Diversity, Equalities & Social Responsibility Committee
UKCP is committed to ensuring diversity and equalities issues are addressed at all levels of the charity.
DESR Committee Co-Chairs: Andrew Samuels (Chair of UKCP) David Pink (Chief Executive)
DESR Officer: Hope Massiah
DESR committee workgroups
Workgroup 1: Training Issues
Convenors: Di Hodgson, Dori Yusef
Areas of Concern:
- recruitment of students (including finance/bursaries)
- course content (including race, sexuality disability, gender, religion issues, sexuality and class issues)
- the imposition of Western models of psychology upon people of non-Western background
- training issues as they relate to practice
- working towards inclusive training models for psychotherapy
- supervision, ethics and CPD (continuing professional development) in the context of diversity.
Workgroup 2: The Image of Psychotherapy in Minority Communities
Convenors: Rotimi Akinsete and Zenobia Nadirshaw
Areas of Concern:
- The image of psychotherapy in minority communities, including minority ethnic, lesbian, gay and bisexual, and disability communities and people of different religious beliefs; as well as gender, class, children, the elderly, those living with chronic illness and people who are terminally ill
- improving access to psychotherapy for minority communities
- perceptions of psychotherapy in relation to other 'talking therapies' counselling, psychiatry, clinical psychology, coaching, 'talking therapies' etc.
Workgroup 3: Children's Issues
Convenor: Sheila Melzak
Areas of Concern:
- Children and young people's issues, including issues for children and young people separated from their parents/families
- the impact of trafficking and detention
- the interface between psychotherapy and education
- improving awareness of the specific therapeutic needs of children and young people.
Workgroup 4: Diversity Support Groups
Convenors: Eugene Ellis and Deidre Haslam
Areas of Concern:
- Setting up support groups and other forms of support for diversity support group(s) for psychotherapists and psychotherapeutic counsellors from minority communities. Please click here for further details.
- Identifying ways for psychotherapists and psychotherapeutic counsellors from minority communities to contribute to the other workgroups and UKCP as a whole.
Workgroup 5: Environmental Concerns
Convenors: Judith Anderson and Tree Staunton
Areas of Concern:
- To raise awareness and improve our practice in relation to environmental concerns, including climate change (and ecopsychlogy); in general and as they relate to the profession and practice of psychotherapy.
Workgroup 6: Asylum, Immigration and Institutional Discrimination
Convenors: Dick Blackwell, Riva Joffe and Máire Stedman
Areas of Concern:
- Improving access to psychotherapy to refugees, asylum seekers and those with uncertain immigration status
- asylum/immigration/discrimination (including institutional racism in the public sector)
- other forms of discrimination, including institutional discrimination; e.g. discrimination and attitudes to disabled or older people
- to identify and contribute to debates, dialogues and policy making on the above issues; and ensure that where appropriate the psychotherapeutic aspect of these issues in given consideration.
Workgroup 7: Class, Economic Inequality and Access to Psychotherapy
Convenor/s: Peter Cockersell and Vicky Gaughan
Areas of Concern:
- Increasing access of psychotherapy to those on low incomes.
- To identify and contribute to debates, dialogues and policy making on poverty, economic inequality and class issues and ensure that where appropriate the psychotherapeutic aspect of these issues in given consideration.
Click here to access the archive of articles on diversity and equalities.
UK Council for Psychotherapy | Registered Charity No. 1058545 | Company No. 3258939 Registered in England
