Imagine for a moment that Nurses* were to call themselves Doctors; or that Legal Executives could dress for court and argue cases in the High Court or Court of Appeal. ‘I have been trained as a Nurse, but I have 15 years’ experience, and I know way more than the junior Doctor who has just started – I’m going to call myself a Doctor from now on!’
One may expect that a job title should relate to a qualifcation gained from specifc, standardised training. Human equality is part of our TA philosophy of I+U+ (ITAA, 2023) that everyone has worth, dignity and value. Yet when difference is not to be tolerated or respected there can be chaos and hurt in a system.
In Italy, Germany, and America the titles of Psychotherapist or Counsellor are legally protected (like Dr in the UK: where one must have a PhD or be a member of the General Medical Council (GMC) if practising medicine to use this title). In our country, Counsellor or Psychotherapist titles are not protected, and anyone may use these descriptors without qualifcation.
This may leave an uninformed public, vulnerable to unqualifed and untrained, social media savvy practitioners. SCoPEd: ‘A shared framework for the Scope of Practice and Education for Counselling and Psychotherapy with Adults’ (Committee, 2022) seeks to address these confusions through making our profession better understood, valued and trusted by clients / patients / employers / commissioners / wider society.
I have been following this initiative closely for several years, last writing about it in the Spring Issue of the Transactional Analyst in 2019 (Hewitt, Spring 2019). The Jan 2022 Framework has now been adopted by the six major UK membership bodies: ACC; BACP; BPC; HGI; NCS and UKCP, following a Final Report on the Impact Assessment in Dec 2022 (Primetimers, 2022). It seeks to set out the core training, practice, and competence requirements for our profession in a transparent way.
There are currently three columns defning the training pathways within the profession and competencies required (see fg 1 in the download). Titles were too controversial to form part of this initial framework and held back the adoption of SCoPEd for several years.
One may argue that those opposed to SCoPEd are complicit in permitting unqualifed and unregistered practitioners into the field causing potential harm to the public (due to lack of training, insurance or membership of a body with a Code of Ethics or Complaints procedure). Yet there are practitioners who have legitimately trained with an organisation (University or Private Training Company) who advertise to be training psychotherapy at NVQ Level 3 or 4.
Questions I found myself asking:
• Is the SCoPEd initiative the villain in this plot, or those who sought to advertise training of counselling and psychotherapy interchangeably?
• Will there be valid legal recourse sought by these graduates?
• Is anger being channelled at those seeking to ensure ethical and transparent communication about our training, qualifcations and competence to the public and employers?
• Are the differing requirements by Psychotherapy trainings justifably included in the columns and competencies? ie in TA: four years of personal therapy; involvement in research; supervision to practice ratio of 1:6 prior to qualifcation; Level 7 academic submissions
• Is it enough to have a Masters / PhD – or must these programmes adhere to the UPCA UKCP College requirements? NB there are only 6 UK Universities with UKCP Accredited Post Grads (College), 2023).
• Is it that you choose to work short-term / long-term? With evidence-based practice / manualised treatment approaches, or in a more Psychodynamic / Relational way?
My call to action is for you to ask yourself – will you be a Bystander (Clarkson, 1987) in this drama, or will you be actively involved in supporting this Framework, and commit to an ethical pricing approach?
You can offer an Adult way of explaining SCoPEd to your clients, colleagues, social media feeds, friends or family, or allow this drama to unfold further, maybe to the detriment of all. TA training organisations may have a duty of care to declare to existing, future and past trainees what column their training is aligned to, and how the training maps to the competencies required. They could also offer clear pathways of how to support past trainees to move between columns through further training, whilst honouring their historic time and money investment.
SCoPEd could have been the reason the break-off from BACP led to the formation of NCS – who are rebranding to NCPS (National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society). It is clear that folk feel discounted in being asked to remove a previously owned title of Psychotherapist or to be informed that there are differences in training routes of which they may not have been aware of at the time.
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