We’re pleased to share with you that the Professional Standards Authority has reaccredited our register for another 12 months.

The Authority reviews our processes annually focussing on our public protection work.

It examines how we uphold professional standards, including how we carry out our complaints procedure, and also looks at our financial status and governance processes.

The Authority has now released its report on our register’s reaccreditation, which runs from March 2021 until March 2022.

Among the feedback given, the report said the Authority “positively noted BACP’s approach to increasing diversity within the roles it registers and its aim to increase access to talking therapies.”

The Authority has made three recommendations of actions it believes could help to improve our register.

These are:

  • BACP should review its communications with parties involved in complaints processes to assure they are appropriate and sensitive to the matters under consideration.
  • BACP should review its processes to assure that parties to complaints are aware of their ability to request reasonable adjustments throughout the complaints processes and that any such requests are managed appropriately.
  • BACP should review its risk assessment processes to assure there is appropriate triage, monitoring and ability to take action to protect the public where necessary. This should include how parties to complaints are kept updated.

We’ll be sharing an update on our ongoing work in these areas with the Authority when we submit our report as part of next year’s accreditation process.

Read the full report

The Professional Standards Authority has also announced it’s to introduce a new ‘public interest’ test for health and care roles that are not subject to statutory regulation. This follows a consultation on the accredited registers programme that took place in early 2021.

Read the Authority’s announcement