New to the table at our June Board meeting was David Chenery, who joins us as a Trustee, and Chair of our Finance, Risk, Audit, Policy and Performance Committee (FRAPP). David has a wealth of charity finance experience and you can read his biography on our BACP Board of Governors web page. We were also joined by an Accreditation Officer from the Professional Standards Authority (PSA), who was there to observe the meeting as part of our application for maintaining PSA accreditation.
In my update as Chair, I reflected on my experiences at recent conferences with the American (ACA) and Irish (IACP) Counselling Associations. Aside from our collaborations on artificial intelligence, and climate-informed counselling, there was a growing discussion on culturally-appropriate counselling. This resonates strongly with our strategy for equality, diversity and inclusion. It was also a very clear centrepiece for our own Research Conference, providing rich context not only for BACP’s research and practice development, but for the work of the Board itself.
Turning towards our strategy, our CEO committed to leading further development work on the global aspects of Increasing Our Reach, to ensure that we interpret our role within the global profession sensitively, appropriately and for the benefit of the people that we work with every day in our practice as counsellors and psychotherapists.
Our finance and risk updates included a progress report on the completion of our annual accounts for 2023 to 2024, and the work of our auditors to scrutinise and report back on their findings. This is taking good shape and I look forward to being able to present our financial and other updates to you at our AGM in November.
We were updated on how the implementation of SCoPEd is progressing and looked at the work ahead of BACP for the remainder of this year as we proceed towards full alignment of our standards by February 2026. Our focus, in reviewing how implementation is progressing, is to make sure we remain aligned and committed alongside our partner organisations to the shared vision for the profession to be better understood, valued and trusted by clients, patients, employers, commissioners and society.
Next, we reviewed important updates from our President, Vice Presidents and Divisions, covering an array of work reaching across our research, public affairs, education, and membership activities. The Board expressed their gratitude and admiration for all of BACP volunteers’ work. If you'd like to know more about the benefits of Divisional membership or want to get involved alongside fellow practitioners, find out more on our BACP Divisions web page.
Before concluding our meeting, we took time to reflect on our own work as a Board, noting that a majority of Trustees are new, having joined the Board since December last year. While some Trustees have taken up chairing roles with one of our Committees, others are assuming lead responsibility for key topics including safeguarding, equality, diversity and inclusion, and ethics. I’m very grateful for the commitment and contributions from all of our Trustees as we work together to further develop our effectiveness as a team dedicated to overseeing and guiding BACP’s role on behalf of the profession and the public.
I hope that this update finds you well and look forward to keeping you posted with the Board’s activities over the coming months.
