SCoPEd
A ground-breaking shared framework for our profession

It’s been collaboratively developed and adopted by the Partnership of Counselling and Psychotherapy Bodies (PCPB), which represent approximately 75,000 counsellors and psychotherapists and who are all Professional Standards Authority accredited organisations.  

PCPB partners have all aligned their membership categories to the framework.

For BACP our:

• registered membership category is aligned to column A
• accredited membership category is aligned to column B
• senior accredited membership is aligned to column C.

Whatever your membership category, you’ll still be able to:

• provide the services you currently do
• practise competences in other SCoPEd columns providing you have the right skills, knowledge, training and experience to do so

The diverse range of backgrounds, approaches, philosophies and professional training that our members bring to their work is a huge strength of the counselling and psychotherapy landscape. The SCoPEd framework reflects this – enhancing and enabling a credible, diverse and thriving counselling and psychotherapy profession. 

It provides greater clarity about the wide range of skills, knowledge, training and experience that our members have and will help counselling and psychotherapy be better understood, valued and trusted by clients, employers, commissioners and society.  It helps to distinguish qualified therapists from other unqualified and unskilled people promoting themselves as therapists. 

The SCoPEd framework is an important step as part of our wider work to deliver several of our members’ priorities – to set standards for the profession, protect clients from unsafe or unethical practice and provide members with the resources and support needed to practice.  

It’s also a way for BACP and the wider profession to engage effectively with and to demonstrate the value of counselling and psychotherapy to employers, commissioners and government.  

We believe the SCoPEd framework enables BACP registered, accredited and senior accredited members to have greater access to more opportunities to provide professional help for people across society.  

To view the SCoPEd framework and for more information about PCPB visit pcpb.org.uk