The new year often brings an increase in people looking to try counselling or psychotherapy as a way of changing something about themselves or their lives. Here’s a very short guide to checking you’ve chosen a registered professional.
‘Counsellor’ and ‘psychotherapist’ aren’t protected titles in the UK. This means that just about anyone can set themselves up in practice, regardless of whether they’ve had any (or enough) training. However, there are voluntary registers (accredited by the Professional Standards Authority) that trained counsellors and psychotherapists can join via several professional bodies. These organisations ensure members have appropriate training, set ethical standards and have a complaints procedure should things go wrong.
Here are links to the registers (or further information about the registers) for some of the UK’s largest professional bodies for counsellors and psychotherapists. Their memberships include practitioners from a range of backgrounds and who offer a range of different talking therapies.
British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) (Find my entry here)
UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP)
National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society (NCPS)
(there are also specialist professional bodies and registers for particular groups of therapists or types of therapy, such as those held by ACC, BPC, and BABCP. You can find a full list of registers on the PSA website).
There are also a number of independent directories that check therapists’ credentials before allowing them to register: Counselling Directory (here I am) and Psychology Today are perhaps the best known, and both sites let you search or browse according to your needs and preferences.
Finally, don’t be afraid to ask a potential therapist about their qualifications, professional registrations and insurance – most will be more than happy to tell you.
I hope you find this useful. Contact me if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to help. Do check back here, as I’m planning to write some further posts about different types of therapy and how to think about what type of therapy you might find most helpful.
Stacey Sewell Counselling 