Tag: counselling

SCoPed and trans (and other marginalised) people

This is a post that got started some time ago but was neglected until now. The arguments still stand and so we are posting it with ‘better late, than never’ in mind. 

The 2023 BACP announcement that ‘all partners’ had decided to adopt SCoPEd is going to reframe what training means for qualified counsellors, along with who gets what, when, and how. What it will eventually mean is that according to your training you will enter at one of three points A, B or C (originally these columns were called ‘counsellor’ ‘psychotherapeutic counsellor’ and ‘psychotherapist’, but this was changed after an outcry- as if labelling the column differently is going to make a significant difference to the stratification of our profession). Jobs will likely be stratified according to at least the competences listed in the columns, if not clearly by the columns themselves.

We’d like to concentrate here on both the EDI assessment, and the impact that SCoPed will have on LGBTQIA+ practitioners and trainees as we move forward.

We will use the term ‘therapist’ here to cover anything that we would consider either ‘counselling’ or ‘psychotherapy’ in that whatever you call it, we are all aiming to be of some kind of therapeutic benefit when working with our clients.

Your TL;DR is: Without Membership Body (MB) data, we do not know if those in ‘protected characteristics’ will be discriminated against, and there is no MB data (and currently no suggestion that this will change). Whilst there will be the ability to move between (up through) columns post-training, it is likely to more significantly impact those with less privilege. A ‘column A’ therapist is expected to have less competences (and will be seen as less competent) than a column B therapist. It follows then that a column B therapist will likely be a higher paid role. 

So, those with less financial privilege (uniformly those who are more marginalised in society) will be most likely to participate in a ‘column A’ ranked training, ending them in a lower-paid job, which will render undertaking further training to get into column B (and C) more difficult (and it is likely that people will be unable to find out definitively from BACP BEFORE they pay for an additional training, whether that would qualify them to apply for the ‘next column’), and once that has happened, the individual will then have to pay to move into that next column.

For this EDI assessment, six therapists, a miniscule fraction of the 50,000+ therapists currently registered with BACP, were consulted, and the qualifications of the consultees is not disclosed. Despite there being very little actual EDI work in this EDI impact assessment, and the results suggesting that there will be at least some impact on those more marginalised, the EDI assessment suggests we make a start on SCoPEd as it is and trust that the rest is worked out along the way.

The EDI impact assessment

We believe that as a process, this EDI impact was flawed. There are six member organisations that have signed up to SCoPEd. Whilst there will be a percentage of people who are in multiple organisations, the membership for NCPS sits at over 9000, the membership for BACP sits at over 50,000, UKCP sits at over 11,000. That’s half the memberships listed, and although we expect BACP to be the largest, if we assume even 5000 for the others, that’s about 85,000 therapists (the SCoPEd announcement says 75,000), and more joining every year.

An ‘EDI impact assessment’ was commissioned to (one presumes) look at the impact of SCoPEd across all demographics.

This impact assessment was conducted by a company called Eastside Primetimers, who state: “The strategic objectives that the Partners set for SCoPEd draw our attention to the dependency of its success on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) considerations”. Before they started on this project, Eastside Primers were calling SCoPEd a ‘groundbreaking project’ and a ‘pioneering project’. We wonder how easy that would be to turn back on if you were to find significant issues with the project.

The report states that it has struggled to get any information about those who might be in protected characteristics from the membership bodies (MBs) and they state at the start of the document that they cannot say (yet) what the impact on those people who might experience less privilege will be. None of the data collected is cited as being race/ethnicity, cis/trans status or sexuality, or disability (pg 13). In those where gender was collected, the average number of men in the profession is 16%. The report suggests (pg 11) that should SCoPEd NOT go ahead, that this will disadvantage people who have less privilege. It does not seem clear on why this is so.

The EDI report acknowledges that the framework is not a public-facing document so it asks ‘a small number’ of the public (12 people who’d had experience of counselling) to consult with it about SCoPEd. They approached six counsellors, 3 of whom were men (meaning that men proportionally have more of a voice as a reflection of the profession here), five were white, five didn’t identity as disabled, and none stated any LGBTQIA+ identity. There is no suggestion of their socio-economic status either. Four people interviewed were in private practice. Again an interesting choice, as those in private practice are potentially least likely to be impacted by SCoPEd. 

They gathered six people for interview. There is no suggestion that, in this ‘equality and diversity impact’ consultation, they interviewed six people who might be qualified to speak about these topics. In fact, their report states “Some communities (such as those identifying beyond the gender binary) are not represented due to factors, such as not responding to the invitation to interview or not meeting the survey criteria in some way, such as not being a member of a registered professional body” (pg15).  Dominic Davies from Pink Therapy, “the UK’s largest independent therapy organisation working with gender, sex and relationship diverse clients” has stated that he was not contacted for any help, and that had he been so, he would have facilitated the reaching out. There are over 200 people listed on the Pink Therapy directory who have a specialism in LGBTQIA+ topics, and at the time of the consultation, 45 of these have ticked the ‘trans’ box as part of their own identity, suggesting that at a minimum there were 45 people listed with an MB who might have been open to being contacted. Several of those people are TACTT members and were not asked

We do not know for certain that The Black, African and Asian Therapy Network (BAATN) or Black therapy matters had a similar experience, but we’re willing to take a guess. This EDI ‘consultation’ didn’t try very hard to find a trans person (or any LGBTQIA+ person), interviews ONE disabled person, and ONE person from a minority racialised background, and gives no real impact on what SCoPEd might mean for therapists with marginalised identities.

We do not really see any EDI impact in this 27 page document until pg 19 when we find  “There is a risk that Partners’ membership data systems do not facilitate EDI-relevant analysis of progress in widening access to and progression within the profession, and so in turn ensuring that the framework does not exacerbate barriers to access and progression”. This says to us that there is no way that we can know if SCoPEd will have an impact on the most marginalised counsellors because MBs don’t collect that data.

Page 20 of the EDI assessment suggests that without the ability to move between columns with further training (rather than only ‘core training’, which would require a qualified counsellor to start again as if untrained), that this will compound the difficulties those therapists with ‘protected characteristics’ hold, and make higher columns inaccessible.

Despite the information given above, this consultation sees no reason why SCoPEd can’t go ahead as it stands and we can iron out the details later. A profession based on expertise especially in one’s own process should never be mediated by privilege. It is an impoverishment of the profession as well as injustice to practitioners with marginalised identities.

There is an interesting point in the data, which is that single women are less likely to support SCoPEd than partnered women, and we cannot help but wonder if this is part of the reason that SCoPEd votes are going through – that if you think it doesn’t affect YOU, PERSONALLY, you don’t necessarily consider the impact on other people. Those who are in a relationship will generally (we know, not always) have a second income coming into the family. Those who only have one income coming in have to be much more aware of SCoPEd and how this might impact. This ‘awareness of how all counsellors might be impacted is, in our opinion, what an EDI assessment would do.

This EDI assessment says: as SCoPEd stands, you can’t move across columns without investing in more training; those who are more marginalised can’t afford more training; some organisations have already said they will start to stratify therapists according to columns, thus ensuring that column A therapists can only do ‘lesser’ qualified roles (which presumably one then gets paid less for, or the thing that we CURRENTLY see, which is that someone is ‘good enough’ to volunteer, but not good enough to be paid), thus meaning that they earn less money and therefore have less income to be able to afford more training that might push them across columns. But please, feel free to get started and iron out these ‘small’ details later.

Trans folk, queer folk, disabled folk, folk with racialised identities, folk who are working class, will all find it difficult to move into the top two categories and are at risk of being pushed into lower paid jobs as a result, and kept there. For those people who are multiply marginalised this will be even more more likely and this ‘EDI impact assessment’ does not recognise intersecting axes of oppression in its report whatsoever.

When is a person not a person?

Answer: when you’re under 16.

That is, at least, according to the ex-chair of UKCP in an October 2025 Telegraph article. He claims to have been unaware that the use of the word ‘person’ in the Memorandum of Understanding on conversion therapy included those under the age of 16.

So, how are children and people different, and what is being set up by and in us as therapists that lets one of the ‘top therapists in the UK’ (as posited by the Telegraph, at least) walk around for potentially their entire life, believing that children are somehow not people?

Dictionary.com gives its first definition of ‘child’ as “a person between birth and puberty or full growth” and we would be the first to acknowledge that the legal definition of ‘child’ has differed across ages and cultures, and situations. A 16-17 year old can get married or join the forces with parental permission, may have sex and procreate without parental permission, but may not smoke or vape, even with parental permission. A 16-17 can’t vote, but can have a job and pay taxes. These numbers have changed across time, and have not always had parity between genders (two people of different sexes could have sex legally at 16 since 1885. Before that it was 12, then 13. There was no consideration of an age of consent for sex between those identifying as men until 1967, when it was set at 21, and then lowered in 1994 to 18, and again to 16 in 2000. There was no equivalent for those identifying as women). None of this takes away from that child being a person, however. A person (also as defined by dictionary.com) is “a human being, whether an adult or child”, which also also suggests that the legal definition of person is “Law.,  a human being natural person or a group of human beings, a corporation, a partnership, an estate, or other legal entity artificial person, or juristic person recognized [sic] by law as having rights and duties”. Yep – even not actual people are legally people in some instances.

The main psychological theories in existence posit that there is a linear and progressive route to achieving stable and enduring gender certainty, and that children and adolescents are naturally in a state of flux. It is this state of flux that seems to create a line between children and adults (or children and people, depending on who you’re talking to). Once you’re an adult (or a ‘person’), you’re assumed to have ‘achieved’ a stable identity. There is a huge amount of double-think going on here. “Everyone changes”, but children don’t know who they are and might change (and therefore can’t be known as trans whilst they are in this place – however long it lasts). At the same time, “adults have a stable identity”, and that’s what makes an identity more trustworthy, but they come to therapy to explore (and potentially stay with) some hitherto un(der)explored aspect of their identity. That is what the jobs of so many therapists is; to work with adults with a stable identity, as they seek to change. That is our livelihood.

Which is it? Are adults and children both capable of fluidity of self? And if it’s not the notion of fluidity that creates the issue with children being seen as people with agency, what is it? 

The difference that seems to be held in popular areas of discussion is this: adults know, and children might think they know, but they do not (and cannot). And therefore by extension, until they know who they are, they cannot be a person. Adults however, may change as much as they wish, because we (who is this ‘we’?) know that they/we have a stable identity.

When working with children and young people, as when working with adults, we would do well to remember that we are not inside the heads of the person in front of us and therefore can not presume to know better than them what their experience is. Our methods of communication are partial at best. Sitting in a room with a counsellor and talking involves multiple steps. As a client, I have a thought/emotion process, and try to translate this into the 2D experience that is words that capture some of my experience. My therapist then receives my interpretation of my experience and interprets that through their own lens (even as some of us attempt to stay within the frame of reference of the other). The therapist then has their own internal process about my words, and then they offer me back their own 2D experience as it relates to my 2D experience of what is at least a 3D experience. As much as we try to be empathic, and sometimes we can do this much better than others, there are too many layers of interpretation happening here, to be right all the time. Whilst we have all been children, a crystal clear understanding of the processes we were going through at any moment in that childhood simply isn’t available to us in the present moment.

We are all human beings in flux, whatever age we are. Most of us who go to therapy go to explore some aspect of ourselves that we’d like to at least understand more fully, so that our deeper understanding might change something in our environment. No children know fully who they are yet. However, no adult does either. We allow adults not to know this, as long as their wondering about themselves don’t fall too far from an acceptable norm, or start from a marginalised place. Those who are marginalised know only too well what it is to have their personhood and agency stripped from them over and over again throughout history. We have a long history of ableism, racism and misogyny, in the same way that we have a long history of not allowing children agency. We are at risk of treating anyone who is not a white, cisgender heterosexual, able-bodied adult as someone incapable of agency, as somehow a ‘thing’, not a person, capable of wonder. And that results in their dehumanisation.

There is an argument that we should not affirm the right of children to be themselves because this somehow leads them down an ‘irreversible changes’ route – that by affirming them, we somehow cause children to become trans (read: delusional), which somehow forces them to get blockers, then hormones, then surgery. The first problem with this is that very little of this treatment is available for under 16 year olds, and so medical treatment such as hormone blockers (let alone what is often called ‘cross-sex hormones, or surgery) is simply not accessible to under 16s (and with NHS waiting lists in place, once a child moves on to the adult wait list it’s still going to be a significant time – the TransActual website shows that the longest wait time for hormones from referral is 8-10 years and in England and Wales the shortest waiting times for adult services are 2 years). Secondly, any therapist who tried to persuade a client to a cause of action would likely be working outside of their code of ethics (should they be registered with a membership body), because attempting to force anyone into anything in therapy is unethical.

We believe the recent article statement from the ex-chair of the UKCP makes clear that either there is a level of deliberate obtuseness, with the argument that he did not know that ‘children’ were included in the category of people (or, to put it another way, ‘didn’t know that children were human beings’), or that somehow, he does not see children as people, with agency, with the right to explore who they are. To suggest (or believe) that children are not people, is to exercise control over them without their consent. We are not ok with this.

Either way, we would suggest that the statement is ridiculous, and it seems clear to us that the definition of ‘people’ should never have needed special explication of just who was included in the category of ‘human’. Nor should children be used as pawns in a fight to withdraw one of the country’s main PSA-registered bodies from the Memorandum of Understanding on conversion therapy. Furthermore, children (and adults!) should be affirmed in their right to explore who they are, whether they come to a cis, or trans identity. At TACTT, we want people to be who they are at every age, and support full and open exploration of self that allows freely for all possible responses.

Inspiration for inclusive practice and creating safe(r) spaces

This book review comes from another of our members.

Supporting Trans People of Colour: How to Make Your Practice Inclusive. By Sabah Choudrey

London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2022

Paperback, 208 pages, £16.99. ISBN: 978-1787750593

I begin by acknowledging the lens through which I read this book and am writing now: I am a trans/non-binary psychotherapist; I am white, in my 50s, middle-class and neurodivergent.

On beginning to read Supporting Trans People of Colour: How to Make Your Practice Inclusive, I was struck by the author’s approach: Choudrey combines their own lived experience with voices from the community (via an anonymous survey) and with the voices, frameworks and tools of elders, researchers, leaders and organisations (for example, BARC Collective, adrienne maree brown, Brené Brown, Justice Founders and many more). This was a very powerful thread throughout the book and I experienced the writing as though it was flowing from a broad collection of lived experience and wisdom.

My second impression was of the holding and educating that is done by Choudrey. While the first section (Identity and Intersectionality) provides an extremely helpful resource on terminology, language, white privilege, cis privilege and the experience of trans people of colour in the UK in various areas (criminal justice, healthcare, faith, etc.), I wish that such education did not fall on the shoulders of those within the community and I acknowledge the effort it must have taken to put this book together.

The chapter Creating a Safe(r) Space was illuminating to me. Safety is such an important theme for the trans community and the encouragement to think about not being able to guarantee safe spaces but to “be accountable to harmdoing and transparent to risk taking” (p.67) in order to create safe(r) spaces, was very helpful for my own thinking about safety and the spaces I offer as a therapist, raising my awareness of my own responsibility. Equally, asking the question: “safer for whom?” (p.67) has already proven helpful to me in group and institutional settings to think more deeply about privilege and how I inhabit spaces. 

Similarly, the chapter Holding a Safe(r) Space outlines the need for us to be active in this endeavour, especially given the fact that trans people are often not allowed by society to take up space. Choudrey continually encourages us to think about intersectionality and overlapping areas of oppression, and this chapter offers helpful sections to understand not just race and gender, but also sexuality, dis/ability, language, access, and class. I admit that class is not an area that I have given a lot of thought to, and this section highlighted my hesitation to think about class privilege, providing me with a great starting point for doing some personal work in this area. The recommendations and discussion in this section have helped me to begin my reflections on how class and classism might impact my work.

Any topic around oppression can feel overwhelming to tackle, but this book offers many practical and manageable starting points for professionals and organisations (therapists, healthcare professionals, charities, educators, and others). The range of subjects covered is broad but always comes back to lived experience and meaningful actions. For example, there were some small actions I could immediately take in my therapy practice, even as I was reading the section on Agreements, contracts and policies. I reviewed my contract and added more detail to provide greater transparency. I also added a task to my calendar to review it regularly because, as Choudrey reminds us, inclusion is an ongoing process. In the chapter Celebrate and Commemorate, I found the calendar of cultural, historical, and social events useful – I know how isolating it can feel if a significant day is not acknowledged by those around us, and educating myself about events important to other communities feels like an easy, supportive step to take.

The book contains moments to pause: breaks in the text in the form of boxes with points to reflect on. I found these challenging, inspiring, interesting… There were parts that raised questions requiring deeper self-examination and ongoing work, such as: Where do I hold influence in my life? How can I take responsibility for widening my circle and experience? Where is my collusion? What do I not see in my much-valued trans spaces?

The other chapters in the book include one entitled Practice (especially helpful for organisations, covering tokenism, visibility, and accessibility – whether your spaces are online or in-person – advertising and recruitment, and partnerships and funding) and one called Exclusion and Inclusion, which includes a 10-point summary for making your practice inclusive.

The care I have experienced in the trans community is something that is very precious and supportive to me, it helps me thrive in life. This book brought into sharp focus the whiteness of my trans spaces, and I realised with sadness that I do not think enough about how these spaces could be safer for trans people of colour. I want our community to be accessible and welcoming to all. Supporting Trans People of Colour provided me with practical ways to think about transforming my community spaces, as well as a wealth of information and points for further reflection. I ended the book feeling empowered.

A book review: The Queer Mental Health Workbook

We asked some of our members if they would care to read various books around working with LGBTQ+ topics, and write book reviews. Here is a review from one of our members, who has approached the reading of this book from the point of view of being a therapist who might want to explore this book as a way to work with clients.

The Queer Mental Health Workbook
A creative self help guide using CBT, CFT and DBT
Dr. Brendan J. Dunlop

Dr. Dunlop’s book definitely fits the criteria of self-help, and shares some of the positive and negative features of this genre. On the positive side, it does offer practical (rather than creative, if I’m being picky) exercises that are easy to complete and buying the book gives you access to downloadable versions of resources too including some colouring sheets which, while not being exactly creative, does encourage the reader to get their felt tip pens out.


Dr. Dunlop puts his ideas in a broader context which helps get perspective and adds meaning to what we are reading or being encouraged to try. He often writes as if he is speaking directly to the reader which gives it a pleasant immediacy and directness and moments of honesty and familiarity would definitely, in my opinion, make a reader feel less alone (for example the list, in the chapter on identity, of very recognisable comments that queer people might find themselves exposed to).


Other useful aspects included in the chapter on self-acceptance and self-compassion, a table on what might be behind things such as self-harm, substance misuse, disordered eating and self-neglect, and Dr Dunlop offers a deep dive in side boxes in the test (for example, giving some background to Section 28 [the prohibition on teaching about ‘homosexuality’ in high schools that was in place 1988-2000/2003 depending on whether you lived in Scotland or England and Wales] and how it could have impacted queer people’s mental health).


The book is very broad, so there’s bound to be something in there for almost everyone and readers are encouraged to go directly to the chapters that will be most relevant to them. However, in this breadth comes some of the aspects of the book that I found less helpful. The exercises, because they are designed to be accessible and applicable to a wide range of people, can come across as quite simple and for me, did not have enough depth and the text was similarly general. 

Some concepts or ideas about concepts were presented as facts without acknowledging that they might not be true for all and a several concepts felt over-explained and overly simplified. I felt frustrated at what felt like ‘talking down to’ the reader.


As a therapist, I would recommend using exercises from this book in a personalised way in sessions with clients, tweaking them to suit the needs of your clients and guiding clients through them rather than just handing it over to a client. I felt, in its current form, it would be best suited to teenagers but for them, the patronising (in my opinion) feel of much of the voice could alienate and annoy them, making them feel that things are being overexplained. Having said that, when the author does go deeper (for example the activity on ‘identity in context’ in chapter 4), it seemed to me to be a lot more useful and beneficial.


In summary, do selectively read this book and choose the exercises you would share carefully, personalising them to your clients and putting them in the context of your clients’ lives and experiences. To be fair to Dr. Dunlop, this is hard to do in a very generalised book, and he does make it clear that a reader should choose the parts that work for them. There are some useful parts here, and it is worth making the effort to find them by zooming in directly to the chapters that seem relevant to your clients and personalising what you offer so it is meaningful to them and presented with respect, with free choice and with acknowledgement that one size certainly doesn’t fit all and ‘facts’ are to be handled with caution.

Response from and to NCPS

NCPS responded to our letter. The text is below, along with our response back.

Text from NCPS reads:

“Thank you for your communication regarding the Society and conversion therapy.

 

The Society, alongside other MOU signatories, was forced to withdraw from the MOU in 2022 after receiving formal threats of legal action against MOU and naming us as potential co-defendants.

 

Our professional indemnity insurers confirmed they would not be able to cover us should legal action commence against the Society and so we had no choice but to withdraw on financial grounds.  Our withdrawal from MOU does not change our position of opposing conversion therapy and has not changed any Society policies. It was agreed at the time that publishing our forced exit as a signatory of the MOU would have had a detrimental effect on the coalition.

 

We have agreed to enter into exploratory discussions with UKCP and other professional bodies which does not signal policy agreement.  Should the Society consider any policy changes in the future these would first be put to member consultation and ratification.


We are aware of the significance and complexities of this issue and will keep members fully informed of any developments.

 

Kind regards

 

Jyles Robillard-Day

Chief Executive Officer”

We have now sent the following response to NCPS:

Dear Jyles,

 

Thank you for your email and the additional information. However, it leaves us with more questions than answers. I have emphasised the questions to which the members who have supported the development of this response ask of the Society, and a request arising from the emergence of NCPS’s withdrawal from the MOU without informing its members.

 

Breach of trust and ethical duty of care to clients

NCPS members of TACTT are shocked and disappointed by the Society’s misrepresentation of its support of the MOU since 2022. Several TACTT members joined NCPS within the past 12 months under the impression that the organisation was a signatory to the MOU. The website states that the organisation is “a proud signatory to the Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy, making it very clear that counsellors can help clients who present with conflicting feelings about themselves concerning sexuality or gender identity.” The GSRD page in the Members area of the NCPS website states that “the NCPS supports the work of the MOU.” Given the context of your email, these statements are false and misleading to members and prospective members.

 

The Society has placed members in the position of harming our clients. Informed consent cannot be given by clients when they believe they are safe because their counsellor or psychotherapist’s membership body supports the MOU when it has not done so since 2022. 

 

The Society has not conducted itself with the transparency that its own code of ethics demands of its members. The code demands that members “ensure that all advertising, no matter in what form or medium it is placed, represents a truthful, honest and accurate picture.” NCPS has recruited paid members using misinformation stating on public-facing parts of its website that the Society is a signatory to the MOU and reinforcing that in member-only information. 

 

Although NCPS members involved with TACTT appreciate statements from the Society on conversion practices, this is an individualised response to a systemic problem. TACTT Members who chose to join NCPS did so on the understanding that their membership body was part of a broad coalition that was using its collective power to bring about systemic change in the UK. 

 

NCPS has let down and misled its membership. This is not only a breach of trust between the Society and its membership, who could not freely choose a different membership organisation that was still an MOU signatory; the vitiation of the therapist/client relationship cannot be undone. The Society has placed its members in the position of deceiving clients, and now we are left with the burden of working out the steps we can take to repair this rupture of trust with our clients. 

 

As members, we require immediate guidance on how we can rectify the position of maleficence that this has placed us in with our clients.

 

Legal action and MOU alternatives

We are aware of legal action that was brought against a number of co-defendants. However, the legal filings we have seen do not show NCPS as a co-defendant in that case. 

 

We would be grateful if you could confirm the case to which you are referring.

 

If the Society’s objective for withdrawing from the MOU was to avoid legal costs, it is unclear how entering into a different coalition to produce an alternative statement on ending conversion practices will protect it from future legal action. If the Society intends to withdraw from any coalition or consensus statement openly supporting ending conversion practices, it is difficult to see how the Society’s involvement in any future coalitions will make any meaningful change. A coalition is only as strong as its members, and whilst we appreciate that the executive team has a responsibility to protect NCPS as a legal entity, it also has a responsibility to be accountable to its members for how its funding, which is generated largely from membership subscription income, is used to support ending oppressive practices in counselling and psychotherapy. 

 

We request a statement on how NCPS makes decisions about which of its principles it will stand by and which it will recant when challenged.

 

Consultation with the membership

It is unclear from your email who you refer to when you say that “we” have agreed to enter into exploratory discussions with UKCP and other professional bodies. The email says that “should the Society consider any policy changes in the future, these would first be put to member consultation and ratification,” but a policy change has already been made. Withdrawal from the MOU coalition is a significant policy change about which the membership was not consulted. As such, we remain sceptical about the trustworthiness of the Society to consult and engage with its membership. 

 

How do you intend to consult and engage with the membership on future changes in policy? 

 

Would rejoining the MOU coalition constitute a change in policy, since the membership was entirely unaware of the policy change to leave the coalition in the first place?

 

Please feel free to contact me if you require any clarification on the above queries. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience. 

 

Kind regards, 

TACTT

How to take action to oppose conversion therapy

The current UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) leadership has today (Friday 5th April)  announced its withdrawal as a signatory of the Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy (MOU), and from membership of the Coalition Against Conversion Therapy. (To read more here about their rationale, and our refutation of it, please see our open letter)

This is devastating news for everyone who wants to see an end to conversion therapy and create safe and better therapeutic options for all LGBTQIA+ clients. We call upon UKCP’s board to reverse this decision. UKCP did not consult with its membership or stakeholders before making this announcement, so we are encouraging everybody impacted by this decision to  join us in making your thoughts and opinions known. There are many ways to do so, and every little bit counts!

We have put together this post as a response to questions from people asking what action they can take to oppose UKCP’s move, and to support the push to end conversion therapy for all – whether or not they are a therapist or a member of UKCP.

Below, we outline options for opposing this move by UKCP and supporting the MOU – for all therapists and trainees as well as for clients and other interested stakeholders. 

We will update this with more information and ideas for action as we are able to – please do contact us if you would like to suggest any. And please share these ideas widely and encourage your colleagues, friends and peers to get involved!

Scroll down to read our suggestions for:

  • UKCP members (individual)
  • UKCP members (organisational)
  • All therapists and trainees
  • Members and employees of other MoU signatories
  • Other interested parties (including: clients, potential clients, parents, charities, stakeholders, employees of other MOU signatories)

UKCP members (individual)

  • Call for a vote of no confidence in the board and demand the resignation of board members by signing our petition/letter to the UKCP and share it with your network.
  • Contact UKCP to raise a complaint.
  • Raise your concerns with the UKCP EDI committee, UKCP Ethics Lead, Membership team or communications team. (Contact details and writing tips)
  • You may wish to cancel your membership or you may prefer to remain a member of UKCP and oppose this action. At this stage TACTT are not advising either way – but we do recommend that if you decide to cancel your membership you contact the memberships team and tell them why.
  • Post or tweet on social media your concerns and/or your support for the MoU and the Coalition Against Conversion Therapy.

UKCP members (organisational)

  • Please approach the UKCP with your concerns as an organisational member. 
  • Consider writing a public statement raising your concerns and/or opposing the UKCP’s decision and your support for MoU and the Coalition Against Conversion Therapy.
  • Raise concerns to the Charity Commission.

All therapists and trainees

  • If you are training or working at a UKCP-accredited organisation, you can raise this with the training organisation via your student reps / DEI reps or ask your training institution directly to clarify whether they support this move by UKCP and if not, to publicly oppose it and/or actively approach the UKCP.
  • Raise this / ask your tutors for advice / support if you are a student on placement and this decision by UKCP would impact your work with LGBTQIA+ clients.
  • Speak to your supervisor about this and your concerns about the impact of this decision on your work.
  • Speak to colleagues and peers who may not know this is happening (not everyone reads UKCP mail)
  • Post or tweet on social media your concerns and/or your support for the MoU and the Coalition Against Conversion Therapy.

Members and employees of other MoU signatories

The MoU has been signed by 25 health, counselling and psychotherapy organisations, and supported by another four (see the list). If you are a member or employee of one of these organisations we urge you to write to them and express your support for the MoU and your desire to see a continued coalition of support to oppose conversion therapy.

Other interested parties (including: clients, potential clients, stakeholders, employees of other MOU signatories)

  • Raise a complaint with the UKCP, as someone who is impacted by the service they deliver (this includes as someone who could potentially use their directory to look for a therapist). 
  • Contact UKCP’s communications team (could include your concern about you or relatives finding safe therapists on their online directory)
  • You could raise concerns to the Charity Commission.
  • Post or tweet on social media your concerns and/or your support for the MoU and the Coalition Against Conversion Therapy. 
  • If you are a member of PCU (Psychotherapy and Counselling Union) / PCSR (Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility) or other therapy organisations ask them to pass a motion to write to the UKCP to raise this as a matter of concern.
  • If you are a member of any charity / client organisation that works with clients potentially impacted by this decision, you could ask them to send a letter of concern to UKCP / the Charity Commission. 
  • Let the Coalition Against Conversion Therapy know you are concerned and let them know your organisation supports their work.

Please all take action where you can and open dialogue with allies, colleagues, family and friends!