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Call for volunteers from UKCP email bulletin 5
There's more to professional life than statutory regulation ...
There is much debate in the counselling and psychotherapy professions about statutory regulation, discussion about the impact of NHS IAPT services, and proposals for changes in UKCP's role as an advocate for psychotherapists. In this edition of our email bulletin I ask for a few minutes of your attention for much less radical considerations.
UKCP's work as a national professional body
UKCP is, first and foremost, a national professional body. That means we do all those activities that you assume are done by professional bodies. That regular work includes:
- developing and updating standards of practice
- setting out principles and guidance on ethical issues
- inspecting and accrediting training organisations
- organising conferences and other professional events
- writing and publishing materials to inform and support professional practice
- reviewing developments inside and outside the profession and writing about their relevance for psychotherapy
- offering the advice of our profession to various government or other bodies.
This work needs to continue year in and year out, and UKCP relies on a band of volunteers to get the work done.
Voluntary work for the profession
This kind of voluntary work needs to be done by therapy professionals on behalf of their colleagues and the profession at large. It needs to stay grounded in an understanding of client work and professional training - but could not be more different from client work.
The rewards
The work has the potential to be about as rewarding or as unrewarding as it is possible to imagine! Certainly not rewarding in the financial sense - no fee, just out-of-pocket expenses. But you get the opportunity to make a personal and lasting improvement to psychotherapy at a national level, perhaps in an area that has long been important to you. In fact there is remarkable scope for personal initiative in a small professional body like UKCP - most of our work is driven forward by individuals with a bee in their bonnet. If you feel that there is an aspect of national professional life that deserves more attention, why not step forward and make something happen?
The frustrations
On the other hand there are unrewarding and frustrating aspects of working within a small national professional body. There is only modest office support, and most of the day-to-day work does not attract much recognition, let alone plaudits or fame. And there is some inevitable bureaucracy, especially in work that involves setting or changing national standards. One of UKCP's great strengths is that it encompasses many different psychotherapy modalities, but that increases the work needed to agree any arrangements across our various colleges. So, even though the work itself is immensely important to psychotherapy as a profession and to our clients, sometimes the process and progress can seem slow. Here there may be a similarity with your client work - not much of our best work is completed in just a couple of sessions!
Maintaining our normal business
In recent times huge amounts of the energy of psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic counselling have been consumed with major external issues. Statutory regulation and developments in NHS therapy services are seen by many as being of central importance to the future of our profession. Even though there might be good reason to make these external interfaces into priority political concerns, we must not neglect the maintenance of our normal business as a professional body. (If HPC regulation does not go ahead, our clients and members will continue to rely on UKCP as the highest national authority in the field of psychotherapy. And even if HPC regulation does go ahead, their model of regulation relies on there being a professional body that develops the standards and practice of the profession which HPC regulates. So our work as a professional body needs to be maintained whatever the outcome on statutory regulation.)
How to get involved
UKCP needs more volunteers for most of its areas of work. You can see some descriptions of our ongoing professional work on our website, for example under the governance and committee area. We have recently recruited very successfully for our work on IAPT, and on Diversity, Equalities and Social Responsibility. We now need to find fresh volunteers to help across all the other areas of UKCP's work. If you want to discuss options, then please do contact:
- the chair of the relevant committee (via ),
- one of the two UKCP vice-chairs (Tom Warnecke, Vice Chair Information And Member services, ; Philippa Whittick, Vice Chair Education, Training, Practice And Research, ),
- Andrew Samuels (),
- or me ().
We look forward to welcoming you into the little-known world of unsung heroes who do the real ongoing work that makes the profession a profession.
David Pink
UKCP chief executive
Voluntary and paid posts within UKCP
UKCP relies upon volunteers for much of its work. A list of current volunteer vacancies follows. UKCP occasionally advertisers paid posts, too, these vacancies are always listed on this site.
Voluntary posts:
Local network contacts (Link to advert in update document)
Paid posts:
There are currently no paid vacancies at UKCP.
UK Council for Psychotherapy | Registered Charity No. 1058545 | Company No. 3258939 Registered in England
