I am pleased, nay thrilled, to tell you that the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) now formally accept online counselling via e-mail, forums and IRC in support of:
a. the 150 hours of supervised practice post training (Criteria 4.1 and 4.2)
b. Professional Development (Criterion 6.)
c. Personal Development (Criterion 7)
Applicants who include on-line counselling will need to show:
1. that the activity was contracted counselling rather than any other activity involving the use of counselling skills.
2. that they have undertaken some specialist training in on-line therapy and are competent to work within this specialised area. Such training would normally take place after the applicant’s core practitioner training and would be admissible as Continuing Professional Development (Criterion 6). It is not admissible as core practitioner training (Criterion 4).
Online Supervision
Online therapy is not normally recommended for novice or inexperienced practitioners or those in training without focused ongoing support and guidance from expert specialists in the field.
The BACP counsellor / psychotherapist accreditation scheme currently accepts online supervision hours for giving and receiving supervision. At present applicants submitting online supervision must demonstrate how they have met the 1.5-hour a month requirement.
As yet, BACP have no definitive means of calculating the time commitment, and so have invited me to consult with the Professional Standards Committee and Accreditation Assessors in May to thrash out those final details. This will unfortunately not be in time to include those hours in the 3rd Edition of the Guidelines, but links to updates will be included in the resource appendix.
I’ve been working towards this since the Guidelines were first published in 2001, so please join me in a big *YAY*!!
Kate
