IPNOSIS: a journal for the Independent Practitioners Network

Coming up:

Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy Against State Regulation

Conference: Principled Non-Compliance [PNC] with the Health Professions Council, October 11th London venue, details here:

Check out the Alliance web site, especially the Newsletters for further details of the progress of State regulation

Key note speaker videos from the Spring Alliance Conference already seen by over 2500 people

HPCWatchDog is an essential introduction to the culture of the Health Professions Council, the next best thing to actually showing up for their fitness to practise and Council meetings.

eIpnosis

Video interview with Richard House, originator of the idea of Principled Non-Compliance (in production)

Organic regulation - Look out for a live demo and administrative outline for a Full Disclosure Practitioner List [FDList] a multi-modality approach to civic accountability.

Behaving Ourselves a film I made with Bob Young in the 80’s about how our ideas of human nature are formed. Among other things it outlines the scientific antecedents of technocratic approaches to regulation. 50 mins, view on line or preferably, download it.

Lobby of MP’s
A bit of orientation... the situation with SR of the psychological therapies is that the HPC's Professional Liaison Group has finished its 'recommendations' on titles and grandparenting and standards etc. for the HPC. The Council, newly appointed and reduced in number, and apparently with zero psychological representation first meet at the beginning of July. They will 'consider' (aka rubberstamp) these recommendations which will then go to the DoH lawyers who will begin drafting the Section 60 Order to regulate counselling and psychotherapy. Before it becomes law, in the next few months, these proposals for regulation have to go out to 'consultation'. It is at this point that the last opportunity to derail SR arises and we are advised that mass letter-writing to MPs is one of the ways of dislodging the DoH's certainty about regulating the psychological therapies.

So... having a lot of well-informed MPs who understand why we think this is bad legislation that is not in clients' interests etc etc is an essential task.

We were recently advised by a senior politician as follows: send to your MP a direct personal letter/email with 'constituent' in the first line, expressing your concerns about SR, follow it up weekly with further 'evidence' until you hear from the MP that they understand what it is you are trying to get across to them. Don't 'moan' or 'whinge'.

For these reasons, ie establishing a relationship rather than making a one-off nudge, personal letter(s)/emails is recommended. There is lots of stuff you can use to feed into your text, for example the Alliance Statement of Intent and Arthur Musgrave's Unintended Consquences of HPC regulation. There is obviously much more, especially here on eIpnosis but this should do as nourishment.

eIpnosis would be interested to hear how your experience of engaging with your MP goes, email eIpnosis