This document is a critical response to the SCoPEd framework, authored on behalf of the Senior Accredited Counsellors and Psychotherapists Protest Group. It argues that SCoPEd harms the counselling and psychotherapy professions by:

Misrepresenting the profession: SCoPEd simplifies and distorts the complexities of therapy. Underpinning the framework is a rigid, medicalised model that undermines the social and relational aspects of distress.

Devaluing experienced professionals: SCoPEd demotes Senior Accredited practitioners by removing their titles and placing them in a lower column. This is disgraceful, totally wrong and it is potentially damaging to their careers. There is no prospect of “Grandparenting” and when they have tried to object, they are silenced and cast aside by so-called “membership lead” professional bodies who refuse to discuss options and who will not listen to them.

Restricting opportunities: SCoPEd limits employment prospects for many practitioners and risks reducing client choice and diversity in the field. It has been called elitist and hierarchical. The framework prioritises academic qualifications over experience without evidence that this produces more effective therapists and it introduces confusing and potentially risky column distinctions.

· Newly qualified students who can pay for the required level 7 degrees and who can afford the 160 hours of personal therapy or personal development will go straight into column C and be seen as most competent.

· Long time served, experienced and skilled counsellors and psychotherapists who have not jumped through the hoops of accreditation will be placed in column A. As will most newly qualified students. No one will be able to tell the difference. Instead of simplifying matters SCoPEd has muddled things so badly that clients and employers have no way of knowing the competencies of the therapists in the framework.

· Counsellors and Psychotherapists in Column C can go to Counsellors and Psychotherapists in Column A for supervision – but to clients and employers the practitioners in Column C will be viewed as more competent than their supervisors in Column A and they will be able to apply for job opportunities that their supervisors will be denied access to.

· University professors, authors and leaders in our field, are demoted to column B unless they have the required Level 7 or they write numerous essays to prove themselves worthy – they are seen as less competent than the newly qualified accepted level 7 students.

Promoting elitism: Entry into the highest tier (Column C) requires costly and exclusionary criteria like extensive therapy hours and academic research, disadvantaging those from less privileged backgrounds.

Eroding trust: The way SCoPEd was introduced—without adequate consultation—has undermined trust in the professional associations - BACP and its partners.

Dominant groups inscribe their power through narratives, and in our field, the story has been crafted by BACP and its partners. Their version of SCoPEd is designed to stifle alternative perspectives and, most crucially, to disempower practitioners who do not conform.

Our future, as well as the support provided to those in need of our services, is at risk if we continue to allow a flawed framework to dictate the parameters of our work.

The conclusion is clear: SCoPEd, in its current form, is damaging to both professionals and the profession and requires urgent revision. For more information please see www.scapa.org.uk

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