Context
The UKCP has announced a removal election of the Board of Trustees in response to a call from some of its membership through an open letter petition initiated by UKCP members who are also members of Therapists Against Conversion Therapy and Transphobia (TACTT). The petition was signed by the required threshold of at least 2% of the UKCP membership, and also garnered support from over 1500 professionals and trainees from across the sector.
The open letter and petition came after the UKCP Board decided to withdraw the UKCP as a signatory of the Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy (MoU2) (and as a member of the Coalition) earlier this year, without consultation with the UKCP membership.
In this statement,TACTT want to take the opportunity to clarify the origins of the petition, and its rationale for calling a vote of no confidence.
Who Are TACTT?
TACTT is a collective of therapists, counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists and other therapeutic practitioners, including trainees in these fields, who oppose conversion therapy and transphobia in the therapy profession. TACTT members belong to a number of professions, and those who are counsellors, psychotherapists, or psychotherapeutic counsellors are members of a number of different professional bodies, including the UKCP. TACTT holds members of all genders.
What is the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU2) on Conversion Therapy?
The MoU2’s main aim “is the protection of the public through a commitment to ending the practice of ‘conversion therapy’ in the UK” (MoU2, point 1), viewing conversion therapies as unethical and harmful. By signing they are committing to ending the practice and ensuring their members are working ethically, based on training, within that principle.
Anyone seeking therapeutic support deserves a safe, trained professional who is truly acting in their best interests. This assurance has now been removed for LGBT+ people approaching UKCP members for such support.
What led to the petition?
(i) No consultation of membership for major policy shift
While much of the TACTT membership was alarmed by the Board’s decision to withdraw from the MoU2, we were further shocked that this was done without any consultation with the membership or Articles-mandated Member’s Forum which “should be consulted on the future direction and strategy of the Charity and advise and collaborate with the Board of Trustees.”
(ii) Contravening UKCP’s Code of Ethics point 32
Furthermore, we are appalled by the contradictions and lack of clarity found in the UKCP’s Board statements:
The stated reason for the withdrawal given by the Board included concerns about how it specifically applied to children and young people. This contradicts the facts of the MoU2 (which states in point 10 that it does not provide these specifics to signatories and leaves each organisation within their own purview to determine the specifics of how that training, and working practice is managed to achieve the commitment of ending the practice of conversion therapy). The Board also stated the UKCP had not known, when signing, that this statement applied to children. This cannot be squared against their years of membership supporting the MoU and its re-signing of the Memorandum in its second version.
Unfortunately the statement put out by the UKCP Board thus contradicts itself as well as the facts of the MoU2. Especially when their withdrawal statement still speaks to the same end purpose of the MoU2 that they are now disavowing.
This all stands to confuse the wider MoU2 membership, the UKCP membership, and the wider public about the expectations of therapy they can receive from counsellors and psychotherapists.
Furthermore, the nature of the comments the Board makes in its withdrawal statement imply that the MoU2, and by extension every other signatory organisation, is failing to sufficiently safeguarding the interests of young people. In doing so the UKCP Board is calling the practice of the wider psychotherapeutic community into disrepute and contravenes the UKCP’s Code of Ethics point 32, which states that members must “act in a way which upholds the profession’s reputation and promotes public confidence in the profession and its members.”
In addition to this, the Chair of the Board of Trustees has in TACTT’s view, publicly contributed to this misrepresentation in the national press and on social media accusing the signatories of the petition and TACTT of “bullying” the Board, comparing UKCP’s members’ legitimate and constitutional call for a removal election with a ‘coup’, and further suggesting that those who support the petition are somehow not interested in the “safety of children”.
We point out once more that in calling for a removal election, the UKCP’s Articles of Association have been adhered to and members are entitled to exercise their democratic right to vote on the continuation or removal of the Board of Trustees, without being defamed by the Chair of their Board. In TACTT’s response statement, TACTT reminds readers that being held accountable through a democratic election is not bullying.
(iii) Lack of response and dialogue
Following the UKCP’s withdrawal from the MoU2 and their statement, UKCP members of TACTT individually and TACTT as an organisation, have tried on numerous occasions to contact the UKCP to discuss their decision and try to talk to them about reconsidering. All attempted contact has been ignored. The open letter/petition is a response to this lack of engagement by the UKCP.
Concerning views about gender and invalidation of trans identities
The open letter/petition was not TACTT’s first attempt to raise questions about the UKCP’s seeming policy direction and its lack of consultation around this. In late 2023, a previous open letter, raised major concerns about how the UKCP’s position was moving towards one that re-pathologised trans identities- in ways that seemed resonant of outdated, homophobic positions-, and how it seemed to promote so-called ‘exploratory therapy’ (a practice which typically ‘explores’ all possible meanings of a trans client’s gender identity experience other than that they are actually trans) for ‘gender-critical’ therapists (i.e. those who typically do not believe being trans is a valid state of being). Here again, the UKCP repeatedly refused to respond to invitations for dialogue about serious concerns raised by multiple UKCP members, Members’ Forum Representatives as well as over a thousand signatories of Therapists Against Conversion Therapy and Transphobia (TACTT)’s open letter (last updated in January 2024).
From this lack of dialogue, engagement and reassurance, we do not have the confidence that the UKCP Board is supportive of trans voices, trans clients, trans students, trans therapists, as now embodied in its unconstitutional withdrawal from the MoU. Again, many other UKCP members outside of TACTT, along with professionals who are members of other therapeutic bodies, agree.
Conclusion
The public discourse around transgender people in the UK is currently toxic, with relentless political and media attempts to smear and misrepresent them. This has left the small UK trans community in deep distress. TACTT sees this in the lives of some of its members and in the anxiety it encounters from many trans and gender expansive clients. This said, TACTT wants to make clear that the grounds for this vote of no confidence lie in the UKCP’s own Code of Ethics, as the authors and signatories of the letter believed that the UKCP Board’s decision did not meet point 32 and they have not been “acting in a way which upholds the profession’s reputation and promotes public confidence in the profession and its members.”
We point out that the Board has made a major policy decision without consultation with individual, college or educational members and note that its communication of its decision to psychotherapy professionals, the wider public, LGBTQIA+ people as potential clients is at best confusing, at worst incoherent. In this confusion they are damaging the reputations of other MoU2 signatory bodies and their professional members by implication.
Further, whilst the UKCP’s statements still claim its opposition to conversion therapy, this confusion stands to harm and reduce the safety of LGBTQIA+ clients and potential clients.
We cannot believe that these actions are in the interest of the fee-paying members or of our clients. Numerous LGBTQIA+ students and trainees from within and outside TACTT have shared their concerns, including students on UKCP accredited courses who are required to be members of the UKCP or to remain members after completing their courses for qualification until they can be able to even consider transfer to a different professional body. That they may be required to remain members of a professional body that leaves them feeling this unprotected and unvalued is unconscionable.
The Board’s Chair has chosen to stand by his comments and the Board’s decision, even after TACTT raised its concerns, and how, in TACTT’s view, they risked casting many UKCP members, and/or members of the wider professional community, into disrepute. We remain puzzled about the Board’s claim to be in discussion with other organisations about the creation of alternatives to the MoU2, when the largest of these organisations, the NCPS, have just announced their intention to rejoin the MoU2, having confirmed that their previous withdrawal was solely on the grounds of being subject to potential legal action by hostile actors which would have been prohibitively expensive to defend.
We ask all the UKCP members with voting rights to consider what, in TACCT’s view, has been done in your name and how, by the Board :
- Ignoring the concerns of professionals
- Making large policy changes without consultation of educational, college, or individual members
- Implying that large swathes of our profession, including UKCP members are failing in safeguarding responsibilities for continuing to support a document, which continues to have the support of 23 other major mental health and related organisations (soon to be 24 once more), whilst claiming confusion over a core aspect of the agreement, eight years after having first signed and then later resigned it.
- Breaching the UKCP Code of Ethics
- Claiming to be in discussion with other organisations about a successor agreement to the MoU without providing evidence of this, and offering no response to recent NCPS actions which seem to clearly contradict this.
- Betraying and abandoning LGBTQIA+ members, many of whom now feel unsafe within the UKCP, and LGBTQIA+ clients.
As a UKCP member, we believe that you deserve better than this. If you agree, then you have the right to vote to remove the members of the Board who enacted this in your name. If you are happy with these actions then you too must vote with your conscience.
Therapists Against Conversion Therapy and Transphobia 