners who do not comply by Julia Evans on 17^th  March 2019 or here

Newsletter against the BACP, BPC & UKCPs’ SCoPEd project : 8^th February 2019 : Alliance for Counselling & Psychotherapy, compiled by Julia Evans : information here

Julia Evans :  Three leading professional regulatory bodies create a new competence framework. (15^th  January 2019) : Information here

Julia Evans : The Context for the APPG’s survey on prescribed drug dependence : 30^th November 2018 : Information here

Julia Evans : The progress of a bill against Conversion Therapy : a reply from the Minister for Women & Equalities : 12^th November 2018 : Information here

Julia Evans : Further on the progress of the Counsellors and Psychotherapy Regulation Bill (Conversion Therapy) : 30^thOctober 2018 : Information here

Julia Evans : Opposing the Counsellors and Psychotherapists (Regulation) and Conversion Therapy Bill : 23^rd August 2018 : Information  here

Politics, ethics, regulation and the talking therapies : current positions emerging from Parliamentary debate by Julia Evans on 20^th  November 2013 or here

What the Government’s strategy of implementation by force produces – fear, and worse  by Julia Evans on 1^st  December 2012 or here

CHRE(PSA) trumpets its success in creating a ghetto of wellbeing practitioners who are compliant (for a fee) to the Government’s fantasy of safeguarding. by Julia Evans on 3^rd   October 2012 or here

How Government Action goes wrong…. ‘The report says the department pushed ahead without undertaking basic project approval checks, taking decisions before testing the ideas for feasibility.’  by Julia Evans on 20^th  September 2011  or here

Challenges to Government’s principles used to define the care of mental ill-health by Julia Evans on 15^th July 2010 or here

Use of power here

Ethics here

Definitions of humanness here  & here

Responses to the UK Government action here

UK Government & Government action here

Note : If links to any required text do not work, check www.LacanianWorksExchange.net. If a particular text or book remains absent, contact Julia Evans.

Julia Evans

Practicing Lacanian Psychoanalyst in Earl’s Court, London

Further posts:

Some Lacanian history here

Lacanian Transmission here

Politics   here

Of the clinic here

Translation Working Group here

Use of power here

By Sigmund Freud here

Notes on texts by Sigmund Freud here

By Jacques Lacan here

Notes on texts by Jacques Lacan here