The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) has reaccredited BACP for another year, with one condition and two recommendations.

The PSA’s accredited registers scheme is a government-backed initiative that ensures professional bodies like us meet rigorous standards of practice, ethics, and public protection.

In its report re-accrediting us, the PSA highlighted positive findings and recognised the “substantial amount of information” on our website including “key processes and support available” for both members and the public.

The PSA also mentioned that we’d worked to address previous concerns it had raised and are continuing to improve our work around complaints about members.

In reaccrediting us, the PSA issued us with one condition that we must provide clear information about the limitations of treatment by our members.

This must be implemented by our next annual assessment in 12 months’ time.

We’re already looking at how we can address this and are planning to update relevant areas of our website.

It also issued two recommendations to be considered by the next review in a year’s time.

The first is that we need to ensure we’re consistently and effectively using section 2.4 of our Professional Conduct Procedure (Case Manager’s Test) to resolve cases that do not meet the threshold for progression.

We've already invested in staff and training to support a more timely assessment of complaints. This includes ensuring we're consistently and effectively applying section 2.4 of our Professional Conduct Procedure (Case Manager’s Test) to resolve cases that don't meet the threshold for progression. 

The second recommendation is that we should provide the PSA with an update on our work to improve the timeliness of progression of complaints about practitioners.

We’ll be sharing our progress on this with the PSA as part of our report for our next reaccreditation process.

We welcome the opportunity to have our work reviewed by an independent organisation and we’re committed to making improvements to our services to ensure we continue to offer the best possible support to the public and our members.

This continued accreditation reassures clients that they’re accessing safe, effective, and high-quality therapy from practitioners who are held accountable to a strict code of practice.

Read the full PSA reaccreditation report.