The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) has said it’s satisfied we’ve met our conditions for re-accreditation.
The PSA reviews our processes every 12 months, focusing on our work to protect the public. It looks at how we uphold professional standards, including how we carry out our complaints procedure, and also at our financial status and governance processes.
This year it carried out a targeted review, seeking further detail on some specific areas of our work.
Following this, the PSA re-accredited us in March with three conditions, and asked us to complete the work on those conditions within three months.
The first condition was that we should obtain an independent, authoritative review of our Good practice in action resource on working with suicidal clients in the counselling professions (GPiA 042) by someone who is not an author of the report, to ensure it fully aligns with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE’s) guideline on self-harm: assessment, management and preventing recurrence (NG225).
Revised resource
This GPiA has now been independently reviewed and some updates recommended. The revised resource will be republished and shared with members later this year.
We’re also developing a new resource that will focus on general risk assessment of clients relating to suicide, which will incorporate other recommendations from the independent review. We aim to publish this resource in early 2025.
The PSA has recommended that we update it on our progress on this new GPiA.
The second condition was that we should share our updated GPiA 042 and supporting guidance with our members.
Video resource
We’ve already produced a short video resource which highlights recent changes to NICE guidance on suicide risk and communicated this to members.
We’ll also share information with members once GPiA 042 is updated and published.
The PSA has recommended that we update it on the progress of republishing GPiA 042 and communicating it to members.
It’s also recommended that we publish information on our website so the public can understand the work we’re doing to revise GPiAs that relate to working with suicidal risk.
The third condition was that we must demonstrate we’ve informed our education and training providers of the need to include the underpinning evidence base (as set out in NG225) in teaching on suicide risk assessment and that self-assessment risk assessment tools are unable to accurately predict suicide.
Earlier this year, we contacted all our accredited courses via email to inform them of the updates to GPiAs. We also highlighted to all course providers that risk assessment tools, scales and risk stratification shouldn’t be used as indicators of suicidal risk, or to determine who should or shouldn’t be offered treatment. We emailed all course providers to ask them to respond and confirm they had read the information. We’ve also updated guidance in our course accreditation criteria on this topic.
Comprehensive efforts
The PSA said: “The evidence submitted by the BACP demonstrates a thorough and serious consideration of its guidance on managing the risk of suicide including through an independent review and its own governance structures.
“The efforts to inform members and education and training providers appear comprehensive.”
We welcome the opportunity to have our work reviewed by an independent organisation and we’re committed to developing and updating these GPiAs to ensure we continue to offer the best possible support to the public and our members.
We’ll keep the PSA, members and the public informed on our progress.