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
Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT)
What follows is a discussion on Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT). If you are interested in helping me with what I outline below, please respond to
Therapy services
One of the challenges for UKCP is to speak out for psychotherapy in the debates around changing public mental health services in the UK. We know that after statutory regulation, the second most common concern of members is the way in which the NHS is providing therapy services.
Nowadays the NHS uses national guidelines produced by NICE, and NICE's methods favour therapies that have had the most trial-based research, primarily randomised controlled trials (RCTs). Manualised therapies are well-suited to this form of research. But we want people to have access to a wide range of psychological support including psychotherapy. So UKCP is working in alliance with charities and professional bodies to broaden the range of therapies included in NICE guidelines.
And then there is IAPT - Improving Access to Psychological Therapies. Over the last three years, the NHS in England has started delivering therapy for people with depression and anxiety using new IAPT services, designed to a national template, and rolled-out locally as a new mental health service organised entirely separately from existing NHS psychological care providers.
Measuring up to the challenge
As the national professional body for psychotherapy, we have applauded the overall stated aims of IAPT: that the NHS will provide therapy for thousands of people who would never have access to therapy otherwise. We also know, of course, that many UKCP members are unhappy about IAPT; they feel locked out of the new services. But voicing your unhappiness or protesting does not take us very far. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people are impacted by depression and anxiety every year, and the old patchwork of NHS, voluntary and private therapy providers was clearly not measuring up to the challenge in many parts of the country. NHS psychotherapists have known this for years, and have often been part of charitable services attempting to help people who could not get NHS or private therapy. Now we want to be part of the new NHS response, with the goal of making sure that IAPT will not spell the end of public community psychotherapy services.
Mass therapy
We do not think that the provision of wide access to therapy on the NHS should be delivered through a centralised factory mass-production model. But it is also beyond dispute that many people can benefit from short courses of cognitive therapy. And it would be completely unrealistic to think that hundreds of thousands of NHS patients could all be referred to and treated by UKCP-registered psychotherapists. The government seems to have adopted the centralised factory mass-production model in order to bypass the decision and power structures of the NHS which have always favoured medical and pharmaceutical treatments, even when patients have preferred psychotherapy and counselling. IAPT need not have been set up in such a way that it has inevitably been seen as an attack on psychotherapy and UKCP should lead a fight back on this point, but we are handicapped because psychotherapists seem to play very little role in designing and leading IAPT services.
Working together to meet the needs of NHS patients
The current factory-model scheme is delivered in a way that often destabilises existing services. But we know that the IAPT service is very narrow, and there will continue to be many NHS patients needing support outside IAPT's range (in primary care or in secondary care services). I would like to see UKCP working with others to create a vision of how a wide range of public, voluntary and private psychological services can work together to meet the needs of NHS patients.
Engaging with IAPT
In the latest issue of The Psychotherapist (www.psychotherapy.org.uk/the_psychotherapist.html), three UKCP members (Alexandra Chalfont, Martin Pollecoff and Michael Sclater) argue that UKCP needs to do much more than its traditional business of raising training standards, and that it must leave behind the modality wars. They argue that UKCP must become a much more assertive advocate for psychotherapists within the NHS system.
UKCP is a public interest charity as well as being a professional body. It is part of our role to argue for and help to provide the widest access to psychotherapy, and it is on that basis that I want us to engage with the NHS IAPT scheme.
We need your help
I am looking for UKCP psychotherapists who are willing to work with us on this agenda. We need two levels of input.
First, we do need to monitor hard facts about the current IAPT system, and how it impacts on the provision of other forms of psychotherapy in the NHS. We need to research, investigate and record details that illustrate the good and bad aspects of how IAPT impacts NHS and non-NHS psychotherapy in your area (geographical and clinical).
Second, we need to build a positive model of how psychotherapists and psychotherapy can be provided through the NHS in a way that does justice both to the massive challenge of depression and anxiety, and also to the smaller number of patients with other equally complex illness and distress that ALSO deserve public service therapy support.
I am looking for members willing to volunteer their time to engage with this on behalf of UKCP. It will be a significant and serious commitment, and I do not underestimate what we are asking. I am assembling a virtual group so we can rise to the challenge of IAPT - but we have a lot of ground to make up. I do not anticipate lots of committee-style meetings, but a facilitated workshop might be one way that we generate and develop our ideas.
I hope that by the time of the next edition of The Psychotherapist we will have started rising to the challenge set out by Alexandra Chalfont, Martin Pollecoff and Michael Sclater.
Contact me if you can help by emailing
From Andrew
Introducing the colleges and faculties committee
Committee chair Janet Weisz interviewed by Andrew Samuels
This is the first in a series of interviews Andrew will conduct for the Bulletin. The idea is to use relational dialogue to draw out information on how UKCP works and shed light on what may sometimes seem to be bureaucratic, dry and even oppressive.
If you have any comments to make about the work of the colleges and faculties committee as it emerges in this interview, please write to
Andrew: What is the colleges and faculties committee?
Janet: The colleges and faculties committee is one of UKCP's standing committees. All its members are chairs of either UKCP colleges or faculties. At the present time, we have nine colleges and two faculties, although this will grow in time.
Andrew: What is the difference between a college and a faculty?
Janet: Faculties are a new entity within UKCP. They are interest groups working across modalities. For example, the faculty of the psychological health of children is the place where those with a passion and interest in psychological work with children can work together unhindered by modality considerations. Similarly, the research faculty draws in psychotherapists from all modalities who are interested in research.
These faculties replace the former committees and have an expanded and more ambitious remit. The term 'faculty' was carefully chosen to reflect the fact that this is where state-of-the-art thinking on the part of the psychotherapy profession as a whole can be generated.
Colleges are modality based, having a commonality of interests and traditions and a shared philosophical base. The initial colleges have emerged from the former UKCP sections. Colleges are the place where organisational and individual members from a particular modality meet together to advance thinking and practice within their own specific approach to psychotherapy - with internal and external considerations in mind. Colleges are, in many respects, the gatekeepers to UKCP membership.
Andrew: Why was the committee set up?
Janet: I think it is no secret that, from time to time, UKCP experiences modality wars. More recently there has been greater collaboration between the former sections and it was from this that the idea of a colleges and faculties committee was born. Hence the committee is designed to be a place where frictions and rivalries can be worked with creatively - though not denied. If there is one place within UKCP where the holistic idea of 'a psychotherapist' is firmly held in mind, it's with this new committee.
There were also administrative reasons. In the past, the modalities were represented through their chairs at the UKCP board. However, this is no longer the case in the new structure and means that colleges and faculties committee will now hold and process some of what used to be contained at the board with the specific intention of generating communication and exchanges of ideas and debate between the modality-based colleges.
Probably many people reading this do not know that, under the new structure, we no longer operate a standards board or a registration board. Much of their work now transfers to, and becomes the responsibility of, the colleges and faculties committee. Hence it is the colleges and faculties committee which now becomes the place where UKCP's cross-modality standards - that is, our conception of what is required to be a professional 'psychotherapist' - are upheld.
Andrew: How well is the committee doing in this regard?
Janet: Well enough so far, although at our last meeting in January it was agreed that the committee will need to meet more regularly to enable us to press forward; with this in mind we have added a further full day meeting at the end of April. The committee needs to be task oriented while making space for reflecting on our work together by allowing room for ideas and differences to be explored pertinently and productively. Our wish is to be both a functional and a creative force within the new UKCP.
There is also much to do in picking up the work from both the standards board and registration board. The colleges and faculties committee has been concentrating on this and working with the previous boards' chairs during the handover period.
All UKCP organisational members are subject to a process of quinquennial review and assessment. Over the years, each section developed its own way of administering this process. It is surely desirable to try to standardise things as much as is possible. If we don't, perceptions (which might be correct) could develop that life in one college is a softer option than life in another. In addition, the process of comparison will lead to colleges (with their specific sets of traditions, modalities, principles) learning from each other. Achieving this will be a step forward.
Andrew: What is the biggest obstacle to the success of the committee's work?
Janet: Time constraints. The committee has a lot of strength and drive but members all have very full workloads. We are mindful of this and are trying to find creative ways to get the work that is needed done.
We must also ensure that there is space to process a fair amount of difficult history because, as I said, at times in the past the modalities have not always got along very well.
Another concern is that we do not know how communication between the various elements within UKCP will develop under our new structure, including the board and the psychotherapy council*. It will be vital for these entities to work together harmoniously - and yet they must also be independent of each other because they have different areas of responsibility.
Andrew: What is at stake, what is the potential gold dust for UKCP?
Janet: The committee is vital because it is the vehicle whereby the colleges and faculties communicate and, when appropriate, collaborate directly. Our job is, as I said, to develop the profession of psychotherapy in a global sense - but we also intend to reduce the risk of splitting and fragmenting within UKCP.
Colleges and faculties provide communities of belonging for psychotherapists. As I see it, the role of the committee is to bring these pieces together.
Andrew: Finally, tell us something about yourself in terms of UKCP and your professional life generally?
Janet: My first training 20 years ago was as a marriage guidance counsellor and I then trained as a psychodynamic counsellor. I began working in primary care 15 years ago while continuing training as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist at the Westminster Pastoral Foundation. I have a private practice as well as continuing to work in primary care.
I became a delegate to UKCP three years ago, and the following year at an AGM was asked if I would like to join the College of Psychoanalysis and Jungian Analysis (CPJA) executive. My shocked silence was taken as acceptance, and, before I knew it, there I was. At the end of 2008 I became chair of CPJA, a post I hold in addition to being chair of the colleges and faculties committee.
* The psychotherapy council and the board of trustees will be the subject of future Bulletin interviews.
UKCP events
Regional forum
22 May 2010, Newcastle Civic Centre
Supervising difference
5 June 2010, Sadler's Wells, London
Inaugural annual research conference
10 July 2010, City University, London
2010 UKCP Conference - Self other and society
3-5 September 2010, York University
Chairs' day (morning)
Members' forum (afternoon)
6 November 2010, London
Faculty for the psychological health of children conference
19-20 November 2010, South East
For more details about UKCP events, visit www.ukcp.org.uk, telephone 020 7014 9966 or email
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