Dear Michael Pearson,

I have become absolutely flabbergasted by the number of your letters to members that have been forwarded to me with comments of dismay, disgust and outrage.

On behalf of more than 1,000 senior accredited members I can conclusively state that you have singularly failed to ‘hear’ our complaints, and consequently failed to serve us in your role as Membership & Customer Services Manager.

Head office staff, and indeed trustees, are employed to ‘serve’ the members,
not to disregard or dismiss us.

Your most common quote is:

“BACP have adopted the SCoPEd framework which means our membership categories need to align to the SCoPEd columns. Our current senior accredited membership category in its current form doesn't align to column C, therefore this needs to be revised to meet the column C standards”, often followed by “It's important to clarify that it is the member categories that are being aligned to the SCoPEd framework, not individual therapists.”

The first statement completely misses the point that the criteria for column C needs to be aligned with senior accredited membership, not vice versa!

It also raises the question as to “who is the BACP?” Is the BACP not an association of counsellor-therapists (60,000 of us)? It is not a small group of employees that are paid to serve us. So, the BACP have not adopted the SCoPEd framework, only a small group of employees. In fact thousands of members who have taken the time to familiarise themselves with SCoPEd have complained to Head Office on multiple occasions to raise concerns, only to be totally ignored.

The second statement completely ignores the simple fact that 1,451 “individual” senior accredited therapists are being “aligned”! (In truth, having their titles revoked!)

In one letter you cited the authority to rescind our senior status as coming from our Standing Orders, saying “BACP’s Board may from time to time update our membership category structure and associated criteria where necessary”, and this is factually incorrect.

Actually the only relevant part of Standing Orders is “The Board of Governors may from time to time determine, add to, amend, revoke or otherwise close such classes and subclasses of membership as are deemed necessary”. The relevant word  here being “revoke”, and without any membership consultation whatsoever those who are employed to serve us are attempting to “revoke” our status! Shame on you.

Collectively you have sought to revoke our senior accreditation and recklessly destroy any trust that the members may have held for our employees.

As a very large group of outraged senior accredited members we are seeking to reverse the decision of our employees to revoke our accreditation and looking into the options available. It is disheartening to say the least, that such an enormous rift has been allowed to open up and potentially destroy the standing and integrity of our Association.

I must ask you in future, while you remain in post, to “hear” the voices of members that contact you and to learn and demonstrate some basic counselling skills of empathy and positive regard, when replying to members concerns.

Any help that you can give to change the current proposals to revoke our accreditation will be much appreciated.

Kind regards,

Turiya

T M R Gough MBACP Snr Accred