17 December 2014

The goose is getting sad



I just wanted to write a short post about Christmas. Yes, yes, there's articles aplenty about Christmas and how to cope with it. 

So I wanted to reassure those of you that might be feeling less than magical about the festive season that you are not alone.

There are reasons why this is the busiest time of year for my counselling service and here's a few of them:

Bereavement - Christmas is a prime time to miss a loved one who's no longer with us. The gap left can be made even more unbearable during the holiday season when everybody is pressurised into celebrating the presence of family and friends

Loneliness - all those cheery adverts showing huge family gatherings and parties just highlight this

Family issues - again, those films and ads show us how we're supposed to be doing it. But maybe our family is dysfunctional, antisocial, abusive, absent or just pretty annoying

Money - oh dear, all those gifts, that special food, those nights out…our finances get a hammering and there is so much pressure, especially when there's kids involved

Winter blues - Christmas is allegedly based on a Pagan festival celebrating the return of the light aka the Winter Solstice. The thing is, that lack of light can cause winter blues or even SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and a form of mild depression. That's not conducive to having a festive spirit is it?

I am receiving enquiries daily. This doesn't happen in the Summer. There must be a reason for this…

Maybe, just maybe, Christmas is actually rubbish for quite a few of us.










2 December 2014

New Premises from 1st January 2015

I am delighted to have secured a new room for my therapeutic practice which is only a stone's throw from my existing room. I am moving for various reasons, one of the most important being that I have built my practice up enough to take on my own room full time. I have enjoyed sharing my previous room with a dear friend and colleague but the time has come to take this important step.

This last week has seen me sourcing and organising furniture and I'm looking forward to making this a pleasant space with a welcoming and professional feel.

My new address from 1st January will be as follows:

Room 2
Second Floor
49 North Street
Exeter 

This room is about 3-4 minutes walk from my existing premises. 




The new room is above Milestone Estate Agents. Enter the front door, follow the stairs up to first landing. You will see a second flight of stairs to the right which take you to the second floor. My room is Room 2. There are other therapists working on this floor, all of whom I hold in high esteem, so I will have their company and support.

Please note that that there is no dedicated waiting area on these premises to protect the confidentiality of our clients. 

There is a Cafe Nero on the High Street in very close proximity to North Street where there is Wi-fi should you arrive in advance of your session and need somewhere to wait.

The front door closes late afternoon. For clients with late afternoon/evening appointments please text me as you arrive so I can come downstairs and let you 
in.







26 November 2014

Why such a decent Google ranking?



by Amanda Williamson

If you are a client looking for a counsellor you may have picked up my card, or found my site via Counselling Directory or perhaps the BACP Find a Therapist website. There's also a good chance you found me on page 1 of Google.

There are many, many counsellors working in Exeter and competition is very stiff so I am very fortunate to be consistently on page 1 of the Google search engine. Many businesses pay lots of money to experts to get their website on page 1 to generate more traffic to their sites. I have never spent a single penny on search engine optimisation* (SEO - the term for making a website as search-engine friendly as possible). So how did I get to page 1?

The reason why Google likes my page is because of the content. Google has become more sophisticated in recent years and tends to prefer sites that delivers relevant content that people not only click on, but actually spend time reading before then clicking through to different pages within that site.

Back in 2011 when I made the decision to work privately I invested zero money and a lot of time into building my own site as a total novice. This site is actually an adapted blogsite via Google's Blogger platform. I invested time into writing articles and delivering content that would interest potential clients and others interested in counselling topics.

My hard work has paid off and not only do I have ranking that I am very happy with, but thanks to the volume of information available potential clients can get a very good sense of who I am, rather than experiencing a somewhat homogenised, generic site as is often seen. I believe that this information empowers potential clients to decide whether they think we will work well together or not.

It isn't without risk, no doubt some may be put off by certain aspects of what I put out there, but again, this allows those clients who are to find another practitioner who will feel more right for them.

A selection of my articles can be found here.


* I have taken advantage of Google Adwords free credit offers from time to time :-)





















4 November 2014

Regulation - a client and therapist friendly way forward?

by Amanda Williamson

[Please note that this post was edited on 17th August 2015 due to the change of name of the Professional Standards Authority's registers from Accredited Voluntary Registers (AVRs) to Accredited Registers (ARs]


I am pro-regulation of my profession. In fact, as I have said previously,  in my opinion counselling and psychotherapy are currently more of a free for all than a profession. What other profession exists, where such a position of immense trust is involved, where a professional who is proven to abuse or exploit that position of trust can carry on his/her practice unimpeded? 

As a counsellor, every time I hear of another therapists' disgraceful behaviour I ask myself; what am I part of? 

The good news is, there have been improvements in the industry and we now have voluntary regulation. More on that below.

Sadly, the real world = rotten apples in EVERY profession


Sticking our fingers in our ears and singing ourselves a pretty tune will not change the fact that therapist abuse occurs and the fact that the impact can be retraumatising and devastating for a client on the receiving end of abuse or exploitation by a therapist.


I want clients to be protected from sociopathic and narcissistic therapists as far as possible. I also want them to be protected from incompetent therapists. But it also important to me that I feel that the profession I am in has integrity and self-awareness. With no regulation and scant research we are operating in the dark. How can we foster self-awareness and integrity in our clients or even in ourselves if our profession chooses to stumble around unchallenged?

Who cares what I want? Who's opinion REALLY matters?


More important than what I, or indeed other therapists want, what do our clients want? I am an advocate of Mick Cooper and John McLeod's Pluralistic Approach to counselling and psychotherapy which I see as a research based and intelligent progression of the concept of person-centredness. So instead of assuming that I know what's best for clients I asked them. My findings can be found here where I discovered that 92% of people asked were for regulation, most of whom were strongly for. What is compelling is that I then found a poll held in Ireland which gave very similar results, with over 80% of people asked thinking that the profession should be regulated.


Then recently Phil Dore aka Zarathustra (more on him later) sent me this research done by Mind (EDIT Link no longer exists as of Jan 2024); Findings from a service user survey on the regulation of counselling and psychotherapy. Again, findings that mirror my own in respect of public/service user opinion. Some of the comments from service users regarding incompetent/unethical behaviour from therapists will make your toes curl. 


EVERYBODY, regardless on their stance on regulation would do well to read all of these, particularly the Mind article to increase their awareness of what this is really about. 


Since being vocal about my wish to shine light on the shadow side of our profession I have been approached by clients and by fellow professionals from all over the country sharing snippets (or more) of their experience of abuse by a therapist. Of course, you only have my word for that. But I am not alone. Many of these people felt powerless in the complaints process and like me, some of them have sometimes wondered if there is any point in a complaints process when serious or gross misconduct does not stop a practitioner from carrying on regardless.



Do we need regulation?

This is a very emotive question. There are people vehemently lodged on each side. As I have said before, I have tried to look outside of my restrictive, personal agenda and look at the bigger picture. 

First of all, somebody who I think has a very important perspective on this is Dawn Devereux, (formerly) the Director of Public Support for the Clinic for Boundaries Studies. This clinic specialises in professional boundaries and boundary violations. Dawn featured in a Guardian article in 2009 saying pretty much what I am saying today, that regulation is needed. Dawn too learnt experientially of the need for regulation, by being abused by her therapist as a trainee. I have to say that some of the people who have contacted me regarding therapist abuse were trainee therapists at the time. If you have any ambivalence or cynicism regarding this I highly recommend Peter Rutter's Sex in the Forbidden Zone which articulates the power dynamics and abuse of position of trust most compellingly.

On the clinic's website they state the following:

"We believe that some practitioners who have violated boundaries will never be safe enough to work with the public in a professional role; we also believe that some have the capacity to be successfully rehabilitated, alongside their professional accountabilities.
We recognise that anyone can become a victim of professional abuse, just as anyone can become a perpetrator." 
So, I told Dawn that I was writing this post on regulation and she offered the following:

"About 20% of the calls we get are from people who have seen a psychotherapist or counsellor who turns out not to be registered with a professional body.  Sometimes these people are actually qualified and have chosen not to register, but many have no recognised qualification at all.  This means that unless the actions of the 'professional' constitute a criminal offence there is usually nothing the person can do to seek redress.  The only way to remedy this is to have statutory regulation that protects the title of 'counsellor' and 'psychotherapist' .  The idea that professionals will simply call themselves something else sounds reasonable in theory but in practice this doesn't seem to be a problem for others professions with protected titles such as doctors.  I have never come across a case of someone pretending to be a doctor by calling themselves something similar".

So back to Phil Dore aka Zarathustra who authors a blog called The Not So Big Society. I have got to know Phil over the last couple of years, orginally making contact with him via his blog posts on abusive therapists. I was researching the therapist Derek Gale who was struck off the HPC and UKCP for abusive practice. 

It turns out that Phil has become a bit of a port of call for people who have been abused by their therapist. His blog/s come up on Google and he writes extensively about the topic. I am aware that he has been contacted by many people, some of whom are desperate for support or advice. I asked Phil to comment, given his vantage point:

"A few years ago I wrote a blog post saying I thought counselling and psychotherapy should be regulated. Since then I've received a steady stream of first-hand accounts from people who've been emotionally or sexually abused while in a therapeutic relationship. Such cases are enormously traumatising, and sadly often happen to already-vulnerable people. I've been shocked not only by the nature of the cases, but also by the way the perpetrators either don't get struck off, or do get struck off and just carry on practising. One of my readers did a survey of people who'd been removed from the BACP register, and found that 22% of them were still advertising themselves as counsellors or psychotherapists."



Opposition to regulation from within the industry


A couple of weeks after the Palace Gate/Phoenix Counselling story was in the papers I was discussing regulation on Twitter. Somebody expressed dissatisfaction at the HCPC (formerly HPC) model. The Labour government were going to introduce statutory regulation of therapy via the HPC but the plans were abolished by the coalition. I appreciate that there were a number of therapists who were opposed to this route and indeed, the Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy formed in order to oppose this planned state regulation. This fellow Tweep emailed me with his concerns at regulation, two issues being the bureaucracy and the requirement for homogeneity of therapies. It struck me at that moment that with the existing voluntary register scheme that we already have something in place that could be built upon.


The Accredited Registers (ARs)


So at the moment, we have voluntary regulation and it is the Professional Standards Authority who oversee different ARs. There are currently five ARs listed for psychotherapy and six listed for counselling. So if a practitioner says that they are on an approved AR you can check each register online for their individual registration. For example, you can check my entry on the BACP register here. Being on this register means that I have a minimum level of qualifications and have insurance. It also means that if a client were to make a complaint about unethical behaviour then I could be sanctioned or struck off. In theory, I would not be able to join any of the other ARs because there is supposed to be system in place whereby the ARs communicate regarding struck off therapists. How this actually happens in practice and how it ensures that practitioners don't slip through the net I really don't know at this point.


So it makes sense to me that there exists a system that could be adapted. Essentially, take the voluntary aspect out of the Accredited Register scheme. Make it illegal for somebody to practice as a therapist without being part of the one of the several ARs available.


Could this work as a way forward? Can we give the public what they want in terms of statutory regulation (and many assume already exists) AND keep therapists happy? What about the associated professional bodies? 

I wrote to various AR [or AVR as they were known at the time] holders and was pleased to receive responses in answer to the following question: 

I am writing a blog post on the regulation of counselling and psychotherapy and specifically on the premise of it being via the existing PSA AVR route, effectively taking the "V" out of AVR. 

I am very much pro-regulation but do appreciate that there is sizable opposition within the industry regarding the HCPC route. Whilst I am sympathetic to the concerns I am not personally totally opposed to regulation via the HCPC route. That said, I do believe that statutory regulation that builds on the existing PSA AVR scheme would be favourable overall, perhaps for the government in terms of expenditure and, I would imagine, for those within the industry that have fears around the HCPC route.

I am asking various stakeholders their opinion on statutory regulation through the PSA led accredited register and would very much appreciate comment from the _____ on this matter.

The first response was from Liz McElligot the CEO of the NCS who replied thus:


The NCS supports the current AVR scheme as the best way of regulating counselling and related professions.

 Should a statutory scheme be able to be developed, the NCS would support this being an adaptation of the current AVR scheme.   Building statutory regulation around professional associations would ensure that the profession is always at the heart of regulation, rather than having it imposed.  It would protect counsellors, counselling modalities, access to training and the volunteer sector. 

In addition, our experience of the Professional Standards Authority is that they have been very willing to engage with professional associations across a number of therapies and do so in a highly productive manner.  We would support them as our regulator of choice should statutory regulation be progressed.

I also heard back from Ruth Clowes, the media and communications manager at the BACP:

As you’re aware, we have for some time been working, and continue to work, within the current Government's preferred regulatory framework for the counselling and psychotherapy professions, the Accredited Voluntary Register scheme. Statutory regulation through the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) was proposed by previous administrations and historically was indicated as the path the profession would follow – as such we were keen to work with the proposed regulators to ensure the best regulation for the profession. Subsequently, this route changed to voluntary regulation and we made a commitment to work within this new form of public protection.

Crucially, we’re committed to working within any regulatory framework that will deliver the high professional standards and a level of public protection across the whole counselling and psychotherapy professions that is expected of our members through the Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy.

After chasing them up, I received a response from the UKCP via their communications manager, Sandra Scott:

To answer your question about regulation, we are in favour of regulation.  We are the voluntary regulator of psychotherapists. There is no proposal for state regulation on the table for us to comment on.  But our voluntary register has been accredited by the PSA, an agency of the state.

I find it interesting that the UKCP refer to themselves as the regulator of psychotherapists as it is my understanding that the BACP also regulate psychotherapists. I also would argue that "voluntary regulation" isn't actually regulation, the two words in the phrase being paradoxical. I suppose that's an issue of semantics.

The Professional Standards Authority provided a prompt and informative response:

Making it compulsory to join an accredited register and creating protected titles would in effect recreate statutory regulation. In this case, whether compulsory registers were held by the HCPC or accredited by the Professional Standards Authority, they would restrict individuals’ right to work. This would require the government to satisfy various legal requirements, including compliance with the Human Rights Act. It is for Parliament to decide whether that would be appropriate. 

The Authority’s view is that Right-touch regulation requires us to first look at the existing system. We must consider whether the scheme is providing the right level of protection and work to develop it wherever there is scope to do so.

Accreditation is not regulation. It is a different form of assurance. It does have one limitation: it cannot bar practitioners from working, although accredited registers are required to recognise each other’s decisions – to strike someone off the register for poor practice such as financial dishonesty or abusive behaviour. If a complaint is brought to an accredited register about the conduct of one of its registrants it may – following consideration under its complaints procedures – strike the person off its register. If this were to happen, the other accredited registers would not permit that person to join them. This means that the public and NHS employers can avoid poor practice by only using people who are on an accredited register.  

The Authority believes that there is scope for improvement, for example through the disclosure and barring scheme, which can be used to prevent unsuitable people from working in health and care. Making this work effectively will achieve a similar result in removing unsuitable people from health and care occupations. The Authority will continue to advocate this approach with the Department of Health.

Accredited registers, however, can and should provide the public with appropriate protection and improve quality in counselling and psychotherapy, as well as the other occupations covered by the scheme. As it stands, the Authority has accredited four registers of counsellors and psychotherapists, all of which provide the public with good levels of protection. Our challenge is to harness the benefits of choice. 
Counsellors and psychotherapists may choose to belong to accredited registers. In doing so, each makes a personal commitment to high standards and to quality. We expect that any practitioner with a commitment to professionalism and compassion for the people who use their services will choose to belong to an accredited register. 

Wherever possible, members of the public should always choose a practitioner from an accredited register. We and the accredited registers are using every opportunity we can to educate the public about the registers and how they protect people looking for health and care services. Anyone using the NHS to access counselling and psychotherapy should be referred to a therapist on an accredited register. This scheme is recognised by key stakeholders including NHS Employers, NHS England and the Care Quality Commission.

As more and more people choose practitioners from accredited registers and increasing numbers of practitioners choose to belong to one, it will become very difficult to work as a counsellor or psychotherapist without belonging to an accredited register. Belonging to an accredited register will be mandatory in practice, if not by law. 

The Authority does recognise that there is some way to go to reach this goal. To arrive there, we need the support of counsellors and psychotherapists, as well as other practitioners covered by accredited registers. We hope that you, your readers and everyone who cares about counselling and psychotherapy will help us to spread the word about accredited registers.

What about other stakeholders? Well, given the very vocal opposition to the HPC/HCPC route by the Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy I sent them the same question. I received two responses. The first was from a member to whom my email had been forwarded:

One aspect I have a personal investment in is the area of multidisciplinary therapists. Therapists registered in one psychological therapy under AVR can practice in other areas (subject obviously to competence) without duplication of regulation. Thus professional bodies like NACHP, NCP, SSM, and other bodies with trained therapists providing a range of psychological therapies (usually counselling, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, hypnotherapy, coaching) can be providing several and be avr registered under the umbrella of CNHC (voluntary regulator and AVR) under the hypnotherapy category.  

Likewise several colleagues of mine are BACP or UKCP avr registered and provide coaching or hypnotherapy. Some are HCPC psychologists providing other therapies etc
The danger of AR might be that suddenly false divides occur where people on one register, say CNHC, are suddenly unable to practice parts of their skill set because of a simple rule change. 

I would be fairly happy with AR if there was an acceptance that a primary psychological therapy needs to be covered, but with that in place other therapies can also be provided if competent and insured. 



Hmmn. Very reasonable and open I thought.

Then a few days later I recieved this email from "The Alliance":


Thank you for your interest in the Alliance’s views on making Assured Voluntary Regulation statutory by removing the voluntary element. The Alliance has consistently opposed the statutory regulation of counselling and psychotherapy. We cautiously welcomed the PSA voluntary registers scheme and are interested in dialogue on the future of the field, so can you say why you think this new form of regulation should be scrapped so soon after its inception? What do you hope would be achieved? How would the statutory system you propose improve the experiences of clients seeking, undertaking and/or having difficulties within therapy?

Well first of all, I don't think it should be scrapped, rather, built upon. What I hope to be achieved is the protection of clients from therapists who have been found to be abusive or exploitative as there is currently nothing to stop them from practising. I think I have already made this point in the first part of this article.

Where I'm at for now…


As a professional...


There isn't ever going to be any such thing as the perfect regulation for our profession. However, I strongly believe that regulation is necessary for the overall good of our clients and the profession. I do find the PSA are approachable and willing to listen, which is a good start.


I have also done a lot of thinking about the individual organisational body that I am a member of. The BACP have received criticism for allegedly "empire building".   I became a member of the BACP because I did a BACP accredited course and it was mandatory. They do also happen to be the largest body, membership wise.  Since qualifying I have learned more about each body, read the various criticisms of each and have given great consideration as to which organisation I should be with. I conclude that the BACP are the best fit for me. 


As a counsellor, being fully appreciative of the potential for damage to clients of getting it wrong, I welcome the opportunity for my practice to be scrutinised if somebody believes that my practice has had an adverse effect on them. It would be stressful and incredibly difficult but if somebody truly feels that my work has harmed then what sort of therapist would I be if I tried to shut that person down, with no mediation, no recourse and no accountability whatsoever on my part. 


I would also say that having been through the accreditation process for the BACP I am aware of how rigorous it is. It is my understanding that they set the highest standards for their individual members which gives me the confidence that on balance, this is an organisation I choose to be a part of.


As a client…


As a complainant in a BACP professional conduct hearing I am satisfied that the panel were aware enough to look at the complaint objectively and professionally (although it seemed unfair sometimes, because they were being so fair!). The only disappointment I felt acutely was the fact that the BACP findings effectively remain hidden from potential future clients of this therapist. But that is not the responsibility of the BACP in a profession without regulation. 


My hope is that all the ARs under the PSA have robust enough complaints procedures but only time will tell. At least there is now a port of call for complainants (against AR therapists) who feel that they have been treated unfairly during a complaints process.


I keep on hoping for the regulation of the profession, and I will keep on talking about it as long as I am receiving emails from all over the country from those abused by a therapist who can carry on regardless.


If my horrible experience of an abusive therapist can make a change for the benefit of this profession then it will have alchemised what was a horrendous 2 years into something tangibly productive for talking therapies which I passionately believe can be wonderful and transformative for clients. We just need to shine a light on the shadow of our profession.




More posts on regulation:

Guest Blogger Patrick Killeen - Accredited Registers vs Protected Titles (July 2015)

If I had the power to regulate counselling (April 2015)

A new name for the PSA's registers for counselling and psychotherapy (February 2015)

The problems with a voluntary regulatory scheme (Sept 2014)


Spreading the word on AVRs - the Professional Standards Authority responds (Sept 2014)

The Regulation of Counselling and Psychotherapy - What the Public Want (June 2013)







15 October 2014

My surprising response to being awarded BACP Accredited status

by Amanda Williamson

[update March 2019 - I have now attained Senior Accreditation]

When I was in training and looking at different career paths it became clear that BACP accredited status was the goal in respect of being able to get paid work being employed as a counsellor or to receive referrals via Employee Assistance Programs.

I trained for an Advanced Diploma in Integrative Counselling at the Iron Mill Institute in Exeter, a BACP accredited course. Rather naively I believed that completing a BACP accredited course would result in my having BACP accredited status. It doesn't. What it means is that the Iron Mill's Advanced Diploma in Integrative Counselling meets the BACP high standards of training. So quite soon into the training I realised that in order to achieve accredited status I would first of all need to qualify which involved:



  • Attending the 2 yr course and completing all the written assessments
  • Attaining 150 counselling hours as a volunteer counsellor 
  • Attending monthly supervision whilst practising
  • Attending personal therapy of 40+ hours


and then to achieve accredited status I needed to have:



  • Been in practice for at least 3 years
  • Attained at least 450 counselling hours under supervision


The application for accreditation is a project in itself involving four written pieces and a whole lot of logging (client work, supervision). You also need a supervisor's report and to find a suitable sponsor who will submit their sponsorship form separately. It's a lot more complex and time consuming than I can possibly say in a short paragraph.


Setbacks


I was ready to apply in May 2013 having enough years experience and around 1000 client hours. However, I had to delay the whole process for around a year due to the professional difficulties I had encountered when I reported an agency for unethical practice. The agency, which subsequently had BACP membership removed twice (there were other complainants) went on the attack and sent threatening correspondence and lodged professional complaints against anybody who had raised grievances with them who also happened to be BACP member. This whole process involved a police investigation and took around 2 years. None of the complaints raised by the agency proceeded to a hearing as the BACP could not find any evidence of unethical practice in any of those who were complained about.

Finally, this year, with the hearing against the agency and that whole traumatic business out of the way I decided to work on my accreditation application. I found it very time consuming and tedious. The written pieces were actually more tricky than I thought to write - harder than the essays during training. We have to demonstrate within a word limit exactly how we are working and demonstrate our awareness throughout of the BACP Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy. We have to describe professional development we have engaged in and demonstrate how this has informed our practice. A lot of it is about reflective practice, our use of supervision and our self-awareness. This is quite difficult to convey in an essay! I found myself tweaking each piece in turn, spending many hours honing them, so that they, as a collective, provide a coherent and authentic representation of myself as practitioner.

The largest written piece is the case study where we demonstrate our use of theory, self-awareness, the Ethical Framework and supervision. These days the BACP ask that your supervisor reads the case study too and recognises it as being a reflection of the work done. So no making stuff up, exaggerating or bending the truth.


Doubts

I had second thoughts about applying. Was it necessary? Was it worth the expense? With the new Accredited Voluntary Registers won't accreditation become superfluous? Do clients know the difference between members and accredited members? Was I doing it because I was on some sort of subconscious conveyor belt and it was an automatic step rather than a well thought out, considered manoeuvre?


Authenticity


I decided to be very honest in my written work about the challenges I had faced and how I had carefully negotiated any impact of the dreadful business involving the agency on my practice. I capped my client load, had extra supervision and saw a therapist weekly during the height of the process. I also explored the learning that I had gained from the experience and how the adversity opened up the pathway to revisiting old wounds and being able to process them more effectively than ever before. I was advised by a colleague to keep that stuff out of my accreditation application but it seemed incongruent not to include it.

I submitted it in May 2014. The waiting time for processing is around 4 months so I sent it all off and…

Failing at the first hurdle...

Due to how long it had been since downloading the original application and actually submitting it the fee had gone up so first of all I had to pay the short fall. Then in August I was told that I had not labelled my essay clearly enough in terms of referencing the Ethical Framework and had managed to miss out a few lines on the client log. After remedying those I was told it would be submitted to a moderator at the next available opportunity.

A difficult week

On 23rd September I had a difficult day because somebody had requested a meeting to describe my experiences at the Palace Gate Counselling Service. I am unable to disclose who but I agreed as a matter of ethical duty/public protection. However, it was incredibly difficult having to describe exactly what happened to somebody I had never met before. I had been in a good place of putting the whole thing behind me but this seemed like a set back. I felt emotionally battered afterwards.

And then on 24th September a firm envelope plopped through my letterbox. I was a bit nervous at first; unexpected large envelopes have often meant rather horrible communication via the aforementioned agency over the last couple of years. Picking it up, and seeing that is was sent from the BACP I quickly opened it and there it was.


Nothing could have prepared me for the emotional reaction. Here was a great big piece of validation from my professional body. They had read my warblings, seen my supervisors'reports (I have two supervisors) and my sponsor's report and decided that I was worthy of accreditation which they describe thus:

"Accreditation offers kite-mark status for individual practitioners, professional training courses and therapeutic service provision, who are able to demonstrate that they are meeting a wide range of criteria, set to recognise high standards of knowledge, experience and development."





I had told myself that achieving accredited status would not really mean anything to me.





But

That night………..I took a look at those written pieces that I had submitted four months before. I read my very honest descriptions of the professional struggles with the unethical agency, my authentic reflection on client work, the ongoing learning and self-reflective practice and…

...I cried.

Had I not been so honest in my written pieces then perhaps my reaction would not have been quite so huge. But it was that I had been so utterly genuine about my ups and downs since practising, and that the BACP moderator had accepted and understood how I worked.

After a baptism of fire into the industry and the horrendous 2 years that had blighted my career until very recently, this was a HUGE relief and an extremely positive step forwards for me.

It meant more to me than my original qualification.

Practicalities wise this does not really make much difference to me on a day to day basis

However, the BACP accreditation process is a very well thought out initiation into the higher echelons of counselling and psychotherapeutic practice.

I highly recommend it as a process to fellow practitioners for fundamental personal and professional self-development.




NB Individual BACP Accreditation should not be confused with the Accredited Registers (ARs). The AR scheme means that the Professional Standards Authority has bestowed accredited status to the register, not the practitioners registered on it.*

Likewise, The National Counselling Society offers accredited status but as far as I can see, this is equivalent to the BACP Registered Membership with a much less stringent criteria than the BACP Accredited Membership status. 

*this paragraph has been updated as the PSA Registers were originally called Accredited Voluntary Registers.






24 September 2014

Transphobia - a cyber *hug*



I have wanted to blog about transphobia for a while but am aware that I most likely can't do the subject justice. But if I can at least make a handful of people think about their prejudices around gender then I will consider this to have been a worthwhile post. This is also my version of a cyber *hug* for somebody on Twitter that encounters a lot of hatred and abuse for being a trans woman.

What is transphobia?

It is the prejudice and negative attitudes and/or hatred towards people who are categorised as transitioning/considering transitioning/transitioned from the gender they have been assigned by the cultural definitions of male/female (binary gender), and those that don't identify with either culturally assigned gender (known as non-binary gender).

The issue has been highlighted to me since increasing my use of Twitter and encountering the extreme hatred towards some that are not cis (short for cisgender; when the sex/gender you know yourself to be correlates with the one you were originally assigned).

I have a long way to go before really understanding the experience of somebody who is not cisgender. I recall watching a couple of documentaries in the early 80's about men transitioning to women. It never occured to me that what they were doing was wrong or unnatural in any way. I was aged around 10 and I distinctly remember thinking how devastating it must be to realise that your outward appearance is the opposite of the gender which your actual self identifies with. I didn't know the word cisprivilege then but the fledgling concept developed within my psyche. I trusted that if somebody feels that way then they must have the wrong bits and bobs to fit with the societal expectation of the outward appearance of the gender they are. Surgical correction made perfect sense.

What is gender anyway? When in deep, authentic "I-Thou" relationship to another, gender falls away, along with age, race, class.

So I am absolutely perplexed at the hatred that I bear witness to on Twitter.

But I have become aware that I am unwittingly contributing to that hatred, which is a horrible thing to admit, but my own prejudices around gender, although not wrapped up in hate, or born of hate and fear,  might even contribute to the culturally backward thinking attitudes that we have. For example, I thought that I was pretty liberal for being cool with trans men and women, but it was only in the last couple of years that I appreciated the concept of being genderqueer or non-binary. I had assumed that people were either male or female (trans or cis) and it took some serious rethinking to realise that I had been effectively blanking out all those who identify as neither.

We seem to be attached to polarised thinking. Black or white, rich or poor, good or bad, male or female, gay or straight...

Remember the hatred towards homosexuals 20+ years ago? Of course hatred and intolerance still exists now, tragically, but we have come a long way from the days of being okay to call homosexuality unnatural and thinking that gay weddings are an abomination. It is becoming more accepted that sexuality is a spectrum that we don't have to plant ourselves firmly at either end of. Again, we have a L-O-N-G way to go but we are getting there. In this country and is my part of the UK at least I would not describe our society as homophobic. There remain some ignoramuses who remain homophobic but they are becoming more and more the minority.

BUT we have a transphobic society. Many people are unaware of the concept of a gender spectrum. Many, many people are not even aware of the issues faced by anybody affected by transphobia. And I, seeing through my cis eyes, filtered with my cis brain, have taken my cisprivilege for granted way more than I would prefer to admit.

Somebody pointed out to me recently that the 90's film Ace Ventura Pet Detective is transphobic. I vaguely remember watching it back in the day and nothing registered. But seeing the relevant scenes today, with my eyes open more than they were then, I was absolutely appalled. Not just at the film itself, but at how I hadn't appreciated in my 20's how blind I was to the hatred and abuse inflicted on those that are not cis.  I can appreciate now how distressing and abusive a trans woman might find the film's (non) handling of trans issues.

I'll call it a day for now. I would like to write more about the topic as I learn and understand more. I'd like to blog a full on rant about TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) women who dish out abuse and hate to trans women (very much "I-It" relating).

One more point. Please let me know if you are trans/non-binary and find anything that I written in any way disrespectful. I don't know what it is like to be you but I do know that there are many things I don't know and I am open to being educated.

Ignorance isn't bliss. It means hurting others without even knowing it.

* The picture above is from the album artwork for I am a Bird Now by Antony & The Johnsons. A beautiful, soulful album. The song You are My Sister never fails to make me cry.




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