Lynne Gabriel

This year our conference theme is Your Conference, Your Profession. We increasingly need to be responsive to one another, to our clients and to the wider public. With the ever-changing professional landscape, keeping abreast of movements and developments is no mean feat today - hence the value in gathering within a conference setting, as diverse providers, service users, commissioners of counselling and psychotherapy services, allied health practitioners, psychological therapists, or interested members of the wider public.

Across the conference curriculum, we will consider a range of topics of relevance to the profession. Not only will the conference engage you with contemporary issues in the professional and regulatory landscape, it will also give you the opportunity to develop your professional ‘toolbox', learn about developments in your sector and keep abreast of the legal and ethical issues which may affect your work.

We have an excellent range of keynote and seminar events. On Friday 9 October, Scott Miller, an indomitable researcher and practitioner, as well as an outstandingly entertaining speaker, offers the keynote address. On Saturday 10 October, we have a lively panel debate on The Future of the Profession. In addition to keynotes and seminars, we have the important BACP business event - our AGM. Please join us at the AGM to hear the outcome of elections to the Board, to accept and adopt the company accounts, to hear about what BACP has been doing over the past year and to note plans for the next.

With plans and next steps in mind, our profession increasingly requires us to be more socially and politically aware. Whilst some might argue that politics and therapy do not meet or mix, in our working lives as practitioners, in our meetings with clients or patients, in our own therapy processes, it is difficult not to encounter or experience the influences of the wider social and political context. Through Government initiatives such as Improving Access to Psychological Therapy and in the run-up to the statutory regulation of counselling and psychotherapy, all of us involved in the provision of psychological therapy services are challenged to consider the future of counselling and psychotherapy and the wider environment in which it sits.

Please come and join us in the beautiful and vibrant city of Newcastle on the 9 and 10 October 2009, for what promises to be an exciting, engaging, informative and thought-provoking event.

Your Conference, Your Profession ...... Your Future.

Lynne Gabriel