Category Archives: regulation

Ongoing Continuous Professional Development

Ongoing professional development and improvement

Stuart is dedicated to ongoing professional development and improvement. As part of his professional registrations he is required to complete around 20 hours a year of CPD training. Stuart however regularly completes far more than this.

For example this year (2017) so far:

By June 2017 over 14 hours face to face CPD, over 100 hours university learning (Open University), Over 10 hours nutrition CPD learning, over 20 hours mindfulness refresher CPD learning.

Short courses in MBCT, Buddhism, Shamanism, Gestalt, Mindfulness, Hyge and meditation have all been completed.

Later in the year a complete post qualification Compassion based therapy course is booked and another 100 plus university hours expected.

This is a fairly typical year, and should demonstrate the level of service improvement Stuart expects from himself.

Key words

Ongoing professional development, continuous professional development, service improvement, CPD, OPD, additional training, post qualification training, standards and qualification.

Contact via the contact us page HERE

New voluntary regulator gathering support

New voluntary regulator gathering support and now launched

The field of complementary and psychological therapies has been complicated in terms of regulation for some time. The Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy, of which the author is a member, helped to block statutory regulation of counselling and psychotherapy with a judicial review. This was primarily because the proposed regulation was not fit for purpose and was based on false assumptions. There simply is no evidence of mass abuse or danger to clients, and most professional bodies already took appropriate action. Also statutory regulation would not prevent continued practice under a different job title.

The Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council was set up with Government support and funding and became the voluntary regulator of choice for complementary therapies, including confusingly hypnotherapy, which is of course a psychological therapy (psychotherapy).

Next the Government set up the Professional Standards Authority Accredited Register scheme, essentially letting any professional body with the quality (and large amounts of money) to gain accreditation from the PSA, who incidentally also oversee statutory regulators. It should be noted that PSA AR status can only be given to existing registers, so any new organisation can not gain accreditation immediately, it has to set up first, gain members and have a “register” and then apply for accreditation.

Various professional bodies now have PSA AR status, including the CNHC voluntary regulator.

New organisation on the block

The Register of Health Care Practitioners (ROHCP) is a new voluntary regulator set up by actual therapists, and seeking to have a more profession driven approach than the CNHC which is sometimes seen as rather bureaucratic and imposed on the profession.  The ROHCP covers essentially all complementary and psychological therapies, and does have the long term goal of PSA AR status once the finance and numbers are there.

it should be interesting to see if the ROHCP can provide a true alternative and competition to the CNHC, and how this will play out.

Stuart’s involvement

I support any organisation hoping to improve the standards of the profession in an appropriate way.  I have been a volunteer promoting the CNHC and I am registered already with them and the FHT (also a PSA AR). I am published on the topic of regulation and am known to be a critic of dividing types of psychotherapy up into different types and having registers for each. I am also in the process of assisting another professional body (hopefully) gain AR status.

In the long run I think it would be healthy for some specialist PSA AR accredited bodies to exist, and also however some integrated umbrella organisations to be voluntary regulators too, preferably with AR status, and I would welcome it if ROCHP was such a body.

Key words
Regulation, standards, professional standards, industry, PSA AR, Professional standards authority, voluntary regulator, voluntary regulation, complementary therapy, psychological therapy, counselling and psychotherapy, statutory regulation, client safety, patient safety, psychotherapy, counselling, hypnotherapy, mindfulness, life coaching

Contact via the contact us page HERE

Book Review published, critical psychotherapy

 

Critical psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and counselling: implications for practice

Edited by Del Lowental and contributed to by leading writers in the field of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, including some colleagues, this book is a major contribution to critical thinking in the psychological therapies.

 

My review is available to those with university / Taylor and Francis access HERE

 

Key words
Critical psychotherapy, critical psychology, critical thinking, counselling, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, psychology, ideology, politics, scientific terminology, reasoning, therapy

Contact via the contact us page HERE

New Book Launched

New publication on future of psychological therapy

 

Colleagues and clients alike are recommended to take a look at the new book Edited by my colleague John Lees. It has contributions from several other colleagues of mine, and I wrote Chapter 3. It looks at the future of the profession through a critical lens from several perspectives and would be very useful for a student therapist or new graduate.

 

The Future of Psychological Therapy: From Managed Care to Transformational Practice

Prelaunch order at Amazon HERE

Contact via the contact us page HERE

Political Diary in Self and Society

Political Diary

From this current issue I will be writing a political diary in Self and Society, a professional Journal for a major professional body.

The diary covers the events of the day, focused around the effects politics have on the psychology professions and our clients.

Accessing the diary

Self and Society is a Routledge published journal via their Taylor and Francis section and if you have academic access via your university then you should be able to log in.

Direct link: HERE

Key words
Psychology, politics, psychology profession, psychotherapy, psychotherapy clients, politics in the UK, UK Politics, social science, philosophy, counselling professions, regulation and standards in psychotherapy, humanistic psychology

Contact via the contact us page HERE

Professional Standards Authority Accredited Registers

Professional Standards Authority Accredited Registers

 

The PSA has launched a report on the new Accredited Registers that list professional healthcare personnel not subject to Statutory regulation. Accredited Registers are professional registers that meet the stringent PSA standards for professional practice. They include registers for complementary therapists and holistic therapists such as the CNHC, NHS (hypnotherapy society) and FHT, and registers for counsellors and psychotherapists including the BACP, COSCA and UKCP.

Real standards, real contribution to health

The report discusses the real standards required to be registered on an AR, standards that protect the public and ensure quality has been checked.

The report also concludes that the AR registers must play a vital role in the provision of integrated healthcare in the UK

Accredited registers in our psychoanalytic practice

 

Both of our practitioners, Denise and Stuart are registered on both the CNHC and FHT Accredited Registers under the hypnotherapy category. The CNHC representatives on the 13th March 2015 at the meeting in Edinburgh confirmed they recognised that counselling and analysis were vital job functions for hypnotherapists and delegates commented that hypnotherapists virtually always provided these additional therapies.

Stuart and Denise are registered with the Society of Stress Managers, a professional body representing Analysis, Stress counselling and Hypnotherapy, and the National Association of Counsellors Hypnotherapists and Psychotherapists, both of which are CNHC accreditation routes. Although they use the titles of Analyst and Hypnotherapist, naturally psychotherapy and counselling are within their job functions, and as such they are registered and insured for these as well. Notably both therapists have received specific training in counselling, psychotherapy (including CBT), life coaching and psychology.

REPORT HERE

Key words
Professional standards authority, professional therapists, psychotherapy, counselling, hypnotherapy, psychoanalysis, analysis, CBT, cognitive behavioural analysis, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Stirling, life coaching, regulation