The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) have become interested and involved and want to hear your thoughts about how the SCoPEd framework, which is led by six of their Accredited Registers, affects you as a member of BACP.
They invite you to share your experience by 17 May by emailing �
scoped-sye@professionalstandards.org.uk
Although the BACP have controlled the narrative on SCoPEd over the past few years, and absolutely silenced any serious criticism of the framework, we set out below serious flaws that need to be addressed.
Please read and make the time to email PSA with your own thoughts on SCoPEd and BACP’s denial of their members input into the debate.
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The aim of SCoPEd was to articulate the professional landscape via the mapping of the core competences and practice standards for counsellors and psychotherapists working with adults. Unfortunately, the resulting framework misrepresents the profession of counselling and psychotherapy.
This document considers the actual harm that SCoPEd will do to the profession of counselling and psychotherapy. It is drafted on behalf of the Senior Accredited Counsellors and Psychotherapists Protest Group. However, the imposition of SCoPEd impacts on the whole BACP membership at all levels and the detrimental consequences are covered in the points below:
SCoPEd is a framework without finesse. It has bluntly tried to capture ideas of what counsellors and psychotherapists should do, but it is confusing and contradictory in trying to convey the multifaceted aspects of therapy that are required to work with all the variables inherent in the human condition. The framework is informed by a ‘medical model’ that downplays the social construction of distress. This means SCoPEd distorts our professional landscape at the expense of a whole swathe of practitioners whose work is misunderstood, downgraded and delegitimised.
The damage caused by SCoPEd to Senior Accredited members is shocking. The removal of their title and the loss of the status they have earned is disrespectful in the extreme and it denigrates their years of dedicated practice. It is insulting that BACP show no recognition that it is demeaning for these senior practitioners to have their skills and achievements judged as lacking when compared against the unwarranted and unsupported parameters of Column C. The removal of title impacts on how Senior Accredited members will be seen by employers and clients going forward. The implication of the demotion to column B suggests there is no ability to work with complex client issues or at depth. This may result in lost opportunities for work and may also cause doubt to be raised as to their competence.
The drafting of the framework into columns presents a distorted view of clinical practice. The framework attempts to establish the core training, practice and competence requirements for qualified therapists but places emphasis on academic qualifications and longer trainings and suggests these produce more effective ways of working than experience. There is no evidence to support this premise. SCoPEd dictates who can work with what and by doing so it devalues the work of thousands of trained counsellors. It removes their autonomy and risks impeding diversity, reducing the field to a mechanistic, psychoanalytically informed healthcare intervention. This restricts client choice and reduces employment opportunities for counsellors and psychotherapists in columns A and B because the framework suggests they are not as competent as their colleagues in column C in having the skills to offer effective therapy. Again, there is no evidence to support this notion.
Confusingly, BACP state that members would still be able to practice competences in different columns where they have the right skills, knowledge and training to do so. This then raises the question of what purpose do the columns serve? How do the columns provide clarity about who does what if people can practice outside of their column? Where ethically would a therapist stand if they practised a skill that was not
dictated by their column? What would the legal consequences be if this was questioned? The framework provides no answers to these questions and leaves counsellors and psychotherapists open to challenge with no protection. SCoPEd undermines the skills and experience of the practitioners it says it wants to support and it does this by introducing doubts without providing answers.
What is evident is that qualified and experienced counsellors will be excluded from a wide range of opportunities because the column they are in dictates what can be expected at that level. Crucially, how can employers and clients know that a particular therapist has other skills and experience? The framework in no way helps the profession to be better understood, valued and trusted – it muddles and obscures the proficiencies of the very people it should promote.
In a profession that aims to mitigate power imbalances SCoPEd introduces excessive barriers to progression. The demand for 160 hours of personal therapy or personal development and the idea that you have to successfully complete a substantial empirical research project, systematic review, or systematic case study to be placed in column C is unnecessary. There is no evidence these aspects create a more effective practitioner. However, what the introduction of these criteria does do is to make the framework elitist and hierarchical so only those with the money to pursue them can achieve a place in column C. The people who are most likely to be disenfranchised by this are trainees and therapists from marginalised backgrounds, especially those from working class backgrounds and minoritised groups. This is also a disaster for clients who already struggle to find counsellors and psychotherapists who look like them, sound like them and have similar cultural experiences and frames of reference.
The application of SCoPEd has resulted in Accreditation losing its meaning. SCoPEd sets a precedent that any markers of achievement or experience can be eradicated at any point. SCoPEd has shown these markers can be removed whenever the BACP board wish, without consultation with the membership and without any consideration of the impact on the those affected. All trust in the association is lost because there is no guarantee of support.
Professor Andrew Samuels (Chair of UKCP 2009-2012) has called SCoPEd a class system that is hierarchical and problematic. (Therapy Today, April 2024, vol.35, no3 pg12). We as the counsellors and psychotherapists impacted by SCoPEd know we are being harmed by it. We are being damaged in the way are now perceived and we will lose out because our livelihoods will be affected. SCoPEd is damaging the profession and the professionals within it. It must be amended.