BABCP Announce Revised Guidelines and Standards
New "Guidelines for Good Practice of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy"
All members of BABCP are required to adhere to the "guidelines for good practice of behavioural and cognitive psychotherapy" but after 35 years, these are about to change.
The original "Guidelines" were drawn up in 1974 by a small BABP (cognitions weren't thought about then!) working group in response to a government enquiry into abuse at a mental health hospital, allegedly from behaviour modification techniques employed. BABP offered evidence to the enquiry in the form of what we considered to be the standards expected of our members using behavioural psychotherapy.
These then became the "Guidelines for Good Practice" and the existing 350 members of BABP were required to sign that they accepted them and would endeavour to adhere to them. All subsequent members joining BAB(C)P have been required to do the same as a criterion for membership. There was a philosophical discussion at the time that the guidelines could not be called "ethics" so they never became an ethical code. Reference has always been made in the guidelines to most members additionally being bound by a code of practice of their core profession so detailed statements of general ethical and legal principles were not included in the guidelines.
Only minor changes have been made to the guidelines over the years to accommodate such issues as "cognitive" being introduced, accreditation commencing and changing views on political correctness. However, in recent years there have been increasing numbers of BABCP members who have not been bound by a code of ethics of a professional body and it is felt that our guidelines are inadequate as a stand alone document. The BABCP Board therefore decided in 2007 to update our "Guidelines" to make them more comprehensive for those members. Coincidentally, the Health Professions Council (HPC) had recently revised their code of ethics for registrants, calling it "Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics". The Board considered that BABCP should base its revised guidelines on the HPC Standards and give it a similar title. This will be particularly useful when psychotherapy becomes regulated by HPC and BABCP members requiring to register with HPC as psychotherapists will already be bound by similar standards.
In adapting the HPC standards, we have used all fourteen ‘duties' they list but enhanced some of them regarding issues such as confidentiality, consent, advertising and clinical supervision. We have also added a fifteenth section (section 2) which deals with issues specific to CBT such as assessment, formulation, measurement and procedures all of which are largely taken from our existing "Guidelines". Members wishing to view the original HPC standards document for comparison, can find it at:
www.hpc-uk.org/aboutregistration/standards/standardsofconductperformanceandethics/
The new BABCP standards document has gone through six drafts to its present form having been considered by a working group and then bounced to and fro between the National Committees Forum (NCF) and the Board of Trustees and finally sent to the whole membership for consultation before this final document is presented to the AGM in Exeter on 16th July for confirmation.
The final document is below for all members to see what they will be voting on at the AGM.
The proposed new Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics in the Practice of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies can be viewed here
Howard Lomas