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Research digest

27th Annual BACP Research Conference

Our 2021 Research Conference Promoting collaboration in research, policy and practice will take place on Saturday 15 May 2021 with co-hosts The University of Salford.

We’ll be joined by two keynote speakers. Michael Barkham will present ‘The results of the PRaCTICED trial and implications for person-centred experiential therapy’, and Mick Cooper will present ‘"What’s a nice existential boy doing running an RCT?” Lessons from the ETHOS trial of school-based humanistic counselling.'

You can register to attend from the link below.

Young people’s experiences of counselling

Our member David Cook tells us about his research exploring adolescent clients’ experience of power in the therapy relationship.

You can read more about David's research in:

Being able to take that mask off’: adolescent clients’ experiences of power in person-centered therapy relationships
Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies, February 2020

Get involved

We’re offering a limited number of private practitioners free access to an online system to manage client case notes, review progress and explore outcomes, until at least February 2022.

The aim of the project is to evaluate the online platform (Pragmatic Tracker) in terms of usability, practitioner experiences and the feasibility of rolling out the system on a larger scale, with consideration of necessary resources.

As well as piloting the system, this project will enable you to contribute to the evidence base for counselling and psychotherapy in a traditionally under-researched area. Members who are currently taking part in the project say that they’ve received very positive feedback from their clients and they’ve found that it can enhance the therapeutic relationship.

If you’d like to find out more about this project and how to get involved, visit our Advancing Practice through Tracking (AdaPT) webpage.

Older people are under-represented in third sector services – what can we do about it?

Data collected from 2,757 clients across six third sector counselling services has indicated low access rates to counselling for adults over 50. Only 24.5% of clients were 50 and over and access rates decreased further with age.

This study explores the implications for practice with consideration to addressing barriers to older adults seeking counselling through mental health promotion and adapting communication during counselling.

It also reports on low completion of routine outcome measures in counselling services and how this poses a challenge to demonstrating the effectiveness of services. It considers the need to support counselling services in the use of routine outcome measures.

Counselling in the third sector: to what extent are older adults accessing these services and how complete are the data third sector services collect measuring client psychological distress?
Jennifer O’Donnell, Joanne Pybis and Jeremy Bacon, Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, February 2021

Journals

The March 2021 issue of Counselling and Psychotherapy Research (CPR) contains a perspectives paper by Dr Dwight Turner considering a heuristic exploration of systemic racism through dreams.

Other papers in the latest issue include a study considering mindfulness as a way to cope with COVID-19 related stress and anxiety and a special section on research mixed methods. The journal is free to access with your membership log in.

All seven of our specialist divisional journals are free online for all members, so take a look at these for perspectives on working with different client groups.

BACP members also have free access to the EBSCO research journal database and discovery service.