Applying for UKCP membership

UKCP welcomes applications from qualified psychotherapists and psychotherapeutic counsellors. The information below is specifically aimed at practitioners who qualified abroad or with UK institutions which are not UKCP organisational members (OMs), and who can show that they meet UKCP standards of education and training.

You must apply for membership through one of our organisational members in the modality within which you trained or with which you feel identified in terms of your practice.

As you may know, UKCP is a professional organisation encompassing a wide range of psychotherapy modalities and, therefore, we do not provide a central application and admission process. By applying through one of our organisational members in your modality, both we and you can access the specific knowledge necessary for an assessment of your application. You will find a list below of what we call accrediting organisations from which you can make your selection. You can apply to more than one accrediting organisation.

What happens next?

In order to assess your application, the organisation will compare your professional education and training with UK training standards in your modality. These already incorporate our generic standards of education and training so if you meet the organisation's standards, you automatically meet UKCP's standards.

This assessment will cover all aspects of your professional skills and experience, not just your paper qualifications. This might include the number of years you have practised, your professional publications, research projects you completed, experience of educating psychotherapists, any further training you received or continuing professional development (CPD).

The rules are a different depending on how long you have been qualified. They are:

Applicants with less than five years post-qualification practice

If you qualified within the last five years, you will normally be expected to demonstrate how you meet the current UK training standards in your modality. The organisation through which you apply will provide you with current information on what these training standards are before you apply. If there are minor disparities you may be asked to complete an adaptation period (practice under supervision for what is usually a six month period with a supervisor recognised by that organisation).

Applications from practitioners with more than five years post-qualification practice

We would normally expect you to have completed a substantive and in-depth psychotherapy (or psychotherapeutic counselling) training course comparable to other contemporary training courses available for the modality approach at the time of your qualification.

Your qualifications and skills will be assessed in conjunction with all aspects of your professional practice and experience, for example how long you have practised, your professional publications, research projects you have completed, or experience of educating psychotherapists. You will also need to clarify how your current practice meets the entrance rules and regulations for the particular organisation through which you apply.

If the organisation finds significant differences in terms of either the length or content between your training and established UKCP standards for the modality, they may make your membership conditional on your fulfilment of additional requirements.

When making the comparison, they will take into account any periods of training and/or professional experience completed after you obtained your initial qualification. They may regard such additional training and/or experience as making up, in full or in part, for any differences between your training and established UKCP standards.

If the assessing body finds that there are major differences between the professional qualifications you have obtained and established standards in this modality in the UK, you may be required to either:
demonstrate your professional competency in a particular specific area where a significant difference has been identified
or complete an adaptation period (practice under supervision for what is usually a six month period with a supervisor recognised by that organisation)

Applicants who have been awarded a European Certificate for Psychotherapy (ECP)

We fully recognise the ECP as a qualification and welcome applications for membership from psychotherapists who have been awarded an ECP.

You can apply for membership of UKCP one of two ways. Either:

Apply via a UKCP accrediting organisational member in your modality

The organisational member through which you apply may ask you to show how you meet the CPD requirements of our five-yearly re-accreditation process. This is because all individual members on the UKCP register are required to complete a re-accreditation process every five years.

Click here to see a full list of UKCP accrediting organisational members and their contact details

OR

Apply directly via a UKCP college appropriate to your modality

UKCP Colleges are collections of members - organisational and individual - who share a philosophy of psychotherapy. Below are a list of UKCP colleges.

1. You'll need to inform the appropriate college that you will be applying for UKCP membership.

UKCP colleges are:

2. Please complete the application form below

Download the application form

You can return the form either by email to or by post to:

Membership Team
UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP)
2nd Floor
Edward House
2 Wakley Street
London EC1V 7LT

Please let us know if you encounter problems with your application process. While we cannot intervene with individual applications, we are keen to address any systemic problems you alert us to.

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