UpdateOctober 2015 No. 52

It’s hard to believe that we are at the beginning of another academic year already ... where did the summer go?

We all hope you’ve had a good break and feel ready for the challenges of the year ahead. And as always, we’re here to support you in any way we can.

All best wishes from CPCAB.

Counselling Professional vacancy

Due to continued growth, we now have an exciting opportunity within our Qualifications Service for an enthusiastic and committed counselling professional who can support our team of qualification leaders, verifiers and assessors, and help to ensure that national standards are maintained across all our accredited qualifications and registered centres.

The successful candidate will have:

Diploma in counselling or a higher level qualification (at least 2 years post-qualified)
Supervision and/or tutor experience
Assessor/verifier/moderator experience
Experience in the design and development of qualifications (preferred)
Experience of Further Education
Evidence of CPD/current or recent therapeutic practice

This role will be based at CPCAB's head office in Baltonsborough, Somerset for 2-3 days per week.

Salary: circa £31,000 FTE pro rata

Closing date: 6th November 2015

Interviews: 17th November 2015

A full job description can be found at www.cpcab.co.uk/public_docs/counselling-professional-job-description. To apply for this role please write to Clare Bewley at CPCAB, PO Box 1768, Glastonbury, Somerset BA6 8YP or email clare@cpcab.co.uk.

Standardisation training

Thanks to all of you who attended the first two standardisation days of 2015-16. We hope you found them useful and enjoyable. We certainly enjoyed meeting you again!

If you haven’t booked your training yet, please note that the two London days (9th and 10th October) are fully booked, but there are still places on the Northern Ireland and Bristol sessions. Please reserve your place in the usual way via the booking form.

On the subject of standardisation training, we’d like to let you know that we have discontinued the cascade CDs for tutors who didn’t have to attend – they have been replaced with downloadable documents on the CPCAB website. Many of you have told us that it’s becoming more difficult to use CDs these days, due to advances in technology, so we hope you appreciate the change. The requirement to go through the cascade material is as vital as ever, though, so please take the time to look at it carefully.

Another small change is that we are no longer issuing paper feedback forms on the day and asking, instead, that you complete an online feedback form in your own time. Your feedback is very important to us and is your opportunity to share your views and for us to show the regulator that we consult with the people who use our qualifications, so please take the time to fill in the form (use the links below) – it’s designed in a way that should be quick and easy to use.

Mobile-friendly Candidate Guides

Technology continues to march ahead and we’ve heard from many of you that you have found it difficult to download some of our documents via phones and tablets. With that in mind, we’ve created a mobile-friendly version of each of our Candidate Guides. Take a look, for example, at the mobile-version Candidate Guide for our Level 2 Certificate in Counselling Skills.

Of course you’ll need to actually use your mobile to get the best idea of this ... we will be pleased to hear your feedback. We look forward to rolling out this feature to other key documents as time allows.

Changes to the qualifications framework

This month has seen the formal introduction of the Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF), the new overarching framework for regulated qualifications which includes the former Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) which came in to force in July 2011, plus the earlier National Qualifications Framework (NQF) which continued to operate in a lesser way until this year.

CPCAB’s regulated qualifications have been transferred to the new framework already and from the point of view of tutors and candidates the changes should be minimal although all references to QCF in the qualification documents and candidate certificates will be removed. Details of the new framework are available on the Ofqual website.

British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy

BACP has released a new version of their ethical framework, the BACP Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions, which is available to view now and will be formally adopted in July 2016. From the BACP website: ‘Ethical practice not only sits at the heart of what we do as counsellors and psychotherapists, it has also informed the work of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy for many years. From the early days of the Code of Ethics and Practice through to the current Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy, our members have been encouraged not only to think about the good practice parameters of their work but additionally to embark on an ethical engagement to ensure what is offered to clients meets the highest professional standards of practice and accountability.’

For more information and a copy of the new framework document, visit the BACP website.

You may also be interested to know that on August 13th Andrew Reeves and Hadyn Williams (the Chairman and Chief Executive of BACP) visited CPCAB for a filming project about BACP and the role of research in counselling, a subject which is dear to our hearts. We’ll shortly have some video clips about these two subjects available on our website, and hope you’ll find them interesting.

CPCAB Model of Helping Work & Counselling Practice

You can now download a new description of the CPCAB Model of Helping Work & Counselling Practice.

This is the generic model applicable to all theoretical approaches that underpins most of our qualifications. The new description integrates key contemporary research from both the counselling field and from other disciplines. Importantly, it focuses on clients and their problems, rather than the different counselling approaches. It also aims to be as student-friendly as possible, whilst still describing the complexity of helping work and counselling practice.

Psychotherapy Excellence

You may be interested to learn about a useful CPD resource, if you haven’t come across it already. Psychotherapy Excellence is an online subscription service for practitioners to access cutting edge CPD with the world's leading clinicians across modality and topics. For an idea of what is available, take a look at the Psychotherapy Excellence website or have a look at the new men’s series. Psychotherapy Excellence will soon be launching group access for member organisations too, as there is a clear demand for this.

Features include:

over 50 academic articles and papers available to view
access to jobs and clinical placements (the jobs board is fairly new and will be getting busier very soon)
plus you can add your own CPD events.

There are free and paid options for event listing.

The Counselling and Psychotherapy Research Handbook

This is a great book for introducing tutors and students to research. It is written by Andreas Vossler, Director of the Open University Foundation Degree in Counselling and a colleague. It’s already attracting good reviews, for example:

‘I think this is a most impressive text. The language employed is plain, accessible and inclusive and the editors have skilfully produced a coherent narrative without losing the distinctive voices of individual contributors. This will without doubt become required reading for anyone – novice or seasoned practitioner – who seeks a wise companion on their own research journey’.

Vossler, A. & Moller, N. (2014) The Counselling and Psychotherapy Research Handbook Paperback. London: Sage.

Humour

With apologies to the many of us who suffer from OCD to a greater or less degree...

My friend accused me of having OCD. I soon put him in his place.
I suffer from CDO myself ... that’s OCD but I prefer it in alphabetical order.