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• There is a great new game doing the rounds, and you have probably already played it without realising. It is a variation on the game you might have played as a child, or at very bad parties, called Whispers. If you remember, you sit in a circle and one person whispers something to the next person, and so on. By the end of the circle the last person says out loud what they have heard, and everyone laughs hysterically because it is so funny. Honestly. Well, that’s how I remember it anyway, and given that I now try to avoid those sorts of parties, I haven’t much recent experience. Funny how the mind plays tricks over time.

  I digress though. The current variation is called Regulatory Whispers. You will know when you are playing it because you will be talking to someone – perhaps at a conference, or at work, or at a really bad party – and the sentence will usually begin with, ‘I’ve heard that…’ There will then follow some horror story about how, once regulation is in place, all counsellors will be made to wear paper suits, or psychotherapists will all drive top of the range saloons whereas counsellors will be consigned to pushbikes. Or how person-centred counsellors will be flogged weekly on street corners by cognitive behavioural counsellors. Actually, that one might be true.

  But it speaks of fear and apprehension though, and something about an uncertain changing future for us all. Regulation seems to be a particularly thorny place to sit in, and sitting on the fence doesn’t seem to help either. So I won’t. My position is that I was initially against regulation because I felt that it was all about the professionalisation of something that should sit outside of such regulatory parameters – that is to say, the intricacies and intimacies of a human relationship. How can calling myself a Registered Counsellor, or Psychotherapist or Psychological Therapist, or whatever we will be called, really make a difference to how I am in the room with someone distressed and uncertain of their own future? In the same way that calling myself a BACP Accredited Counsellor/Psychotherapist doesn’t really make a difference to what I do or how I am, or ultimately the quality of relationship I offer my clients. Surely any desire for regulation must stem from my own need to be important and taken seriously?

  The reality is that regulation per se will not rid our profession of poor practitioners. OK, people won’t simply be able to have a brass plaque made with their name on it with some spurious qualifications and call themselves a counsellor anymore; we all know that some who create the greatest damage can be in apparently respected and accepted positions of trust. However, it has sort of dawned on me that this is missing the point. So, after much thought I am now in favour of regulation and believe (hope) that, in principle, it will bring benefits rather than costs to our work.

  In the words available, let me say a little more about what I mean. As a counsellor I believe in the importance of containment and of clearly articulated boundaries for my work. I agree these with clients before I begin counselling, and stick to them in the knowledge that they will help protect us both at times of difficulty. I believe that I should be accountable for what I do – not only to my clients, my employers, my supervisors and my colleagues – but also to a wider notion of society and community (yes, I do believe in society). 

  As a client, I like to know that my counsellor is held within an agreed professional baseline of good practice. More importantly, I would like to know that if things became really difficult, they would remain accountable to those baselines and not simply have the option of opting out – resigning their membership of their professional body, for example – simply because they didn’t like the rules anymore. I would want the same for my friends and family who seek therapeutic support too. This is partly why, as a practitioner,I believe that regulation will not necessarily create the harm we fear.

  As practitioners, however, we do need a constant supply of good quality, reliable and full information to help us make up our own minds and re-structure our work accordingly, if necessary. Without it we have only whispers, and that tends not to be so funny when so much depends on it.  

   

• Andrew Reeves is a counsellor at the University of Liverpool Counselling Service and editor of Counselling and Psychotherapy Research (CPR).