Partnership of Counselling and Psychotherapy Bodies (PCPB)

In 2025 the HGI became one of the founding members of the Partnership of Counselling and Psychotherapy Bodies (PCPB), along with the other five bodies which together published the Scope of Practice and Education for Counselling and Psychotherapy (SCoPEd) framework in 2023.

PCPB represents over 75,000 therapists and so can have an increasingly powerful voice beyond the SCoPEd framework collaboration to improve standards in the profession and ensure that it is trusted, respected and more widely understood by the public.

All PCPB partners have registers accredited by the Professional Standards Authority. The other five members of the partnership are:

• Association of Christians in Counselling and Linked Professions (ACC)
• British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP)
• British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC)
• National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society (NCPS), and
• UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP).

PCPB’s stated aims are to continue developing the SCoPEd framework, ensuring its recognition and application as a standard for professional practice; strengthen the identity of the partnership, embedding it within the profession by promoting public understanding and trust; and to use data to enhance understanding of the profession’s demographic makeup and improve inclusivity and representation. Its website will offer a central platform for updates on the SCoPEd framework and other PCPB initiatives.

The HGI has always been known and respected for ploughing its own furrow and forging a thoroughly commonsense approach to therapy training and delivery. It has been crucial to be, and continue to be, part of the SCoPEd framework, ensuring that specified standards for therapy training and delivery include our individual, highly effective way of working. This will become particularly important if attempts are made in the future to regulate counselling and psychotherapy, with the government of the day drawing upon the SCoPEd framework, as will be hoped, in order to do so.

Our unique HG approach does mean, however, that we are unlikely to want to align with all PCPB initiatives, and we have made this clear to our partners, who understand and support our approach. For instance, we have declined to be associated with an ongoing project to accredit postgraduate psychotherapy training in person-centred and psychodynamic counselling for depression within NHS Talking Therapy services. We will work hard to ensure that our reasons for standing outside partnership actions, whenever we choose to do so, are sufficiently explained and acknowledged on the website. Conversely, we look forward to the rewards of being part of a larger partnership in pressing for the important developments that we believe in.