Jan 23rd 1-day Conference on Impact of Regulation
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
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Confer presents
State Regulation - The Issues A one-day conference to consider the impact of Health Professions Council regulation of psychotherapy and counselling Saturday 23 January 2010 Conway Hall, London Fees: £50 (early-bird until 10 Jan) and £75 thereafter Recent events and discussions in the psychotherapy world have demonstrated how much concern and uncertainty is felt about the proposed regulation of the profession by the Health Professions Council. In response, we have brought together the key players in the process to answer your questions and hear your views. They include the chairpersons of the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC), United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), the CEO of the Health Professions Council, and a representative of the Alliance of Psychotherapists and Counsellors Against State Regulation. The day, which will be facilitated and structured, will be an opportunity for you to consider: What the proposed regulations would mean for your practice, modality and training organisation. What statutory regulation would mean for your patients/clients. What kind of regulatory structure would work best.
AND contribute your views to the panel. SPEAKERS: Dr Lynne Gabriel Chair, British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy Professor Darian Leader Representative of the Alliance for Counselling & Psychotherapy Against State Regulation Julian Lousada Chair, British Psychoanalytic Council Professor Andrew Samuels Chair, United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy Marc Seale Chief Executive and Registrar, Health Professions Council Professor Diane Waller Chair, Counsellors and Psychotherapists Professional Liaison Group of the HPC FACILITATOR: Sarah Lewis To read the programme and for online booking click here and follow link to State Regulation - The Issues>> |
| Summary of Positions held in Common Desire for the best structure for patient protection. A desire to design the best possible model for fitness to practice. Desire for public confidence in psychotherapy and counselling. Belief in the importance of rigorous training. Belief in the importance of ongoing improvement of psychotherapies. Wish for psychological therapies to be as accessible as possible. Recognition that the tension between the needs of practitioner and patient is complex to manage. |
| Summary of positions in favour of HPC regulation Desire for a closer relationship between state and profession in order to increase access to psychological therapies within the NHS. Wish for legal recognition of professional status and protected titles. Believe public protection is best served by the introduction of government managed standards of education, ethics and professional competence. Appreciation of the government's recognition of the importance of psychological therapies and its endeavours to make these more available via the NHS. Supportive of the government's initiative Improved Access to Psychological Therapies. Concerns about lack of training rigour and wish for the Dept Health to intervene in designing and regulating training programmes in order to ensure standards and thus increase public protection. Belief that more rigorous demands should be placed on practitioners to raise standards of care via enforcement of the HPC's Standards of Proficiency document. Concern that struck-off psychotherapists remain in practice and confidence in the HPC ethics council to deliver appropriate sanctions when complaints are upheld. Some regard psychological therapies as aligned to medicine and are comfortable with medical model of diagnosis defining the treatment approach. Wish generally to strengthen the alignment between psychological therapies and the NHS. Belief in the importance of research to show that treatments are effective. Wish for greater investment in research. Some are supportive of NICE and its attempt to align evidence of effectiveness with guidelines for practice. Wish to co-operate with the Health Professions Council on bringing state regulation about. May favour HPC regulation to ensure a specific modality receives legal recognition. |
| Summary of positions opposed to HPC regulation Belief that a closer relationship between state and profession will undermine the complex tension between the needs of the practitioner and patient via over-regulation. Assert there is no evidence that the Health Professions Council would be more effective in safeguarding the public from rogue or incompetent practitioners than the professional associations. Concern that the profession will lose its autonomy with regards to standards of proficiency, which have already been designed to high standards by professionals. Fear that the profession, founded on refined intellectual traditions, will be reduced to formulaic or homogenised approaches that will undermine the quality of trainings and ultimately sterilise the culture of psychotherapy and its theoretical base. Fear that highly specialised psychotherapy disciplines will be marginalised or denied state approval. Belief that government-favoured research methods (e.g. RCTs) are driving the agenda and that the efficacy of sophisticated approaches, that require more subtle forms of evaluation, will be subordinated. Adherence to a relational model of process underpinning healing, rather than a medical model of cure. Do not regard psychotherapy and counselling as health professions within the culture of medicine in which diagnosis determines a treatment strategy with a defined outcome. Confidence in the professional associations' integrity, desire and capacity to preserve the public's confidence in psychotherapy. Concern that the HPC will not have the expertise to understand the challenges presented by working with complex patients. Fear that an over-zealous or heavy handed ethics committee within the HPC will not use sufficiently subtle sanctions to resolve problems between practitioners and patients, or practitioners in difficulty. Belief that the current model for state regulation is not appropriate for the 70% of practitioners who work privately. Some protesters would be willing to adopt a position of principled non-compliance. |