An open letter to the professional bodies supporting the counselling and psychotherapy professions.
We write to you with growing concern for what we see as both a prevalent encouragement of unpaid work for qualified counsellors and a consequential contribution to the degradation of the profession. There needs to be a positive change in perception around the counselling profession and its value in helping to support and promote the importance of mental health. We as your members are looking to you our professional bodies to support and work towards this change.
Increasingly we are seeing positions advertised for qualified counsellors to work unpaid within their industry while making reference to benefits such as accruing practice hours for accreditation or increasing essential work experience. Whilst these are arguably beneficial elements of any practice, whether voluntary or paid, the implication of expectation that accompanies many of these advertisements could be considered misleading in many cases.
Furthermore we believe that this kind of encouragement and expectation of qualified counsellors to work unpaid devalues the profession and degrades the importance of mental health care as a whole. In turn this is likely to have a negative impact on Government and societal support of mental health services and those in need of them.
Whilst we acknowledge that voluntary positions have a place in society and that many people volunteer for a variety of reasons, we do not believe that it is acceptable to put undue expectation or suggestion that voluntary (unpaid) work is a requirement for qualified counsellors to further their career or to attain a higher level of accreditation within your organisation.
As our professional bodies whose purpose includes supporting both counselling as a profession and the professionals therein, we urge you to consider how your involvement in supporting or opposing these unpaid positions will impact upon your members, other professionals and on the field as a whole.
We ask that you, as a professional body:
- Actively and visibly support the idea that qualified counsellors should be paid for their work.
- Refrain from advertising or supporting unpaid positions that explicitly request qualified counsellors.
- Refrain from advertising positions that offer benefits that might be considered misleading e.g. where unpaid practice hours are suggested or inferred to be required for accreditation or career advancement.
