All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie.
W.H. Auden

RESIGNATION FROM UKCP

This statement has been prepared by a small group of current and former members of UKCP, and is for those across all modalities to sign.

The UKCP Registration Board 2008 Annual Report notes that over a thousand registrants a year are dropping out of membership, many of whom do not give reasons for leaving the organisation. No information has been given to the remaining six thousand or so members about the reasons that are given by those who have left. There are, it is true, new registrants joining each year, and there are a number of psychotherapists who are bound by their conditions of employment to stay in the UKCP. There are, of course, alternative registration bodies that some of those leaving could join, but until the Health Professions Council takes psychotherapists under its wing (which will not, if it does take place, be for a few more years), these ex-registrants may only want to retain membership of their own training organisation.

There is a crisis in the UKCP, and it has been increasingly apparent that the organisation is either unwilling or unable to make clear to government and associated regulatory bodies that proposed forms of state regulation are unacceptable to many of us. Negotiations with the HPC, for example, are conducted on the basis that all UKCP psychotherapists should be included, not that there is such diversity of practice that many UKCP psychotherapists should not be regulated as a health profession. The assumption of the UKCP leadership has been that unity should be maintained in negotiations with government and associated regulatory bodies, and conflicting perspectives are treated as embarrassments. Those who do speak out are viewed as weakening the position of those conducting the negotiations on our behalf, and we are, as a result, being pressed into a shape that is antithetical to ethical practice. The UKCP membership is repeatedly told that current proposals for regulation (whatever they are at any particular time) are inevitable, and no provision is being made to support those who will refuse to participate for ethical and philosophical reasons.

We do not claim to speak for all those who have left UKCP in the past years, nor for those who will now decide not to renew their membership in 2008. But we are now putting on record this resignation statement to be circulated to ex-registrants and to our colleagues who have concluded that the UKCP governing board is working against them rather than for them. This is formulated as a resignation statement to be endorsed retroactively by those who have already left, now by those who are actually leaving, and indicatively by those who are seriously considering taking this step. For many years the UKCP has been the best forum for bringing together psychotherapists of different modalities, and then more recently it has been the least-worst forum. As individual members of Member Organisations of UKCP, and in some cases as representatives of those organisations, we have now reached the point where we are unwilling to give our support to the UKCP through registration with it. It does not defend the diversity of psychotherapeutic practice against attempts by the government to regulate them en masse, and has done nothing to give voice to those who are opposed to the proposed regulation. We have had enough, and do not want to lend our support to an organisation that has failed to argue against the impending destruction of psychotherapeutic practice and has, instead, become part of the problem.

We are together debating the next steps we should take, and how and where the arguments against regulation should be conducted. We are well aware that taking this step on an individual basis and voicing our dissent in this way risks colluding with the UKCP's attempt to steer the organisation toward forms of individual membership (which is compatible with HPC registration). For the moment at least, we are pursuing these issues inside our own member organisations.

Signatures are currently being collected for this statement.

Email I.A.Parker@mmu.ac.uk to add your name.