We hope you are enjoying the extra hours of daylight and the new growth in nature that is everywhere to be seen. It is clear that we are working our way through difficult and uncertain times and our friends and colleagues may be anxious or angry. We hope that harmony will be restored soon and send you all our very best wishes for the remainder of 2019.

Important consultation - please read

We have been advised by Ofqual, our regulator within England, that an important new consultation is currently available for responses from all stakeholders, including training centres and learners.

The consultation links to the Government's drive to increase recognition within the VQ sector and give it equal recognition to general qualifications – the academic route. It's a worthy cause and one that CPCAB is proud to support, but inevitably it will result in changes in terms of how regulated awarding organisations oversee the delivery of their qualifications within recognised centres. The changes are “intended to ensure that appropriate controls are in place so that standards are consistent, whenever and wherever an assessment is taken.”

We have taken part in a number of consultation events and, whilst it appears that the impact on CPCAB will be less than it might be because our current processes are already broadly in line with the proposals, there is likely to be a subtle but significant shift in the relationship we currently enjoy with our centres. The time scale is one of the details that is up for consultation but it's likely that any changes will be implemented at some point during 2020, following a second-stage consultation later this year.

Ofqual will welcome responses from learners as well as centres and we would encourage you to find some time in your busy lives to set out your views; the deadline for this first consultation is 20th May 2019.

Open the consultation.

CPCAB staff

Our CPCAB family at head office continues to grow and we are delighted to welcome some more new faces to you.

Rachael Hann has recently taken up a new position as Centre Service Assistant, to support our hard-working Jackie Rice who is about to disappear under a pile of paperwork! Rachael is also a very busy person, with two children, a husband and much-loved family dog to care for as well as the demands of CPCAB. Rachael's background includes a wide variety of roles, including nearly two decades at the nearby Bath & West Showground. She's a big fan of live music and theatre and has extensive skills in this area too, so we're looking forward to making the most of her talents! Welcome to the team, Rachael.

Leo Gulliver-Haynes has just joined CPCAB as Education Standards Professional, another new role. He is working with the Qualification Service team in this key area, helping to maintain consistently robust educational standards and supporting the staff group to enhance their understanding of the education landscape. His background is ideally suited to this position, as a qualified teacher who has extensive experience of CPCAB qualifications, particularly within the field of substance misuse. He also works in adult education in his local area of Devon, Somerset and Dorset. It's hard to imagine how he finds the time or energy, but he is also a qualified fitness instructor and he runs classes in exercise and dance. Welcome, Leo – we'll try our best to keep up with you!

Diversity Symposium

BACP and CPCAB are delighted to co-host the 'Connecting with the lived experience' diversity symposium in Canada Water, London on Friday 10th May, where we will explore the way forward in understanding diversity as part of the client experience and as part of personal development.

The symposium aims

• To open a dialogue to enhance engagement with the lived experience.
• Encourage delegates to look at their own diversity in order to be fully present and open to the diversity of the other.
• Explore what prevents the delegate from fully entering and experiencing the client's world.
• Provide a space to consider what prevents the client from being fully transparent and present when meeting a counsellor outside of their lived experience.

This event is now fully booked but if you would like to be added to our waiting list, please email events@cpcab.co.uk. We hope to be able to share with you a video of the event including a post-symposium ‘on the couch' review, which will be available shortly afterwards.

A New Vision for Mental Health

“Have you ever wondered what mental healthcare would look like if, knowing what we know today, it was redesigned from scratch?” The New Vision for Mental Health project looks at various aspects of – and answers to – this question.

Recent posts on the project website include:

• Thinking (differently) about suicide
• New Vision for Mental Health: An Ecological Paradigm
• Mapping Our Madness: The Hero's Journey as A Therapeutic Approach
• Making the World Go Away, and How Psychology and Psychiatry Benefit
• Psychotherapy's Missing Link – “Why Don't the Majority of People Who Could Benefit from Seeing a Therapist Go?”
• Integrating Counselling & Psychotherapy: Directionality, Synergy and Social Change

Social media

We are delighted to announce that our social media presence continues to grow and a recent summary showed

• nearly 8,200 Facebook followers
• Nearly 8,100 subscribers to our YouTube Channel
• Just over 1,800 followers on Twitter

It's good to keep in touch!

Disclaimer

We are occasionally asked to include articles or promotions for related material within our Update newsletters, on our website or social media accounts, and this is something we are happy to consider; please contact email us for details. Please note that inclusion in any edition of Update does not imply CPCAB approval of the product or promotion.

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