As the April edition of Update makes its way to you, in Somerset it's finally beginning to feel as if the worst days of the winter are finally behind us. It feels as if the “Beast from the East” has stormed away, come back wagging a finger saying “And another thing...!” and finally flounced off and slammed the door. The spring flowers are looking glorious and the birds are singing to lift our spirits.

We'd like to introduce you to our new Qualification Leader for Levels 2 and 3, Andrew Thorne. Andrew comes to CPCAB with a wealth of experience in both counselling and counselling training that began with an introductory course as a Christmas gift! His career has encompassed psychiatric nursing, agency management and teaching at a number of levels; it has also expanded to include Programme Co-ordinator and Counselling School Manager. The move to an awarding organisation seemed like a natural next step after such a varied journey and he is already proving a very helpful – and popular - member of the team.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

As many of you will know, the law in this country will be changing in May this year in terms of how organisations handle data they collect and process on behalf of individuals. CPCAB and our recognised centres handle your personal data as joint data controllers. If you are studying at one of the higher levels and working with clients you will also have an obligation to meet the requirements of the new legislation and, whilst we are in no way experts in this law we are working with centres to provide guidance that we hope will be useful to you.

There is a lot to learn about the changes to data protection and here at CPCAB we're working through the guidance that's available. Our Data Protection Policy has been given a thorough makeover and is now available on our website.

For your own GDPR work, you might find these links (below) helpful but we would ask you please not to contact us directly for individual GDPR advice; we are far from being experts in this area and don't have the resources to offer this service. If you are a member of BACP, you might also be interested in a recent article in Therapy Today which you may find helpful.

• ICO - Data protection self assessment
• ICO - Guide to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
• BACP guidance for agency data protection

A New Vision for Mental Health

The New Vision for Mental Health website asks: “Have you ever wondered what mental healthcare would look like if, knowing what we know today, it was redesigned from scratch?”

Some of the latest posts include:

• This Way Madness Lies – the asylum and beyond
• For Centuries, A Small Town Has Embraced Strangers With Mental Illness
• It's the Coercion, Stupid!
• What is 'Living with Feeling'?
• Is mental illness real? You asked Google – here's the answer
• Germany's Ministry of Happiness and Wellbeing

Access is completely free and open to everyone.

External Assessment videos

As we mentioned in January, our videos of scripted listening or counselling sessions, used in external assessment for the Level 2 Certificate in Counselling Skills and the Level 3 Certificate in Counselling Studies, are used for a limited number of times in assessment before being made more widely available via mock papers and tutor standardisation day exercises. New films are produced each year to keep the assessment experience “fresh” and to ensure that anyone doing a re-sit won't be asked to watch the same film twice.

Our videos team has now taken this a step further by adding a number of films that are now regarded as public to our Youtube channel, The Counselling Channel. They are free to view and may prove a useful tool in the classroom or for home study. Remember that they were designed to generate question papers (these aren't made publicly available so as to keep the assessment “playing field” as level as we possibly can) and shouldn't be viewed as examples of best practice! More films will be added from time to time as they are removed from our confidential list.

Humour