** Calling all BACP members – please vote to support Resolution 2 in the 2022 AGM motions and resolutions process ** – VOTING CLOSES 9th September 2022!
Dear BACP member
Myself (Maria Albertsen – CTUK founder) and Marvis Stewart (CTUK member) recently submitted a resolution to BACP asking them to take a firm stance against counsellor exploitation with regards to paid work.
Can you vote and help us to make a difference?
How to vote: On Monday 8th August 2022 BACP sent all members an email with the link to vote. Look for an email from BACP Chair / Mi-Voice. If you didn’t receive this email them please do email BACP and ask them to send yours.
Everything you need to know about the resolution is just below
Thanks, as always, for your ongoing support.
Maria
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Vote for Resolution 2
RESOLUTION: “Unpaid volunteering jobs aimed at BACP registered and qualified counsellors remain an issue within our profession. We ask BACP to take a firm stance against counsellor exploitation and communicate with organisations advertising such jobs to make them aware of the importance of paying qualified therapists a decent, proportionate wage.“
Proposer: Marvis Stewart
Seconder: Maria Albertsen
Summary – the call to action
As unpaid volunteering positions aimed at BÄCP registered and qualified counsellors continue to be an issue within our profession, we ask that BACP takes a firm stance against counselor exploitation, We ask that BACP communicates with organisations advertising such positions to make them aware of the value of qualified BACP members and the importance of paying counsellors a fair, decent, proportionate wage.
We ask for BACP’s Workforce Employment Strategy Lead to engage with these organisations in order to send a clear message that BACP does not support unpaid work for their qualified members.
Additional Information
Big counseling organisations and chanties continue to advertise for placements and other unpaid roles for qualified bacp members. Qualified members continue to shoulder the costs of professional liability insurance, clinical supervision, professional membership and other outgoing costs while being asked to work for free. These roles push out the very edge of what is considered volunteering by stating a minimum term of up to two years, At the very extreme some counselors are actually charged a monthly fee by some organisations to volunteer for them, and in effect, they are literally paying to work for nothing.
BACP members are paying to work and risking increased debt to work unpaid roles which do not offer the legal protections of employed positions. This is unacceptable, counselors are people that also need to financially support themselves and often others.
Many qualified counsellors indeed choose to volunteer their skills and services when and how they can, and everyone should have the right to do so. BACP has stated that they find it unfair and unreasonable that qualified counsellors are finding themselves in a position to take unpaid work and that they believe the promotion of voluntary jobs or roles for qualified counselors contributes to the underfunding of counselling services. It is time for BACP, the largest counselling and psychotherapy membership body, to action this statement in measurable ways. We ask that BACP helps other organisations understand that when a counselor has achieved their qualification, it means they are indeed qualified to work and as such require payment for their work.
If this resolution is successful, the BACP Workforce Employment Strategy Lead will support members through actioning the following processes:
1. For the BACP Workforce Employment Strategy Lead to put together a working group to discuss, assess and create an action plan to tackle this issue. This group should consist at least three BACP members who are qualified therapists and selected via an interview process.
2. For the BACP Workforce Employment Strategy Lead to share said action plan with members as well as their strategy to address this issue within a reasonable time scale.
3. For the working group to actively research and communicate with any organisation that knowingly or unknowingly is using the accreditation loophole to ask for unpaid work from qualified counsellors.
4. We ask that the BACP working group create a letter and or statement template which strongly discourages the perpetuation of inequality and poverty by asking members to pay to work in an unpaid role.
5. The Workforce Employment Strategy Lead would then communicate with the BACP membership, via the annual report, an overview of the outcomes across the year which includes a clear percentage of how many communications resulted in organisational change.
This would provide BACP with concise data to report to their members on how they are tackling the culture of advertised unpaid work, and would provide us with some statistics as to how widespread this problem is. Additionally, it makes us aware of why these changes are not happening yet.