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:
This project is still live, see BACP’s chair Andrew Reeves explain the aim of ScoPEdhere – 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 #HYPERLINK “https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ScrapSCoPEd&src=hash”ScrapSCoPEd pic.twitter.com/nlBvkvv5H0
Three leading professional regulatory bodies create a new competence framework.
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. 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/ HYPERLINK “http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/improving-care/campaigning-for-better-mental-health-policy/rcpsych-in-parliament”rcpsychHYPERLINK “http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/improving-care/campaigning-for-better-mental-health-policy/rcpsych-in-parliament”-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 areasking 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
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Conference – for your diary:
People Not Pathology: Humanising Counselling and Psychotherapy
A Two Day Conference, 9–10 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 paulwilliamatkinson@gmail.com
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And a conference jointly organised and presented by the
Association for Humanistic Psychology in Britain (AHPb) & Self HYPERLINK “https://ahpb.org/index.php/self-society-journal/”&HYPERLINK “https://ahpb.org/index.php/self-society-journal/” Society
with the Association for Humanistic Psychology Practitioners (AHPP)
and the HYPERLINK “http://ipnetwork.org.uk/”Independent Practitioners Network (IPN)
ANNUAL CONFERENCE:
Engaging Our Hearts in Dangerous Times:
Contributions and Perspectives from Humanistic Psychology
Saturday 23rd November 2019 – 9.30am to 5.30pm
COST: full price £70; AHP, AHPP, IPN and Study Society members: £55; other usual concessions: £45
SPEAKERS:
Professor Andrew Samuels:
“Embracing Risk in Psychotherapy and in Politics: We Are up against the Wall”
Lucy Scurfield:
“From Roots to Shoots: A Personal and Professional Journey with Heart”
Elena Manafi, PsychD:
“Riding the Wave of Someone Else’s Breakdown: The Unbearable Relatedness of Being”
Skeena Finebaum-Rathor:
“The Key Place of the Heart in Extinction Rebellion”
John Fletcher:
“Humanistic Psychotherapy for All – Wishful Thinking or a Realistic Ambition?”
Tim Broughton:
“Freeing the Body, Opening the Heart, and Clearing the Mind: The Five Rhythms movement practice of Gabrielle Roth”
Richard House, PhD: Conference Chair
Zohar Dina Glouberman, PhD: Conference Facilitator
Venue: We meet in the West Room, Colet House, home of The Study Society, a London-
based charity that offers practical, inclusive ways to find rest, stillness and meaning through Advaita Meditation, member discussion groups, Mevlevi Turning (whirling dervishes), Poetry, Kirtan and Vedic chanting: http://www.studysociety.org.The address is: 151 Talgarth Rd, Hammersmith, London W14 9DA. The nearest tube station is Barons Court on the District and Piccadilly lines. See the map.
For booking links and further information, see the website: www.ahpb.org
Booking on Eventbrite is here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/engaging-our-hearts-in-dangerous-times-contributions-and-perspectives-from-humanistic-psychology-tickets-71146750847
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Newsletter compiled by Julia Evans (www.LacanianWorks.net )
the free psychotherapy network 