IPNOSIS: a journal for the Independent Practitioners Network-

The well attended October 2009 Alliance Conference on state regulation featured various Alliance speakers who outlined the situation of oncoming regulation as they saw it. Videos of the presentations are posted on the internet here. Despite valiant attempts to bring his talk to a close, one presentation by Andrew Samuels about the practicalities of non-registration with the HPC if regulation was instituted, ran on and on. Not only was there a lot of interest in this topic, including people who said they would go to jail rather than register or give up their occupational title but there were clearly many people who were actively considering how to handle what my colleague Richard House several years previously had presciently called Principled Non-Compliance [PNC], a local form of conscientious objection. PNC has provided a rallying point for practitioners who are exploring how to stay out of the HPC's grasp.

Several very valuable texts at the conference detailed the levels of risk in non-compliance in terms of its legality and insurance. Insurance would still be OK it was confirmed, and authoritative legal opinion suggested that only if anyone claimed to be doing 'counselling' or 'psychotherapy' or that they were a 'counsellor' or 'psychotherapist' while not registered would they be at risk of receiving a 'cease and desist' order from the HPC.

So far so good.
Almost a year later September 2010 HPC sovereignty over the territory of counselling and psychotherapy is still disputed. Psychotherapy is claimed to be distinct from, and at a higher level of sophistication than counselling - 'research shows' it is counter-claimed, that in practice counselling is equivalent to psychotherapy.

In pursuit of checking out progress in this dispute, eIpnosis showed up at the September 30th HPC professional Liaison Group [PLG] meeting (at the Dominion Theatre! in London's West End).

While vigorously chaired by Di Waller and with incisive re-definitions of the HPC work plan from Michael Guthrie, this was a meeting remarkable for its dreary dullness. Did this group dynamic reflect, as became increasingly obvious late in the meeting, that regulation looks to be terminally stalled over 'differentiation' between counselling and psychotherapy? (see the BACP meeting report) Or as oblique hints to members of the public suggested, was the awkward tone an artifact of off-stage secrets, that plans for other, non-HPC forms of accountability were afoot? Even, as chinese whispers, subsequently well supported have suggested, under the auspices of the Council for Health Care Regulatory Excellence CHRE? You can reality test this possibility by viewing the eIpnosis video of Janet Low's 2008 visit to the CHRE Council

However after this October update, to return to APA and the general overview: In a signal move in autumn 2009, Andrew Samuels put himself up for election as Chair of the UKCP and to his astonishment and some others' deep dismay, won by a resounding margin. The twin track approach that his election platform advocated meant that UKCP would now support both HPC regulation and psychotherapists who chose not to register with them.

At the end of 2009 eIpnosis put together a proposal for how PNC might be implemented in the form of a flow chart. It outlined the likely options and ended with some proposals as to how practitioners might move forward into PNC.

I was on the point of publishing this when I realised that, on the assumption that some pro-regulationists possibly look at eiPnosis, even if it is only once a decade, or get reports from the Alliance, the specifics of PNC options could get back to the HPC and could compromise efforts both of opposition to the HPC regulation and non-compliance. It may have been an inflation of eIpnosis relevance at this point but reticience and discretion won the day and I pulled the PNC page.

Elsewhere at the beginning of the year, the need for the UKCP to better define what the non-registration twin track approach would mean in practice led to the production of a Q&A document that spelled out a framework for what was called Alternative Professional Accountability [APA]. It included an edited version of my proposal for PNC options.

During most of 2010 as the earlier update paragraph details the regulation process has been showing signs of locking up and now looks to be stalled. However, the widespread promotion by the Alliance of the crucial importance of acting to prevent accrediting bodies turning over their registrant data bases wholesale to the HPC seemed to be producing results.

The government's mid 2009 decision to give the social workers to the HPC will fill the huge administrative hole there left by the non-arrival of the psychological therapies, so on that count admin central at the HPC are likely to be happy However over in the Strand, courtesy of a sector of the psychoanalytic community, a top law firm, Bindmans, are pursuing a Judicial Review of the HPC's due process regarding counselling and psychotherapy. If not all the boxes have been ticked, a very unhappy HPC may perhaps emerge from this.

Early in 2009, the slow germination began of perhaps quite small layer of practitioners threaded through existing accrediting bodies who do not intend to be regulated by the HPC but who see some form of APA as viable alternative. In June 2009, to bring this interest into focus, a meeting of organizations that were interested in discussing APA gathered in the palatial premises of one of the psychotherapy training organizations in north London. The BACP said it would send someone but they didn't show up. Otherwise people from IPN, the UKCP, The Lacanians, person centred counselling and the psychoanalytic Consortium met and discussed how to implement a practical form, or as eIpnosis argued, practical forms plural, of APA.

From an IPN eIpnosis perspective this was a top down, organization-driven meeting that did seem to appreciate that an APA organization was not on the cards. But how would APA be implemented? Or how would it organize itself? There did seem to be some assumption that APA would mean not much more than a re-framing of practitioner relations with their accrediting bodies, and this is certainly occurring in at least one sector of the UKCP.

Alongside this, IPN is an existing form of APA and PFDLists would be another way of taking APA forward but the total numbers and variety of working idioms of practitioners likely to stand aside from the HPC point does seem to point to a need for a multiplicity of models. The possibility of a bottom up or horizontal, layered or networked connectivity for APA has yet to emerge, a culture of APA not centred anywhere, perhaps even a culture of psycho-practice that identifies itself as 'post-professional'.

A Judicial Review of the HPC that succeeds in pressing its reset button with respect to counseling and psychotherapy would be likely to consign APA to the next century. However an ebullient HPC with the social workers digested, a name change allowing it to claim it knows something about caring, and a section 60 Order regulating counselling and psychotherapy going through the Lords rubberstamp process; that would be another matter. It would be likely to precipitate an adrenalin rush in people faced with the stark, and eIpnosis appreciates, very difficult choice between capture/compliance or principled conscientious objection.

APA may yet have a role to play. Development continues in the wings. Make contact if you want to know more.