HPC PLG C&P day 2, pm

Towards the end of the HPC PLG for C&P last week the group started thinking about their next meetings. According to the work plan written down by Mr Guthrie, most of these meetings will be taken up with the question of Education and Training/standards of proficiency.

As the group approached this they revived something that Diane Waller had mentioned and parked a bit earlier. It was the question of 'life coaches' and people using other titles but doing similar work. Mr Guthrie had reminded the group that the process was about Protecting Titles, not function. This left the difficult question of figuring out how the HPC could guarantee anyone on its register without recourse to training and validation of practise. There is also the question of what they would do if people simply invented a new title for their work.

This is the way the nightmare works. Having invented a name, they now have to invent a new practise that fits the name and that they can police, otherwise they have no power whatsoever. It is a where the twist in the law is most obvious. The mistake Ian Kennedy and his followers made was to imagine a group of people who were the exception to the rule. The rule was that professionals were not to be trusted, the exception to this rule could alone solve this problem. The exception to this rule is the HPC. When Ian Kennedy said so casually 'why should they [the medics] have the power over life and death' he implicitly also said 'it should be us, who are better'. Which is, of course, nonsense.

What follows is a compact and incomplete account of some of the discussion. I've given it like this as an antidote to the anodyne minutes which reduce all the differences in the group to a single unanimous voice. I have also included their names so that anyone reading this blog might decide to engage in a conversation with any of these people (simple to figure out how through google) on some of the points that they make.

Jonathan Coe (Witness CE) said "The need for standards in professional training is what will protect the public."

Graham Smith (HPC Panel, Physio) linked this to the 'intention to deceive'.

Karen Ablack (UKCP standing in for Kathi Murphy) remarked that 'if people are not doing it [therapy] well enough and they are using my professional title then ...' she left it to her body language to indicate what she would do (flush them down the loo, I guess, she seemed to
indicate poo).

Mary Clark Glass (HPC Panel lay member) said 'we'll get them on it - if you go beyond your skills and competence, you will be called to account'.

Someone said "Prevention is the better protection of the public"

Finally Julian Lousada (BCP) remarked 'we've parked a difficult issue' to which

Diane Waller (chair) replied 'we can be seen to have done justice to the question'.

Sally Aldridge (BACP) then offered to exhume a dead and buried report done by the big 5 some years ago [UKCP, BACP, BPS, BCP, BABCP I think] which had tried and failed to synthesise competencies across the board. Someone else offered another similar dead and buried document, and Peter Fonagy (SfH) offered his NOS. All were eagerly accepted as fodder for the next few meetings.

In this way the work done in these other places by these other people for those other purposes are going to emerge into this tight schedule and could easily be taken up for want of the time to make something more suitable. This is how bad laws get made, and its other people who are going to suffer the consequences without any idea how it happened to them. That's why I'm writing this blog.