A Personal Experience of Regulation under the Health and Care Professions Council, and the Perils of Institutional Professionalization

Abstract

SYNOPSISThis is a personal account of my experience of regulation under the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC). Back in the 1990s the profession I belonged to was invited to vote as to whether we should join the then HPC. My profession overall voted ‘yes’ to joining. What happened next was a tightening grip on our abilities to help, of oppression of professional experience, and a change in the climate of care as a forgetting of the client, of subscribing to something political, and playing into the cost-effectiveness movement. This experience is considered with reference to the profession of counselling and psychotherapy, and the dangers of its increasing professionalization and institutionalism.