The Maresfield Report

The College of Psychoanalyts UK publish damning report of state endorsed regulatory processes: Here is the press release accompanying the Maresfield report, issued on October 7 2009

The Maresfield Report on the Regulation of Psychotherapy in the UK

"A new report [published 09 Oct] delivers a devastating critique of the Government’s flagship Health Professions Council. HPC are vaunted as the most efficient and robust route to protection of the public in the health sector, yet the report finds persistent failings in public protection, excessive and wasteful expenditure, and evidence of a policy of privileging employer complaints over complaints from members of the public.

The Maresfield Report, which focuses on the proposed HPC regulation of counselling and psychotherapy, finds that:

* Since 2006, around 30% of complaints made to HPC each year have not been processed, creating a growing backlog and placing undue stress on all parties involved.

* Although its complaints expenditure is the largest part of HPC’s budget, with £4.66m spent in 2008-9, only 17 complaints from the public heard by HPC were deemed to have a case to answer.

* Of all complaints to the HPC from the public, more than 70% are deemed ‘no case to answer’ by HPC, compared with only 10% deemed ‘no case to answer’ by the UK’s largest psychotherapy umbrella organisation UKCP.

* Employer complaints about employees constitute the largest part of HPC complaints hearings, yet these are financed by registrants of the individual health professions that HPC regulates. Registrants are thus effectively financing employment tribunals that ought to be funded by NHS Trusts and other employers.

* In 2008-9, more than 80% of complaints from employers were deemed ‘case to answer’, compared with only 22% from members of the public.

* All HPC hearings take place in front of a public gallery, depriving complainants of the confidentiality that the details of psychotherapy cases may require. The formal and adversarial parameters of HPC hearings will discourage potential complaints.

* HPC does not offer any mediation or informal processes of complaint resolution, in contrast to the psychotherapy organisations which resolve more than 60% of cases via mediation.

* Most forms of psychotherapy do not fit the criteria of health professions set out by HPC and cannot be made to fit them without changing the very definition of psychotherapy itself.

* Although there have been several projects to ensure that therapists are registered and subject to complaints procedures, Britain is the only European country to propose regulation for the actual content of therapy sessions.

The report will be a major embarrassment to HPC at a time when it has begun actively lobbying both Conservative and Lib-Dem policy makers, anticipating a change of government before the proposed legislation can be introduced. It will be particularly embarrassing to HPC’s CEO Marc Seale, who is trying to push through this controversial regulation while many politicians are becoming critical of the once received wisdom of the project.

You can read the Maresfield Report in full on www.psychoanalysis-cpuk.org"