Welcome
The UKCP Bulletin is a primarily factual update of around 2,000 words. It is sent every few weeks but aims to be a very flexible tool and when things are hot we may send it out more frequently. Although written by the chair and chief executive, we will draw in news from the vice-chairs and various committees.
Both of us welcome your feedback. Please send your emails to
Andrew and David
From David
Email and communications
In last month's bulletin I told you about the way we are developing services for members. I was very pleased, and surprised, at the number of people who responded. Clearly for some of our members email is a good route for UKCP communications. If we are to keep faith with people, we must make sure we hear and respond to every member. Every suggestion and comment is welcomed, even if we cannot do everything you ask, or as quickly as we would like.
We hold email addresses for the vast majority of members. As a means of communication, email has the advantage that sending is easier on earth's resources, and cheap for members to fund through subscriptions. When our new database is up and running in the next couple of months, you will be able to use the website to choose which communications you want to receive from UKCP - so if you tire of this bulletin, you will be able to switch it off!
The staff team
We have just completed the redesign of the staff team at UKCP. My aim has been to deploy as many staff as possible in outward-facing jobs - communicating with members and providing services to members. This has been a big cultural change for UKCP and its staff, and we are left with a number of vacancies to fill before we can become the organisation needed to meet the aspirations of the psychotherapy community. Details of the staff team are on the website at www.psychotherapy.org.uk/ukcp_staff.html.
Communicating with members is the key to transforming UKCP from being a lofty standards and regulatory body to an engaging membership and services organisation. I am particularly interested to hear more suggestions about how we can communicate and engage members. So far we have conducted a member survey about The Psychotherapist, appointed individual member trustees, held a series of regional events, and events in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and started sending you these email bulletins. We have also committed to a wider member survey, a better communications network between trustees and individual and organisational members, open meetings of UKCP's new Psychotherapy Council, and better engagement of members in the key policy decisions of UKCP. Andrew and I are very keen to hear your ideas about how we develop these new initiatives, and what more we need to consider. Don't tell me UKCP is remote and out of touch; or, if you do need to tell me this, tell me your ideas for how we change UKCP so it would feel better connected to your practice and your needs.
Contact me at .
David
From Andrew
The diversity, equalities and social responsibility committee: a work in progress
What follows is a report on the new and evolving diversity, equalities and social responsibility committee. I would like to encourage all members with an interest to get involved.
If you are interested in serving on the diversity, equalities and social responsibility committee, especially if you are a member with a personal and/or professional interest in diversity, please email me at , including a brief biography.
The gatherings
I assembled two 'gatherings' earlier in the year (on 30 January and 6 March) to start thinking about UKCP's new diversity, equalities and social responsibility committee. Twenty-two people attended the meetings, with six others contributing on the telephone. Veterans of the social responsibility scene including Susie Orbach, Judy Ryde, Dick Blackwell, Judith Anderson, Tree Staunton and Valerie Sinason were involved, along with academics, activist psychotherapists, vice chair Philippa Whittick, and the previous diversity and equalities committee.
At the first gathering, Susie Orbach spoke about the ways in which our internal worlds are constructed from external social and political forces and structures. She laid out a historical perspective on the work which has been done, and emphasised that the practice of psychotherapy and political struggle are intimately linked. The group agreed that what was important was 'connection': between the various themes being discussed; between the people affected by the issues being discussed; between the people who had expressed interest in the venture; between all peoples on the planet; between people and the planet.
The gathering agreed that there is a bias towards normalising within the profession; that intolerance is defended, prevalent or even institutionalised by insufficiently questioned adherence to culturally and historically situated theories. There is, for example, a widely held perception that psychotherapists are hostile towards minority sexualities. Many spoke of our need as a community to look inwards as well as outwards, to the personal as well as the public space. Since many members qualified before disability and equality issues were recognised syllabus, UKCP psychotherapists need to own safe spaces where they can explore their ignorance and prejudice, beyond the training space.
Building thinking into practice
Most psychotherapists agree that our profession still has a problem in connection with many kinds of minorities, including LGBT, BME, disability and vulnerable children. If so, how far have we moved from our original problems of elitism, prejudice and adherence to conformist values?
Some will ask: have sufficient resources been made available to help translate aspiration into reality? Can we build on the thinking and practice that has got us to this point? Can we submerge our different political and psychotherapeutic agendas into one collective commitment to bring about radical change in our profession within a recognisable time frame?
But what if the problem is deeper and more insidious than a resource problem? What if there is something more or less built in to the structure of what we think and do as a profession? What if, when it comes to diversity and equalities, we are incorrigible?
Is the battle to end discrimination against LGBT people in terms of trainings in psychotherapy really over? Or are we colluding in a liberal con trick? Are the western roots of psychotherapy so powerful that even to think of its applicability to people from other cultural and ethnic backgrounds is a colonial act (the position of Gayatri Spivak, for instance)?
It can be argued that work in these frontier areas is not only a good thing in itself, but that there is also a refreshing and re-visioning impact on 'mainstream' work. On this reading, to engage in therapy thinking around diversities and equalities is to engage with the contemporary heart of the entire project.
The new diversity, equalities and social responsibility committee will need take our starting point, apply a great deal of strategic vision and make detailed work plans. It will take a helluva lot of work and commitment and will, we hope, involve many more people than hitherto.
Talking amongst ourselves and with others
I hope that the new committee will be a forum for psychotherapists who wish to influence the political process by incorporating emotional and psychological perspectives into current debates on social, cultural, environmental and political issues. We have to find new ways of talking amongst ourselves, and with others, which honour the fact that the personal and the political integrate in our daily lives.
We should also engage in serious dialogue with policy makers, activist and scholarly/research groups, and with the media. The new committee will, we hope, identify organisations which we can partner on issues such as climate change, discrimination and economic inequality. The future has to lie in interdisciplinary work and we must be modest about the therapy piece.
The new committee: practicalities
The focus of the diversity and equalities agenda will be on ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, disabilities, and children's needs and how society conceptualises children.
The focus of the social responsibility agenda will be on environmental concerns, including climate change (and ecopsychology), asylum/immigration/discrimination (including institutional racism in the public sector), and class/economic inequality.
The gatherings proposed a large committee plus workgroups. It will be possible for someone to serve on the committee without serving on a workgroup. I would serve as acting chair while UKCP establishes a process for election. The following workgroups were proposed:
Diversity and equalities workgroups
Workgroup 1: Training issues as these relate to practice
The agenda will include: course content (including implicit racism, sexism, religion issues, homophobia and class issues); the imposition of western models of psychology on people of non-western background; the problematic of 'whiteness'; supervision, ethics and CPD; recruitment of students; UKCP bursaries; external finance and fundraising generally.
Two or three organisational members would work with the committee on a pilot project basis.
Workgroup 2: Towards an inclusive psychotherapy in the private and public sectors
We will answer the question: 'We do not understand what you are offering'; and look at the image of psychotherapy in minority communities and more generally (gender, class, children, older people, those living with chronic illness, terminally ill people); access to psychotherapy; psychotherapy in relation to counselling, psychiatry, clinical psychology, coaching, 'talking therapies'; user groups.
Workgroup 3: Children's issues
This group would liaise with the other workgroups and look at issues such as trafficking, detention, and the interface between psychotherapy and education.
Workgroup 4: Diversity inflected support groups for psychotherapists
These groups (for example, black and minority ethnic, Irish or LGBT psychotherapists) could be learning communities and feed back ideas to the main committee and to workgroup 1.
Social responsibility
Workgroup 5: Environmental concerns, including climate change (and ecopsychology)
Workgroup 6: Asylum/immigration/discrimination (including institutional racism in the public sector)
Workgroup 7: Economic inequality/class
The gatherings enthusiastically supported the involvement of partner organisations. Suggestions included:
Climate change : Climate Outreach and Information Network, Climate and Health Council, Stop Climate Chaos
Asylum/immigration/discrimination : Medical Justice, Liberty, Refugee Therapy Centre, Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, Baobab Centre for Young Survivors in Exile, Immigration Counselling and Psychotherapy (Irish oriented)
Class/economic inequality : New Economics Foundation (more suggestions welcomed)
The gatherings also proposed forming a political unit, which would be a rapid response unit for the committee, writing letters, connecting UKCP to petitions and actions, engaging with whistle-blowers and challenging clinical prejudices.
Committee structure
The diversity, equalities and social responsibility committee will comprise as many people as wish to serve, to an agreed maximum. This will be unwieldy, but Googlegroup and Doodle decision-making technology will be used. The committee will have a chair and vice chair and may or may not need an office staff member in addition to the full-time officer already in post.
The workgroups will each comprise a minimum of three and a maximum of ten people and will also use Googlegroup and Doodle technology and involve teleconferences. Each group will have a convenor and it will be possible for one person to convene more than one workgroup
Diversity, equalities and social responsibility officer
The newly appointed full-time diversity, equalities and social responsibility officer, Hope Massiah, attended the second gathering. Her appointment is a signal that UKCP is going to put its money where its mouth is. More money is available and more will be spent.
Consultant
Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility (PCSR) will be the consultant to the committee. PCSR began as a UKCP initiative in 1994.
Those involved so far: Nazia Ahmed, Rotimi Akinsete, Judith Anderson, Nawal Asous, Lisa Baraitser, Dick Blackwell, Shaun Brookhouse, Ingrid Cleaver, Anne Cussins, Sarah Deco, Alan Dupuy, Reem El-Shelhi, Eugene Ellis, Pamela Gawler-Wright, Diane Hodgson, Riva Joffe, Jasna Kostic, Mickey Kaufmann, Jasna Kostic, Darren Langdridge, Nicola McCarry, Isha Mckenzie-Mavinga, Sheila Melzak, Zenobia Nadirshaw, Susie Orbach, Shila Rachid, Judy Ryde, Andrew Samuels, Valerie Sinason, Barbara Smith, Tree Staunton, Máire Stedman, Adrian Tate, Philippa Whittick, Dori Yusef.
Andrew
UKCP events
Regional Day
Newcastle - 22 May 2010, Newcastle Civic Centre
5 June 2010, London
Supervising difference
10 July 2010, City University, London
Annual research conference
3-5 September 2010, York University
2010 UKCP Conference - Self other and society
6 November 2010, London
Chair's day
19-20 November 2010, London
Many paths to a child's emotional health
For more information about UKCP events visit www.ukcp.org.uk | 
