“BACP was once an organisation I was proud to belong to. I would promote you and support you - but no longer. It is that time of year when you invite me to renew my membership, but I will not renew with BACP again and I want to share with you my reasons for not renewing my membership.

BACP was where I started in 2000 and BACP has always been my professional home. It is with hugely mixed feelings I leave you but I feel you have pushed me out. You say you listen to your members, but you don’t. You stick to your fixed line. A line that is harmful to the very people you should be supporting. I don’t believe you are aware of the strength of negative feelings in your membership. I see you as inward looking without any consideration of the harm and the wider consequences of your actions. You need to think on this.

I do not believe you ever intended to be open to making amendments to Scoped. You have always been fixed in defending your position and that is not good enough. When what you have done has distressed, indeed outraged so many people, there is a moral obligation for you to make changes and this you have stubbornly refused to do.

I will not give you one more penny to further the damage you are causing to the profession. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. I hold you all responsible for destroying the good name of BACP. Some of you, by the actions you have taken, which should never have been taken. Others because you did not act when you should have done.

In the way you have formed and adopted Scoped I believe you have trampled over your membership. Many of the members do not realise the damage Scoped will cause because you have never been clear on the ramifications of what you have put in place.

No one. Not one of you, has offered any real empathy or compassion to me on the removal of my senior accredited title and that is disgraceful. Your cut and paste replies are insulting.

I will not permit you to diminish me. I have been in practice for decades. I have lectured on a BACP accredited course, been a member of your Public Protection Committee, and I have been published in your journals. Yet you offer no recognition of the dedication and skills I bring to the profession, and I will not stay in an association that does not act to support its members.

And I know I am not the only one leaving you. When you have created an atmosphere within BACP that is so toxic that it results in your members leaving you, it is vital you question yourselves as to what you are doing that forces your members to take this action. Sadly, to me it is clear, you have proven yourselves incapable of this self-reflection and this alone in our profession is worthy of sanction.

Do not respond telling me what I need to do to remain ethically correct in my advertising or removing logos. I will remove your logos. I will do nothing to promote you in any advertising. If anyone asks me why I have left I will tell them about what you have done and the harm you are causing. I have seen that you have desecrated so many ethical boundaries I do not have enough ink in my printer to cover them all. You have rendered your accreditation program worthless because you have proven you can move the goalposts at any time. This means any status you convey is meaningless and can be revoked whenever you choose. You rightly demand the highest ethical standards from your members, but we cannot trust you to act accordingly. I consider you to be a hypocritical cabal of charlatans.

You should think long and hard about you are doing. It is not too late to make changes. But if you don’t, it is my view that you will harm the profession of counselling and psychotherapy forever - and that is unforgivable.”

Most sincerely,

Dr. Stacey Goldman. D.Prof. FISCP, NCPS (Snr. Accred.). NCIP (Snr. Accred.)