Appendix - Member institutions

Past and present

The need for Member Institutions arises from two features of UKCP as it now is:

The essential place of Sections within UKCP. This has come about because of the diversity of modalities and trainings eligible for UKCP accreditation. Hitherto the centre has set generic standards and criteria for UKCP membership, and would have found it too difficult to set and oversee the implementation of specific rules on training/qualification standards for every Member Organisation (MO). Sections have therefore been indispensable for the organisation and implementation of rule-making for MOs. At the same time the existence of Sections has ensured that different modalities have been heard and respected, and that UKCP as an umbrella has been big enough to encompass the diversity of the profession. It is widely held opinion that these historic reasons for the existence of Sections make a compelling case for a organisational entity with at least as great a role in the future.
The ambiguity of Sections’ status. Although existing essentially as an organisational device to break an otherwise unmanageable span of control, Sections have of necessity exercised some executive and administrative activity, incurred expense and generated income, as if with autonomy. Yet legally they are a part of and an extension of UKCP itself, giving rise to a gap in the proper control and accountability of any corporate or charitable body. This anomalous status needs to be cleared up: legal incorporation as a MI is one answer.

Future scenarios

With statutory regulation getting closer there are additional reasons for establishing Sections as legal entities.

UKCP may cease to exist after statutory registration comes into effect. Those UKCP functions now undertaken by the Registration Board and of acting as the coordinator and final point of appeal for complaints, will pass to the Statutory Regulator (probably the Health Professions Council (HPC)). UKCP would then be left with few functions: overseeing of standards/rules and their enforcement; and activities that promote the whole UKCP membership (in the main those now being managed under the Service Development Committee). These remaining functions might then best be dealt with at modality level – i.e. by Member Institutions, each on a par with those institutions just named. And insofar as any one Section/MI chooses this route, as BABCP are perhaps doing, it becomes the more attractive for others to do the same
Alternatively UKCP might be able to reinvent itself as a super-umbrella, embracing say BCP, BACP, BPS, so that the profession could for the first time speak with one voice. However its role thus transformed might well be very limited indeed, perhaps no more than a talking shop Council with little if any power or resources. The real organisations might be at the next level
Even if UKCP still existed with a role that allowed that of the MI to be minimal the Member Institution might not see a need to remain a part of it, provided of course it was confident its entitlement to statutory registration with HPC was not prejudiced. The larger/stronger the MI the more such a possibility would be feasible. Hence, in the changing environment, Sections/MI s may also be active in seeking mergers to form larger units, paving the way for the demise of UKCP (since above all else duplication of function, with all the confusion, conflict and expense implied must be avoided)
Another possibility is that smaller MIs, or any Sections and MOs that choose not to become a MI, might find themselves as the residual members of a much smaller, UKCP. Such a UKCP, size and role-limited, would then itself in reality be nothing more than a MI, albeit without in all probability a single modality, and would need to rename itself appropriately.

The potential role of the MI; and some boundary issues

In most of the scenarios above a MI is likely to need to be able to stand alone. It would probably take on or develop some or all of these wider functions:

As the primary standard setting, rule-making and monitoring body for the trainings which it accredits
As a centre for the development of theory and practice, and/or for trainings, within the boundaries of the MI’s modality or client group
Being proactive in the provision of CPD whether for its members alone or competing in the general commercial market for such services
Acting as the accrediting body for individuals who complete/qualify in trainings that fall within the MI’s jurisdiction; and therefore
Holding a register of individual members
Reaccredidation likewise
Having a role in the complaints process, either taking on the role of a defence organisation for the therapist, or in processing the complaint in place of a MO
As an external voice in the promotion of the modality whether in the interests of the public, or of the MI’s membership, or both.

This list of functions would take time to evolve, during which great care would need to be taken as to:

Avoiding duplication of role with either UKCP or MOs
Resolving the functions taken over by an MI from its MOs. Some MOs may willingly pass this responsibility upwards on grounds of efficiencies of scale; others may fervently wish to retain them, for fear of loss of identity – issues that would be a matter for each MI and its MOs to thrash out
Defining its role in relation to those MOs that have trainings and membership categories not eligible for current UKCP registration and (??) maybe not statutory regulation
As with UKCP, an MI would need organisationally to separate the roles of standards and rule-making from those of provision of services
The appropriateness of charitable status: if the role is oriented towards services for members (whether organisations or individuals) and/or if commercial activities are engaged in, then charitable status is likely to be lost.

Rupert Tower
Executive Director

Suite 709, 19-21 Crawford Street, London, W1H 1PJ Tel: 08450 045359