And From Scotland - ministers and servants : democracy inaction [sic]

Below is a letter from Stuart Morgan-Ayrs who is replying to Robert Girvan, who you will see is from the Regulatory Unit of the Scottish Gov (his letter is reproduced below that of Stuart). I've put them in this reversed date order because Stuart's is the more vibrant, alive and interesting, of the two. Robert's is an important testasment to the kind of response many of us have been getting from government ministers and their servants, and it is easy to see the mark of the HPC itself in the reply (hence bringing us again to the question of QUANGOs and their independence from gov and vice versa).

Stuart replied on 24th October with the following:


Dear Robert

Many thanks for your most interesting response.

Sadly it would appear that either the Scottish Government is not staying up to date having ceded this to Westminster, or your colleagues in London are keeping you well and truly out of the loop.

The HPC regulation regarding BPS is proving a failure with a substantial proportion of psychologists refusing to register. A major reason for this is that considering the unregulated nature of the title "psychologist", practicing psychologists are objecting to paying a yearly fee, which gains them nothing, just to add a prefix onto the generic term! By dropping the prefix they do the same job, in the same way, for the same money, save the cash and do not have to sign up to this daft scheme!

If psychologists are doing this, who are mainly employed, how will self employed counsellors and psychotherapists behave? Why should I for example, with qualifications in all three disciplines pay over £70 per year to use the title "counsellor" or "psychotherapist", when I can simply and accurately use the generic term "psychologist", "therapist", "psychoanalyst", "life coach" or "complementary therapist" for free. For those of us with post graduate qualification and over 10 years of professional practice - we do not need silly titles verified by a government quango to sell our wares! It is only going to be the scared and freshly qualified therapists, and those people employed by the NHS that are going to bother registering! Senior therapists like myself will naturally remain professionally accountable and insured through our existing affiliations.

The BACP - one of the largest counselling and psychotherapy bodies, together with many more smaller bodies have rejected the HPC draft proposals. This is driven by the fact that the membership of these professional bodies neither meet the draft proposal requirements, nor agree with this move backwards for the profession. The profession have simply not been consulted, instead a stooge ridden practitioner liaison group was set up (later modified to get rid of dissenters!). For example taking the BACP: 80% roughly of their members (their figures) are not BACP "accredited" but are instead professionals in related industries who use counselling and are currently classed as counsellors, or volunteers. These people will be excluded or face abhorrent costs! Many therapists have already paid out many thousands of pounds for independent training (the usual standard until recently) for good training, which will now be disputed. My own initial training cost over £8,000 for nearly 5 years of training, which I was only accepted on to as a graduate, and which led to an NVQ Level 4 in Training and Development. Highly assessed - highly supervised - high standard - multiple schools of therapy, and soon to be completely ignored.

TWO legal challenges have already been initiated to question and prevent the legislation in it's current form.

A substantial university study and report has also just condemned the HPC proposals as flawed.

A publication of leading therapists in their fields has now been published explaining why the proposals are completely unacceptable. Typically these papers are scribed by professionals with far more credibility in their divisions and schools of thought than anyone consulted by the HPC!

As for the levels of qualification for counsellors and psychotherapists, this is again a bad joke. For years counselling has been accepted as a part of almost any therapy physical, mental or combined, and therefore counselling courses of a vocational nature have arisen, usually at levels 3-5 on the SQA / QCA. Most would not be considered acceptable by the HPC since they require specific content (still undefined) at a minimum level 5 level.

As for psychotherapy - post graduate sounds very nice - but the majority of courses are not university accredited! Therefore at a stroke the multitude of excellent courses, often vocational in nature will be consigned to scrap, because of a figure on the qualification scale pulled out of a closed discussion group! Why for example should a psychotherapist with say 20 years experience and existing diplomas have to retrain? Why should someone with for example a MSc in Psychology ALSO need a MSc in Psychotherapy? Why should a counsellor with level 3 accreditation and years of experience need to jump another 2 levels? And since most of the work is intuitive, why the silly emphasis on academic study anyway? What about persons with dyslexia and other learning restrictions either class, ethnic social or environmental? Counselling is a conversation, not a paper exercise and currently is a suitable career for them. It will not be if you need a university degree though! Why the discrimination against them and in favour of white middle class academic kids? And what about all the styles of psychotherapy and psychology and counselling that have no accredited university courses available? Are you going to criminalise providing these just because the courses have not yet been developed, or simply may never been available? I use Morita and other Eastern forms of psychology in my practice - university level courses are simply not available in these in the UK. Should therapists using these go and study an "approved" method like person centred (with half the history and development) and lose these methods for the public?

It would appear that your department is blindly following a course of action which is also being questioned in Westminster, and that is fundamentally flawed, not least because the HPC failed to adhere to the legal requirements of it's own mandate when (not) identifying whether this form of regulation was appropriate.

There now exist a raft of practical, ethical, philosophical, financial and legal reasons why the proposed HPC regulation is likely to fail or else do substantial damage to the industry.

Incidentally it is surely your responsibility to consult with the voluntary agencies of Scotland who employ counsellors and canvass their opinion? Are you aware that the effect of proposed measures will cause chaos and termination of services across Scotland the rest of the UK? Or are you planning to pay all the registration, grand-parenting, qualification and supervision fees on behalf of all the voluntary counsellors in the whole of Scotland? You might want to consider the bill per volunteer of registration, grand-parenting fee, any training required at undergraduate or post-graduate level to make the grade, and then reassessment! The figures we have seen include over £400 for grand-parenting and university fees can be easily into the thousands!

All that was ever required was an enforced requirement to be professionally registered with an adequate professional body, have full indemnity insurance and adhere to a nationally agreed code of conduct and ethics, with all names held centrally to ensure no jumping between associations in event of dismissal! The associations could easily be required to register all names within one register. Not exactly rocket science!

All the current proposals mean is that many of us are going to re-brand with a different job title rather than compromise our philosophical and ethical integrity if the HPC proposals go ahead. Since the numbers of us declaring this are in the thousands, PLUS the rejection of whole associations like the BACP - all the HPC is possibly going to achieve is causing us all to rename our job titles! What a waste of time, effort and tax-payer's money!

More information on this complete farce that you are signed up to!

http://www.psyreg.co.uk/

http://ipnosis.postle.net/

http://hpcwatchdog.blogspot.com/

http://www.allianceforcandp.org/pages/


Kind regards


Stuart


This is what he replied to:

ROBERT GIRVAN, Regulatory Unit
Scottish Government, Robert.Girvan@scotland.gsi.gov.uk


Dear Professor Morgan-Ayrs


Thank you for your e-mail of 21 September regarding the regulation of psychotherapists and counsellors. I have been asked to reply on behalf of the First Minister, Alex Salmond.


The regulation of these groups is a matter devolved in Scotland to the Scottish Parliament. However, the Scottish Government is currently committed to UK-wide regulation of the health professions, sensitive to Scotland’s needs. This is in the interests of the cross-border flow of staff and consistency in the application of standards across the four countries, as well as public understanding.


The White Paper Trust, Assurance and Safety – The Regulation of Health Professionals in the 21st Century stated Government plans to introduce statutory regulation for psychotherapists and counsellors as a matter of priority, as what they do carries significant risk to patients and the public. The Health Professions Council (HPC) was the recommended regulator as it was designed to regulate new professional groups and had the most expertise in bringing new professions into statutory regulation and also in regulating a wide range of professions within a common system.


The final report of the Department of Health Extending Professional Regulation Working Group (EPRWG) was published on 16 July. This Group was set up as part of the implementation of the White Paper Trust, Assurance and Safety to take forward work on the scope of professional regulation. The Scottish representative on the Group ensured that our own Extending Professional Regulation Group fed in to the DH Group and vice-versa.


Given the risks presented by these groups, the EPRWG report supports the commitment to regulate psychotherapists and counsellors and recommends that the ongoing work to implement statutory regulation by the HPC should continue. The report can be viewed at: http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_102824

The HPC regulates by protection of title. Each of the professions regulated has at least one title which is protected in law. We are confident that the statutory regulation of psychotherapists and counsellors will promote protection of the public by restricting the use of protected titles to those who have demonstrated that they are fit to practise, and have the relevant skills, knowledge and aptitudes. Under statutory arrangements, the public will have the choice of whether or not to use a statutorily regulated, registered professional whose standards are explicit.

We are aware that there are a wide range of psychological and knowledge bases from which these psychological therapies have derived. As was the case with the introduction of statutory regulation for practitioner psychologists, for those practitioners who do not qualify for automatic transfer onto the HPC register the HPC will also provide for an interim assessment process known as ‘grandparenting’, which will allow applicants to register with them based on a more individualised assessment of their qualifications and experience.

All four constituent parts of the UK are still in the early stages of work on a regulatory system for psychotherapists and counsellors. As you note, the HPC sought the views of stakeholders with a call for ideas from 23 July 2008 to 24 October 2008. The responses informed the work of the HPC Psychotherapists and Counsellors Professional Liaison Group (PLG) set up to consider issues relevant to the statutory regulation of psychotherapists and counsellors.

The Group consisted of 17 members including representatives from professional bodies, education providers and service users. Their report has now been published and the HPC have completed a further three month consultation. The key issues they consulted on were the titles to be protected, the standards for safe and effective practice and the threshold level of qualification for entry to the HPC register. The outcome of the consultation will help inform the HPC’s recommendations to the Secretary of State and to Ministers in the devolved administrations on the regulation of this group. The consultation closed on 16 October and I hope that you submitted your views to it. The Scottish Government has also submitted a response to the consultation informed by key stakeholders.

There is still a considerable amount of work to be undertaken before statutory regulation can be implemented across the UK. We welcome the views of stakeholders as we move towards regulation, including during the further period of consultation that there will be on the eventual draft Order under section 60 of the Health Act 1999 which will put regulation in place for psychotherapists and counsellors across the UK.

I hope this clarifies the current position.


Yours sincerely


ROBERT GIRVAN