The issue that continues to get lost in all this public protection and regulation type talk is the real local problem of the difficulty that people get into when they try to work together. What can be done when someone disagrees strongly with the way their practitioner is operating, or if they think they have been harmed by it in some way? On a comment to a previous blog Paola has talked of the change in relation between her and her son when he began working with a music therapist. The music therapist is registered with the HPC so Paola took her complaint there. Judging from her comments she found the process very unsatisfactory, and instead of reducing her disquiet it has given her more to complain about. From her point of view the HPC is protecting the practitioner against her right to complain.
Jonathan Coe is the chief executive of Witness, a charity set up to help people give voice to their complaints against practitioners. He is on the PLG for C&P at the HPC. At the last meeting (Jan 09) he said that the evidence base was clear that there is harm done by practitioners in the field of counselling and psychotherapy and that something must be done about it. He was particularly concerned to know how to stop someone practising after it had been decided they should be struck off the register. But what, Jonathan, what shall be done? I can see no good reason to believe that the HPC will make things any better, with it's huge computerised list of names, its random spot checks on Continuing Professional Development, and the centralised policing of educational standards across the hundreds and hundreds of colleges up and down the country. I can see plenty of reason to believe that it will make things worse.
When it comes down to it, the problem is how to create conditions for safe practise, for informed and thoughtful practitioners and publics, and for safe and productive forums of debate and disputation.
At the recent Rally of Impossible Professions, in London (September 2008) a university counsellor gave a little example in the morning of the way that safe spaces were being eroded by the encroaching audit culture. Where once there was a group of practitioners who created a space in which it was possible to discuss the issues and deal with the anxiety arising from some of the work, now the manager closes down difficult topics and imposes brute control.
In an afternoon session at the Rally, Mark Neocleous outlined the steady rise in the discourse of security and shows how, paradoxically, it creates the conditions conducive to hostility. The repetition of empty phrases like 'we must protect the public', or 'regulation is the only way', or '5% of practitioners are a danger to society' contribute to a rising unease because there is no way to understand what they mean.
It is this that is the crux of the problem. The PLG at the HPC are happy to keep repeating the phrase 'we must protect the public', but are less interested to hear that they are perpetrating a problem that is producing a very real danger for a much bigger public by obliterating the conditions for safe practise and genuine enquiry. The HPC is part of a very large and long process of centralisation in this country that is steadily tearing knowledge away from practise. Michael Power's ongoing work into the rise of the audit culture leaves the reader in little doubt as to the way that this is happening. Read the beginning of the argument here and follow it up in his other books, they are very well written, cogently argued, and give an unbiased account of the nitty gritty way that these things are happening. And they are happening here in the UK.
Posts
2 comments:
Hello Janet
I write to thank you for mentioning the case of our family and the HPC-registered music therapist, and also to clarify that, from where I am standing, the HPC has been protecting the music therapist against ACCOUNTABILITY. This has not helped her either: learning of the dire consequences of her many misguided actions and inappropriate interferences would have given her valuable feedback and helped her in her professional development and in her personal growth: the HPC has failed her too. Whilst, as a mother whose child was unnecessarily left with trauma of a sexual nature and whose prospects of educational success have been drastically reduced by the music therapist it would have been understandable for me to have sought a striking off of this registrant, I have never asked for such an outcome (my correspondence with the HPC is testimony to this), and I do not advocate it. Rather, I always felt that there would be much more value for us in an apology and in a constructive use of the damage done to my son and myself as an opportunity for education and training, awareness and growth. The HPC does not do these things. In fact, and with reference to my previous post, the HPC does not do apologies either. The HPC does not do feelings and emotions and real people full stop. It is a truly worrying state of affairs. On another, HPC-related matter, reading of the FTP cases on which you reported, and on the strength of my own experiences, it seems to me that there may well be another worrying outcome of HPC regulation, a danger inherent in their structure and procedures: that the academic and professional standing of registrants under investigation will have a bearing on the outcome. In other words, that there will be a hierarchy of vulnerability to sanctions, which seems to me to be the case at the moment. If the FTP investigating panel includes a member of the profession, I find it hard to believe that they will be immune to prestige and renown. I do not particularly expect many people to agree with my view (borne of personal experience), but I believe that a strong academic presence is meaningless – if not possibly the least relevant qualification and opportunity to acquire skills – when working as a human being with real people. Academics are often inebriated with their own cleverness, and are under enormous pressure to churn out paper after paper (quantity being more important than quality), re-hashing the same tired old cases, couching them in slightly different terms for publication in different journals. And I would have my doubts that the existing (and we all know that they operate more or less covertly but ruthlessly) within the psychopractice field itself will not have an effect if regulation by the HPC is to go ahead on the same terms as that of the professions currently regulated by the HPC. But these are only my speculations and worries.
Thanks Paola: your experience, your speculations, and your concerns are all extremely valuable, and very well put. There's plenty to think about here. I am pleased to be in a converstion with you, I think it can only be helpful. Janet
Post a Comment