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About the Author
About Ian Thompson, BACP's Equality and Diversity Advisor
One man and his identity
Who do you think you are, is a question that may resonate with individuals from minority groups more directly than many others, as children, students and adults. Ian Thompson reflects on some of the experiences that have shaped his identity and outlines how he hopes to influence our profession.
Home from university one sunny Easter holiday I was walking to the dry cleaners when I noticed a car slowing down and heard shouting from that direction ‘Oi, what‘s your name?'. I looked around to see that this was directed at me! I chose to ignore it. As I continued walking the car suddenly went into reverse and: ‘Hey, I'm talking to you, what's your name?' I nervously chose to ignore both the question. By now the car was within a few feet of me I noticed two middle aged men glaring at me, once more he shouted ‘hey' we're C.I.D. tell us your name?' ‘Er, I, know my rights, I don't have to tell you if I don't want to.'
The next few seconds were a blur. The door suddenly opened and I was pushed into the back of that car. Hysterically, I shouted and screamed ‘lemme out, what are you doing, you can't do this!' The passenger, a giant with greying hair, told me to ‘shut up and be quiet', whilst nonchalantly telling the driver to go straight to ‘the nick'. At the police station my pockets were emptied and I was put in a cell. My new surroundings was dark, grubby and smelly. ‘If you need attention press here' read the sign under the buzzer. My finger was sore by the time anyone gave me some attention. ‘What do you want? said the woman police constable (wpc), ‘To get out of here, you're supposed to let me have a phone call, why am I here, you can't do this, you racist bastards?' I said angrily in an attempt to hide my tears. ‘Be quiet, someone will see to you shortly'. The wpc shut the flap.
Ninety minutes later the cell door opened and the same giant told me to follow him. For a split second I thought about protesting. I met a duty solicitor who explained the charge. Charged for what, walking down the street?' ‘I haven't done a thing' I shouted, ‘it's them' pointing to the police, ‘who should be charged.' ‘Calm down, calm down,' the solicitor responded, ‘let's take this one step at a time.' After a few minutes I was calm enough to listen. There had been a theft several days ago from a Department store and the perpetrator apparently ‘looked like me'. The giant asked me where I had been that particular day, I told him that I was studying in London at the time and that I had returned to the area only yesterday. The Giant responded with ‘oh you can go then'. My anger returned tenfold, ‘go, what do you mean I can go? All I was doing was walking down the street and you lock me up for two hours because I looked like someone, do you do this to every white person that looks like someone?' Ian, the solicitor, tried in vain to calm the situation down. ‘I can't believe how racist you are; you won't get away with this'. Oh how the Giant must have recalled those words to his colleagues over a pint or two...
I always wondered how people perceived me: from my early school years when I used to play and even instigate ‘eeny, meeny, miny, moe' recalling in shock and disbelief in my teens when I discovered the rhyme's full meaning, to attending secondary school, colleges and university where I was overlooked for awards, football teams and educational progression. At times I tired of challenging the system and whilst not assimilating, shrugged my shoulders and adopted the ‘just getting on with it' attitude. Did my peers see me as a threat, or was I just not good or intelligent enough to receive awards, accolades or recognition for my educational prowess?
Whilst at college, a colleague, David, did not complete an assignment, ‘too many beers' over the weekend was his excuse. I gave him my assignment, typed in a smart document holder and reminded him not to plagiarise too much. David returned after a couple of hours with three pieces of A4 in his back pocket. After viewing it, I advised him to hand in the assignment the following week but he wanted to ‘get it out the way', assuming he would accept a poor grade and work harder for the next assignment.
Guess what? When the grades were handed out David's grade was higher than mine. Easily solved, you may think, he may have only used the essential elements of the assignment and presented it more clearly and concisely. Not so, his assignment was unmistakeably poor. Furthermore, it was David who actually pushed me into reporting this to the Principal. ‘Yes, can I hep you young man?' he beamed. ‘I, er, I think one of your lecturers may be marking in a discriminatory manner.' ‘How dare you suggest such a thing? My staff are the salt of the earth, what gave you such a notion?' I told him almost shamefacedly how David used my work and acquired a higher grade. Long silence, when it was broken he told me that he would ‘look into it'. Nothing happened, no lecturer or Tutor spoke to me. I received an ‘A' for my next assignment; and the following assignment another A grade. Even more perplexing, in other modules I started getting straight A's too. This went on over a considerable period even when I put hardly any effort into the assignment. I did not even sit the exam. I received my grade for the final completed assignment which I did put a lot of work into and received a ‘D'. I took this as a clear message...
1999 I started my Counselling education. The Tutor, who was also a practising Counsellor, immediately gave me that unconditional positive regard we humans crave: the dignity, respect and space to be educated in an environment that was both positive and nurturing. This was something I had never experienced outside of the family home and the feeling was both surreal and yet natural. Was this the norm for Counsellors to be totally accepting of BME people/clients? What was it that distinguished them from the hordes of previous Tutors? For the first time I truly felt it was alright to be me, Ian Thompson, a guy searching for answers to questions such as why am I here, what is my purpose, do I have a calling, and, importantly, a sense of identity? For the first time I felt alive.
It was an easy decision to continue with Counselling. When I embarked on my Masters Degree in Counselling at Durham University, I was astounded that out of over 30 students I was the only visible minority, the others were five Greeks and one Irish student. So started my quest to ascertain why so few minorities engaged within the Counselling. Yes I was in Durham County, where you would often hear the age old adage ‘no problem here' in reference to the debate of the lack of ethnic minority initiatives, yet Durham University attracts over 3000 international students from over 120 countries, so where were the visible minority students? This is not the fault of Counselling, or is it?
Should Counselling and other therapeutic bodies do more to encourage and promote diversity within the profession? Yes, is an obvious answer but this issue is not unique to the counselling profession. Across industries, many a boardroom discuss the issues of widening the participation of women, sexual minorities and black and minority ethnic (BME) population and attempt to dispel the notion of institutionalised racism or a glass ceiling with minorities in their field. My concern as a student was regarding the low numbers of BME taking up counselling as a profession. During the course of my counselling education the 30+ students who started the course whittled down to approximately 15 who graduated with a Masters presented by the then Chancellor the late Sir Peter Ustinov. My sense was that it was when our lecturer said that this would be a good time to experience counselling as a client that many students ‘jumped ship'.
Me, I could hardly wait for my appointment with a counsellor. As I made contact with ‘Jayne' the residential counsellor at my GP's surgery, I was thinking what kind of response Jayne would have when I walked into the therapy room as my voice does not distinguish my identity as a black male. Personally, I felt that that it should not matter however, life had taught me that it most certainly does. I walked into the room with trepidation looking for Jayne to look coolly surprised, nope, she welcomed and put me at ease in a matter of seconds. I did not have to resort to a ‘yeah, that's right, I'm black, do we have a problem here?' Not that I have done that before but it is something I have often thought in hindsight. The remarkable thing that endeared me to Jayne was that she checked out with me aspects of my unique culture. Not just issues of race but more importantly, my being. If I had any doubts about counselling as a career they were dispelled within these few moments. It was one of those times when you just know, when everything feels right. After the standard six sessions it was time to end. I did not realise that I had difficulty with endings until then. The feeling was mutual in that Jayne expressed sadness also. In hindsight, I realised that it was unconditional, very positive regard and natural warmth that enabled me to be myself to establish and reaffirm my identity as Ian Thompson, suave, sophisticated, glamorous and did I say a wannabe comedian?
My first position as a counsellor was for a school within a secure unit for young people remanded by the courts for either criminal or welfare reasons. What would my clients think of me and more importantly what did I think of my potential clients? During my tenure there, my prejudices far outweighed my clients. Did I tar my clients with the same brush regardless of their individual qualities or failings? Did I adopt a stance of social prejudice? I will be brave and acknowledge, yes I did. I had not known what to expect. I first had to set up the counselling element of the service which was over three months after I was employed. In this time I met and chatted to almost every young person at the centre. I came to know their thoughts, beliefs, and their own sense of identity, their background, hopes and fears. I was humbled by these young people who told me their individual stories that brought them to this home from home. What shone through was their tenacity, their struggle that I had never thought existed. Then again why should I think that their young lives have experienced struggle? Surely, only adults struggle with the congestion of life's turmoil, the politics, the economics, the social deprivation, the endearing human struggle? Yet here I was with young people who had experienced greater hardship in their early years than most of us will endure in our entire lives. Did they warrant me as a school counsellor, moreover did I warrant being their counsellor? I had to make damn sure I did. Together, with their help, we designed our own counselling room. Top of the list was a beanbag, blue was the colour and ‘Speakeasy' the name.
The Speakeasy was no seedy juke joint that operated without the authority's knowledge, the term came from the view that they would be able to speak quietly and easy about their fears, hopes and concerns. It was a huge success, I attribute this to the young people designing the service for themselves the way they wanted, a place where they could take ‘time out' and chat about their concerns with someone who made no judgements about them. They needed a place to ‘check out' these thoughts and seemed to find this at the Speakeasy. As soon as I opened the door to start counselling, there was competition as to who could run and jump the highest and land on the giant bean bag. Getting young people to ‘open up' had never been so easy.
The issue of ownership was without doubt the key ingredient in ensuring ‘take-up' of the service. If I had setup, designed and named the service myself and just expected young people to use it, it would not have been so popular. My question is this: - Why cannot counselling services enlist the help of vulnerable, marginalised or hard to reach groups or communities in creating and designing services that they would feel comfortable using? It is a simple case of being ‘market orientated', providing what the customer wants rather than the old fashioned product orientated or ‘Henry Ford notion of ‘any colour as long as it's black' which did not do poor Henry any favours when the Japanese decided to give the customers what they actually wanted. Ensuring that marginalised groups views are taken into consideration when designing services makes ethical, political, moral and social sense
Within colleges and universities, the student population is approximately 2.5 million; at least 10% being international students. Thus Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) students together with International students tend to make up a high proportion of those accessing counselling services. As AUCC represents over 600 members, the obvious question is: how do these counsellors ensure their competence in working with BME students? Will their core conditions be enough during therapy?
Within counselling education little or no regard is paid towards a specific diversity module. What concerns me is the dearth of BME counsellors within the AUCC. With a membership boasting approximately 600 strong, the numbers of BME members is close to 30, this equates to only 5%,. What can be done to address the situation? Fortunately, this concern has been acknowledged by the AUCC Executive committee and together with Ruth Caleb we are discussing initiatives to ensure correct systems and processes are put into place to recruit more BME individuals both onto the Committee itself and into the profession
During my short tenure at BACP as the Equality & Diversity Advisor, I have already uncovered concerns from counselling students on the lack of diversity training. To help expedite this, I am in the process of developing an Equality and Diversity Accreditation scheme that will enable individual members to acquire an Equality certification. This would then inform clients and prospective clients that the counsellor has taken up further professional development to learn, understand and be more competent in working with diverse clients. This could be used as a marketing tool to inform prospective clients that the counsellor has accreditation with regards to Equality and Diversity good practice. Though accreditation does not enable the counsellor to speak in the mother tongue of every nationality, hopefully it will provide confidence in the counsellor that they have a demonstrable capability and competency around issues of diversity. This may in turn instil confidence in the client. This can only be as effective as the quality of the relationship as in reality, if someone possessed all the equality and diversity accreditation but remained unable to provide the core conditions, a client from any background would struggle to find confidence in the process.
To have an opportunity to influence individual and organisational culture, raise awareness of equality and diversity within the profession, and to provide an advisory role of the management of equality and diversity initiatives within BACP, gives me professional as well as personal gratification. It allows me to be at the heart to influence change at BACP, a profession that I signed up to because of the value that I place on counselling.
The first changes always should and will be made at ‘home' within BACP itself, looking at internal policies, behaviour and culture. When our ‘own house' is in order, the aspects of the wider profession will be perused. IAPT to me is not just about improving the provision of psychological therapies in the treatment of depression and anxiety. I interpret it to improve access to psychological therapies for marginalised groups such as BME, sexual minorities, those with disabilities, younger/older people and offenders who for whatever reason do not access counselling or psychological therapies as much as they could.
I thought a good place to start would be to meet up with specific groups to ask questions around ‘what can and should BACP be doing in respect of encouraging more take up of psychological services from members within their remit?' I attend the Black and Asian Therapist Network (BAATN) and met Dominic Davies from Pink Therapy to ask these such questions. I am also conducting a feasibility study to look at developing training packages for Colleges and Universities around aspects of Equality and Diversity. This came about as a number of students and educational bodies have contacted me for direction for attaining best practice around this issue. Their concern is the lack of education and/or awareness around Equality and Diversity within the curriculum. They expressed a need in wanting to be assured of their own competence in working with diverse clients. Other initiatives will follow in due course so watch this space!
Ian Thompson, Diversity & Equality Advisor, BACP