- Darian Leader calls for a waaaahmbulance
- Regulation of Psychotherapy – why it matters
- Regulation of Psychotherapy – Who’s Against it
- Regulation of Psychotherapy – More from its opponents
- Psychotherapy self regulation – a licence to carry on abusing?
- Psychologists join the HPC register
- The sham of self-regulation
- Regulation of Psychotherapy – A Psychotherapist Responds (1)
- Regulation of Psychotherapy – A Psychotherapist Responds (2)
- Regulation of Psychotherapy – Response to Zarathustra
- Regulation of Psychotherapy – Another Arts Therapist struck off
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: The Maresfield Report (1)
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: Maresfield Report (2)
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: Something rotten in the state of Denmark?
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: Something Rotten in the State of Denmark (2)
- Professor Andrew Samuels caught lying about his role in abuse case
- An Open letter to the UKCP
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: UKCP document leaked to Mental Nurse
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: More on the leaked UKCP document
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: More leaks from the UKCP
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: Samuels’ Damascene Conversion
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: Therapist struck off by BACP, remains registered with UKCP
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: HPC calls UKCP critique “gobbledegook”
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: 85% of service users want statutory regulation
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: Acclaimed Journalist Calls for Psychotherapy Regulation
- Regulation of Psychotherapy: Charity Commission urges UKCP to seek legal advice
Yesterday I posted about the Maresfield Report, which offers a “devastating critique” (well, according to their press release) of the case for regulation of the psychotherapy profession by the Health Professions Council. Among other things they offer the stunning revelation that psychotherapists shouldn’t be regulated because, er, they aren’t required to abide by child protection or Protection of Vulnerable Adults legislation.
This really is quite an unbelievable claim on their part. If I stated in work that confidentiality could override child protection/POVA concerns, then I’d be hauled into supervision to have some very fundamental questions asked about whether I’m safe to practice. If I said it in a job interview, it would absolutely guarantee that I wouldn’t be offered the job. But here it is stated in a report that’s endorsed by no less than ten psychotherapy organisations – including the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, the Arbours Association, the Philadelphia Association and the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis.
The authors claim that this report is a “a major embarrassment to HPC”. It’s a major embarrassment to somebody, all right, but I’m not sure it’s the HPC.
I’ve been reading more of the report, and in between smacking my own head on a desk, I’ve discovered more examples of outright stupidity. So, ding-ding, Round Two of my critique of the Bible of Boswellox that is the Maresfield Report.
There’s some stuff in the report that’s a bit more valid than “but we don’t have to report if a child is being abused, do we?”. They point to inefficiencies in the HPC and backlogs of cases. This may well be true, but here’s thing about regulatory bodies. I moan about the Nursing and Midwifery Council all the time. Likewise, Fighting Monsters moans about the General Social Care Council. But neither I nor Fighting Monsters have any disagreement with the core aims and principles of the NMC or GSCC. We just want them to do their jobs better. I’m not saying the HPC is a perfect organisation. I’m just saying that they may be, to borrow a psychotherapy term, good enough.
A lot of their other claims are rather less valid. In fact, they’re downright silly.
Silly Claim#1
Although [the HPC's] complaints expenditure is the largest part of its budget, with £4.66m spent in 2009, only a tiny percentage of complaints from the public are heard each year. Of these, more than 70% are found to have no case to answer, compared with only 10% deemed to have no case to answer by one of the field’s main regulatory bodies, the UKCP. (page 6)
So, the HPC dismisses 70% of the complaints it hears from the public, whereas the UK Council for Psychotherapy upholds 90% of them? Wow, that’s a lot of psychotherapists that the UKCP is raking over the coals…
…except that the UKCP, unlike the HPC, doesn’t actually take complaints direct from the public. The UKCP is an umbrella organisation for 80 different psychotherapy organisations. You have to first go through the complaints procedure of the individual organisation that your therapist is registered with. Only after it’s been through the member organisation’s complaints process will the UKCP hear your complaint. If it’s gone all the way through one complaints procedure, and then on to the UKCP’s, then it’s inherently more likely to have substance to it than if it’s come straight from somebody writing in to the HPC.
Surely the authors of the report must know how UKCP complaints procedures work? After all, several of the signatory organisations (the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, the Arbours Association, the Cambridge Society for Psychotherapy, the Association for Group and Individual Psychotherapy etc) are UKCP member organisations themselves.
Silly Claim#2
They make great play of the fact that the HPC finds a case to answer in significantly more of the complaints that come from employers than they do of complaints that come from the public.
So, far from protecting the public, the HPC upholds the interests of employers of the practitioners it registers, whilst being funded by registrants rather than their employers. (page 40)
Well, yes that could be a conclusion one could draw from the fact that a complaint is more likely to be upheld if comes from an employer rather than a member of the public. It’s because the HPC is on the side of the fat cats.
Or, it could be because a complaint from an employer will already have gone through its own internal disciplinary procedures, and, as with complaints that have already been through a member organisation before going to the UKCP, it’s more likely to be a substantial case.
Silly (and possibly libellous) Claim#3
On page 30, there’s a few unpleasant, possibly even libellous insinuations about Witness, a charity that has been campaigning for HPC regulation of therapy.
Witness circulates stories to the media of abusive therapists and promotes the HPC as the solution to this, yet there have been questions as to the possible conflict of interest that may be involved in their approach, and the HPC’s collaboration with Witness as opposed to actual user groups. According to Companies House, Witness has been in administration for some time now and there have been concerns that if funding were to be a key issue for their survival, and if the DoH and even HPC were funding this organisation, there is the risk that Witness may not be in the best position to articulate critiques of HPC.
Love the phrasing there…”there have been questions”…”there have been concerns that”. Way to heavily imply something you’ve got absolutely no fucking evidence for! Classy.
As for “HPC’s collaboration with Witness as opposed to actual user groups”, well, Mind have been campaigning for HPC regulation for some time now, and they’re heavily user-oriented.
I could do more fact-checking of the report’s claims, but the more I read of this ridiculous publication the more I’m losing the will to live. Maybe I need therapy for it.
All I can say is, with such stunning logic employed by the Maresfield Report, it’s no surprise they’ve received such overwhelming interest from the media.
The level of spin/bullshit in the report is familiar to me from my own writing.
However, I enjoy the Office of Holy Fool and my position is well sign-posted as well as branded on my buttocks. No-one, except a Commissioner from the US’s Federal Health and Human Services, could ever really mistake my modest turds of wisdom for the real hot jobbies.
I say without any facetiousness that the quality of the material in the report presented in a debate of vital importance for the welfare of extremely vulnerable people, is sufficient to demand they’re all given a bloody good going over.
They’ve attempted to debate with the grown-ups and have failed miserably.
The Victory is ours. But not very many people care. Only a crippled administration on its last legs could possible fail to put the boot in to a bunch of Beardy Tossers when presented with so many waxed scrota.
‘ang ‘em all!
Hi me again.
Thank you guys for keeping this alive and for desperately trying to raise interest in something that at some point affects the welfare of so many people.
As you know I am not a professional report reader, other than overnight ratings for X factor, nor do I have any expertise in report preperation or presentation. I have certainly never been in a position of having to compile an authoritive report that opposes legislation and is intended to influence national debate at the highets level. But as such I must congratulate the producers of the Maresfield Report for proving that there are very serious problems in the education system for the training and recognition of psychotherapists. With all their professorships, doctorates, financial nouse, intellect, years of “hands on” experience, years of self regualtion experience and expertise, legal clout etc they have managed to produce a report that offers zilch evidence for their case, has no reference points for their claims nor seems to have any basis in evidential fact.This thesis would not even get me a bachelors – which makes me wonder how they got theirs – oh yes, that’s right they give them to each other don’t they
Their ignorance of their own self regulatory structures and the actual way in which the HPC actually work is borderline negiligence towards their own clients – but then their actual real paying clients (as they call them note NOT patients) always seems to be at the bottom of their list of priorities. Why else would they propose a complaints structure, and presently operate one, that is designed specifically to bully the complainant into submitting to a compromise without any recourse to legal sanction other than the get out of “well if you’ve been ripped off or rpaed go to the police not us”.
As my specific area of knowledge is the Gale case, I was the original complainant to both the HPC and the UKCP. I am surprised that not a single one of the Maresfield sect (great they’ve now given themself a name like all good cults) seems to have taken on board any of the hearing notes or comments. For example the case of protective clothing in psychotherapy – which you all seem to have dismissed as some sort of joke or irrelevant. One of the complainants in the Gale case sustained a head injury during a “psychodrama” conducted and supervised by Gale. Gale acknowledged that people were often injured in his psychodrama workshops through their own fault (yes, please read that again you read it right the first time) but he was not responsible because he always said at the opening that no one should do anything they did not want to do. Although this was never evidentially proven and even in his own made video psychodrama presentation he did not say this nor did he say it in a previous “training” video he had made. He acknowledges that he encouraged aggressive actions and that quite violent pushing and shoving occurred. He acknowledged carpet burns and minor bruising were frequent especially if “the girls didn’t wear appropriate clothing”. He encouraged particularly female clients to push their way through walls of male clients who had been told to resist as forcfully as possible. It’s all in the transcripts for anyone who wants to read it. So the HPC quite properly did not question his motives nor methodology of therapy, they did not even ask what modality justified this level of aggressive violent interaction between clients where bruising and carpet burns were frequent and acknowledged. Instead they quite rightly questioned him rigourously on his ability to appropriately risk assess. Why had there been no crash mats provided? Why did this activity take place in a room with an open fireplace that the client could hit their head on? Why had inappropriate clothing been allowed? And here’s the cruncher……..why had he not considered the provision of protective clothing, knee pads, elbow pads and… maybe even boxing style helmets? His answer…… “I am running a psychodrama not a paintball game”. By all accounts he was, and still is, running group bullying and what the cousins call “hazing”. But you see the important thing is that the HPC DID suggest that it is appropriate for a psychotherapist to evaluate the safety of their clients by the use of protective clothing – so that clause suddenly doesn’t look so funny does it when you consider Gale was deliberately harming his clients? Any ethical practioner of dramatherapy or psychodrama would want to properly risk assess all group activities and properly moderate them with the provision of protective clothing if required.
I am still wading through the Maresfield Report and like Zarathusa banging my head at almost every parpagraph but then my paranoid thought reform motivated cult beliefs kick in and I understand that what we actually have here is the bible of their sect. Gimme Scientology anytime – Dianetics for beginners is amuch better read and just as incomprehensibly dumb.
Cheers
for now.
H
H.,
It is important that people like you and Z produced reasoned responses and refrain from my own personal psycho-drama/response of head butting the wall while screaming “Why the f— won’t someone do something about this?”. Ranting mad men aren’t Recognised by those in Power.
But, (the cynic gagged momentarily), it is my experience that the people who Matter in debates of this sort – Ministers and Civil Servants will be amenable to coherent, scientific/rational lobbying.
A solid evidence base is also de rigueur these days, so don’t forget the references.
And remember, Those Who Matter, probably number in the tens or a few score – not hundreds or thousands. Identifying the right people and focusing the effort is critical.
There endeth the first Lesson. [from Socrates New Rules For Radicals]
Socrates – I admire your stance, but recent experience of Prof Nutt and the drug advice gang he headed suggests that your observation “Ministers and Civil Servants will be amenable to coherent, scientific/rational lobbying” is, sadly, not true in these days of the last gasping sighs of this benighted administration.
Yes, I had forgotten to factor in Nutt.
I admit my personal experience is limited to the Dept. of Health and the ONS – and they were certainly prepared to act on good evidence.
The Home Office, well they’re playing to the Hanging and Flogging Brigade – it was either execute anyone wearing a hoodie or wack a hippie. The hippies lost.
Hmmm when I shopped around for a therapist in the last 90s in Cambridge, I got through quite a few before I found one who was any good. Some practiced a variety of therapy that wasn’t going to be useful to me and said as much after a short discussion, but others were just idiots or arseholes or both. My favourite was the one who insisted that I book 6 sessions at once, and that if I failed to turn up, even if I gave weeks of notice, say, when I was going on holiday, for any of them, I would have to pay. Otherwise I would have to do without for those 6 weeks. Plus he would have the right to discharge me if I opted not to take a particular 6 week block. He also asked for the money at the start of each session. After 3 session I realised he was an irritating pain in the arse as well so I told him so and left.
Excellent comments DeeDee. Your words remind me that – as with any service – there will be times when the consumer cannot get what he or she wants. If this is so, they are free to take their custom elsewhere. The critical point is how we best ensure that consumers get what they want. The answer, as with any good or service, is free competition. There is no right to a good psychotherapist per se. There is, however, a right that the consumer gets what they are contractually entitled to. How contracts are enforced is a political matter, and the application to a particular field (say, psychotherapy) requires no special rules other than the general one of upholding contract.
My general opinion is that we should all be very afraid of the state taking more control of any matter. If and when people realise that the state might have an incentive to take its own interests more seriously than the interests of individuals, it is already too late.