Protect Therapy Users

06/10/2026

If access to counselling and psychotherapy is expanded, safety and accountability have to expand with it.

More people getting therapy is not enough on its own if the public still has limited clarity about protected titles, regulation, complaints and what happens when therapy causes harm.

How is this being built into the conversation about access?

Everyone deserves access to mental health support that works for them... And better mental health can often mean better physical health, too. The…

05/10/2026

And hereby lies the operational failure within counselling and psychotherapy: harm may only become visible to an accountability system once somebody recognises what has happened, identifies the right organisation and is able to make and pursue a complaint.

But what about the harm that is never formally reported? The deterioration noticed by somebody close to the client? The concerns that never become a complaint? The person who is too distressed, dependent, unsure or exhausted to take action? Public protection cannot begin only after harm has successfully made its way through a complaints process.

If regulation is genuinely preventative, it also has to ask how risks are identified earlier, how concerns become visible and whether the system is capable of learning from information that never arrives as a formal complaint. That is part of the conversation we need to have about the regulation of counselling and psychotherapy. Thank you to Professional Standards Authority Chief Executive Alan Clamp and Monisha Shah, Chair of the Legal Services Board, for the listen.

🎧 The full discussion can be found on Spotify, YouTube or Apple Music: Institute of Regulation, Episode 42: Oversight Regulation

04/10/2026

And sometimes, being believed is where accountability begins.

03/10/2026

Therapy depends on trust. When that trust is breached, people need to know there is somewhere safe, independent and accountable to turn.

In the UK, the titles "counsellor" and "psychotherapist" are still not legally protected, and statutory regulation does not currently apply across these professions.

We're calling for change.

Our petition asks for protected professional titles, statutory standards and an independent regulatory system with meaningful routes for complaints and public protection.

If you believe people seeking therapy deserve clear, consistent safeguards, please sign and share the petition.

🔗 petition.protecttherapyusers.co.uk

02/10/2026

An important distinction: right-touch regulation is not the same as light-touch regulation.

The Professional Standards Authority describes Right-touch Regulation as a risk-based approach: identifying the risk of harm and choosing the most effective and proportionate response. For counselling and psychotherapy, that raises an important question.

When practitioners may work under titles that are not legally protected, regulation is largely voluntary, and serious harm can occur within relationships built on trust and professional authority, what level of regulatory protection is proportionate to that risk? Or in other words: does the current voluntary system provide enough protection when therapy causes serious harm?

Protect Therapy Users believes the debate should include not only the dangers of over-regulation, but the consequences of under-regulation too. For people harmed in therapy, for those trying to raise concerns, for public confidence in psychological support.

Right-touch regulation should mean the right protection for the level of risk.

This month's Hot Topic is Right-touch regulation (RTR), but what does that actually mean?

RTR is a principles-based framework for making effective, proportionate decisions about protecting the public.

First published in 2010, the guidance helps regulators assess the risk of harm and choose the most appropriate response, whether through regulation or other measures.

The 2025 update responded to a very different landscape from the one that shaped previous editions. As regulation comes under pressure to demonstrate value and enable innovation, RTR remains a practical tool for identifying what needs regulating, and how.

Read more here: www.professionalstandards.org.uk/publications/right-touch-regulation-2025

02/10/2026

We support removing unnecessary barriers to mental health support; nobody should have to deteriorate to crisis point before being heard.

But as "same-day access" becomes an increasingly prominent policy goal, we also want to see safety and quality given equal weight.

The proposal by Mind is for a meaningful first conversation and appropriate onward support, not necessarily same-day therapy, but if people are then being directed into counselling or psychotherapy, faster access cannot be the end of the conversation.

Who is providing that therapy? What standards apply? How are adverse effects recognised? What happens when therapy causes harm? And are there accessible routes for concerns to be heard?

Getting people through the door more quickly matters. But so does what happens once they are inside.

This is a step in the right direction.

But more action is needed.

We need to overhaul the mental health system. Our advice is a ‘same-day open access’ mental health model that gives people support on the day they need it.

What does that look like?

1/ An immediate, meaningful conversation with a professional on the day you reach out

2/ Holistic support based on indivudal needs

3/ Time taken to understand the person and provide the right foundation of support

Every young person should get the support they need, on the day they need it.

Photo credit: By Alecsandra Dragoi / No 10 Downing Street, OGL 3, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=196791206

30/09/2026

This is an extraordinarily difficult story to read. The Guardian reports on "Sarah", a mother whose daughters were removed from her care in 2020 after a family court relied heavily on evidence from an unregulated psychologist. The expert's conclusions were later found by the High Court to rest on an "uncertain and mistaken foundation", and the court said they should not be relied upon in future decision-making.

What is so disturbing here is not simply one professional's conduct. It is the number of systems around that conduct which appear, in Sarah's account, to have failed to protect her and her children.

For Protect Therapy Users, this story resonates far beyond family law. Institutional betrayal happens when harm is not only caused or enabled by an individual, but compounded by the systems that are supposed to provide scrutiny, safety and accountability.

It raises questions we see repeatedly in our own work:
- What happens when professional authority is treated as more credible than the person affected?
- What happens when an individual raises concerns but the institution interprets those concerns through the very framework being challenged?
- Who is responsible for recognising harm when the person experiencing it is overwhelmed, disbelieved or unable to make the system listen?
- And what does accountability mean when institutional recognition comes years after the damage has been done?

There has since been reform. Family Justice Council guidance now makes clear that "parental alienation" is not a syndrome to be diagnosed by an expert, and new rules introduced in July 2026 generally require psychological experts in family proceedings to be appropriately regulated, subject to limited exceptions.

Those changes matter. But this story is also a reminder that regulation and safeguards introduced after institutional failure do not undo the harm already experienced by those who were failed.

🔗 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/sep/29/mother-feels-betrayed-family-courts-parental-alienation-england-wales

30/09/2026

A small but important step for Protect Therapy Users.

We're pleased to share that PTU will be represented at the upcoming Westminster Health Forum policy conference: "Next steps for professional healthcare regulation in the UK" on the 22nd October.

The conference will bring together people working across professional regulation, policy, public protection and healthcare to discuss issues including regulatory reform, professional titles, fitness-to-practise processes, accountability and public confidence.

These are conversations in which we believe therapy-user and lived-experience perspectives need to be present.

Counselling and psychotherapy currently sit in an unusual position within the wider healthcare regulatory landscape: "Counsellor" and "Psychotherapist" remain unprotected titles and regulation continues to rely largely on voluntary professional registers.

We'll be attending to listen, learn, ask questions and bring the perspective of therapy users into discussions about what effective public protection should look like. We're particularly interested in conversations around protected professional titles, complaint-led regulation, fitness-to-practise, the use of third-party concerns and the point at which voluntary regulation is no longer sufficient for public protection.

Thank you to Westminster Forum Projects for enabling PTU to attend. We are looking forward to hearing from colleagues across professional regulation, public protection and patient safety, including Professional Standards Authority, Avma and others contributing to the programme.

We'll share what we learn after the event.

29/09/2026

This is important work by Centre for Mental Health, but we are surprised to see professional regulation and public protection missing from the report. While it rightly discusses access, workforce, quality and accountability, there is no discussion of regulation, registration or protected professional titles.

NHS England has itself recently acknowledged that many psychological-profession titles are not legally protected and has introduced clearer registration requirements within NHS-commissioned services because of the implications for public protection.

If we are rightly campaigning for more children and young people to access mental health support, shouldn't we also be asking how children and families can know who is appropriately qualified and accountable, and what safeguards exist when therapy causes harm?

Was professional regulation considered as part of the Future Minds recommendations?

A major new report launched today warns that, without urgent action, over a million children could miss out on mental health treatment by end of this Parliament.

The report from Future Minds - A Mid-Term Report Card on Children and Young People's Mental Health - gives the Government's overall performance halfway through this Parliament a verdict of "Requires Urgent Improvement", warning that progress is failing to keep pace with rising need and that ministers are running out of time to deliver on their promises to children and young people.

The report paints a stark picture of a system still struggling to cope with soaring demand. More than one in five children and young people now experience a probable mental health condition, double the rate seen two decades ago, while referrals to children's mental health services have nearly doubled since 2018/19.

The Future Minds campaign is calling for the Government to use its forthcoming Mental Health Strategy for England to deliver four urgent commitments:

➡️ Triple-lock spending on children and young people's mental health, ensuring funding rises by inflation, earnings growth or 2.5%, whichever is highest.
➡️ Make children and young people's mental health a national priority across government.
➡️ Introduce and enforce access and waiting-time standards for children's mental health services.
➡️ Deliver the manifesto commitment to provide open-access mental health support through Early Support Hubs in every community up to the age of 25.

Read more and find the report on our website.

28/09/2026

UKCP is changing its complaints process and we want therapy users to have a say.

One proposal would introduce "consensual disposal". Where a therapist accepts the material facts and acknowledges breaches of UKCP's ethical code, some complaints could be resolved without a fully contested hearing. UKCP says this could reduce delay, stress and unnecessary hearings. UKCP is also proposing that removal from membership should become the expected outcome in proven cases of sexual misconduct, rather than suspension (except in genuinely exceptional circumstances). PTU welcomes the stronger emphasis on public protection in this proposal.

There are, however, aspects of the proposed complaint changes that we think need careful scrutiny from the perspective of therapy users. Under the proposal, UKCP's Professional Standards Manager "may" seek the complainant's views before resolving a complaint through consensual disposal – it is not stated as a requirement. Once a consensual disposal is agreed, the complainant would not be able to challenge it, and there would be no right of appeal for any party.

We are also concerned about transparency. Although consensual-disposal decisions would be published, UKCP currently proposes keeping them online only until the therapist has complied with the terms of the agreement. That could mean a published finding based on admitted facts disappears once a sanction has been completed.

This is where we particularly want to hear from you. If you have experienced the UKCP complaints process – whether you completed a complaint, withdrew, supported somebody through one, considered complaining but felt unable to proceed, or tried to raise a concern in another way – your experience could offer extremely valuable insight into how these reforms might work in practice.

Consultations about complaints must reach beyond the people who already participate comfortably in professional and regulatory spaces. Those who have actually tried to seek accountability when therapy goes wrong may have some of the most important evidence of all.