Dear FPN colleagues and friends,
I am writing to let you know that I am thinking about stepping back from the administration of FPN in the near future. We are now over 10 years old. After the early years of energy as a political venture combining the provision of free counselling and therapy for people on benefits/low incomes with activism around social inequality and the abuse of counselling and psychotherapy in the service of capitalist agendas, FPN as an organisation has become exclusively focussed on providing free and very low cost therapy. This is as important a project as ever.
We still have new therapists joining us as well as leaving the list. Overall the number of therapists has changed little – around 80. A lot of us now have notices under our entry saying we have no vacancies. Though the number of visits to the websites has fallen from a peak in 2021, we still have 50,000 visits and around 25,000 unique visitors a year.
For several years FPN has been run by a small group of therapists, based in London. Some of us are getting old (me for example) and/or are committed to a range of political campaigns including other projects around therapy and politics.
I think FPN needs a new lease of life with new people interested in organising it, revisioning its identity and mission. I am happy to help see a transition through. At the same time, I will be stepping back over the next year.
Nicola Saunders, Andy Metcalf and I met recently to discuss the issue and decided to call a general meeting on 27th September of FPN therapists, supporters, and anyone interested in the project to talk about where we go from here. Hopefully, ideas and energy committed to revitalising and keeping FPN alive will come out of that meeting. If not, we may have to think about how to responsibly close the project.
One of the issues is how few general meetings of members and friends we have managed to host in the past few years. As a consequence, we have lost touch with how much energy and passion people in the Network have for the project. We are writing to some of you whose active participation we are aware of to ask for your thoughts on FPN’s future and to help prepare for a general meeting in September. Could you please give this some thought over the next few weeks and come back to me with your responses. We will be sending out notice of the September meeting during July.
All good wishes for the Summer.
Paul Atkinson
paulwilliamatkinson@gmail.com
the free psychotherapy network 