Press Release from the Health Professions Council - 10/12/2009
Conclusions on the proposed statutory regulation of psychotherapists and counsellors
The Health Professions Council (HPC) has today published its conclusions from a public consultation on the potential statutory regulation of psychotherapists and counsellors for the Secretary of State for Health. The consultation ran for a three month period and incorporated recommendations made by the Psychotherapists and Counsellors Professional Liaison Group (PLG) and the HPC Council.
Also published today is a second document outlining the preliminary conclusions that can be made at this stage about the potential regulation of psychotherapists and counsellors.
In the 2007 White Paper on the future of health regulation, the Department of Health stated that psychotherapists and counsellors should be regulated by the HPC, subject to consultation and legislative approval. The HPC was then instructed by government to examine how that could be done.
Having reviewed the responses to the consultation, the HPC has concluded that if the decision is taken to proceed with statutory regulation of psychotherapists and counsellors, then:
• one additional Part of the Register should be established for “Psychotherapists and Counsellors” and these titles should be protected;
• modalities should not be reflected in the structure of the Register;
• the HPC should adopt the approach to dual registration;
• the inclusion of names in the HPC register from other eligible registers should be performed by means of a three-stage process; and
• the ‘grandparenting’ period for those professions should be three years.
In addition, the HPC has concluded that any further consideration of draft standards of proficiency for psychotherapists and counsellors should be deferred until the Council has concluded the current review of its existing generic standards.
The consultation received over 1,000 responses, the majority from individual practitioners in the field as well as from service users, charities and professional bodies. The responses revealed a range of different views to be taken into account in considering the most appropriate way forward.
The work that the Council has undertaken since the White Paper , including the ‘Call for Ideas’, the work of the PLG and the recent consultation and has not identified any specific issues that would prevent psychotherapists and counsellors from coming into the system of independent statutory regulation operated by the HPC.
Marc Seale, HPC’s Chief Executive, commented:
“Based on the work undertaken to date, the HPC is confident that its systems can accommodate the regulatory needs of psychotherapists and counsellors.
Statutory regulation would seek to enhance public protection by protecting commonly recognised professional titles and providing a fair and appropriate complaints system. It would also seek to protect the professionals by removing incompetent and unethical practitioners from practising and potentially harming the public, and thus reducing damage to the industry’s reputation.”
The 2007 Government White Paper contained a clear statement of policy that (subject to consultation and legislative approval) psychotherapists and counsellors would be regulated by the HPC, the task therefore was limited to examining the practicalities of implementing that policy.
The Council approached the task by examining four regulatory ‘building blocks’ and looked at how the Register could be structured, professional titles to be protected, Standards of proficiency (SOPs); and Standards of education and training (SETs).
The work was not intended to produce final drafts of either SOPs or SETs but was a feasibility study. Therefore further work and consultation on those standards will need to be conducted after the Government has finalised any regulatory proposals in the form of a Section 60 Order.
HPC Chair, Anna van der Gaag, commented:
“We are confident that as a multi-professional regulator and given our experience and approach to regulation we are well placed to regulate psychotherapists and counsellors. The HPC currently regulates arts therapists, including arts psychotherapists and recently took on practitioner psychologists and has successfully integrated them onto the Register.”
The HPC agrees with government that the regulation of psychotherapists and counsellors is important for the protection of the public. Of course, the final decision about the statutory regulation of these groups ultimately rests with Government.
Visit the HPCs website for more information www.hpc-uk.org