The government’s recent policy concerning unemployed people registered with Job Centres in the UK includes ‘providing’ counselling to all benefit recipients. If they refuse this provision their benefits will be removed.

We, at Pink Therapy, wish to support the other national registering bodies for counsellors and psychotherapists, and make the strongest possible objection to the mandatory use of therapy being used in this way. This goes against the ethical basis of our profession, which states that therapy must be freely entered into and must never be imposed. 

Whilst there is little doubt that many unemployed people have enduring mental health difficulties, forcing people to engage in therapy as condition of continuing to receive essential welfare benefits is the grossest breach of the tenets of counselling.  Counselling cannot be administered under duress. Furthermore, counsellors are obliged to abide by an ethical framework and providing counselling under the circumstances proposed by the government will contravene this framework and leave the counsellor open to complaints of malpractice.

We are fully in favour of offering therapy to people who are depressed, anxious or suffering from any form of emotional distress, but we do not support coercion. Pink Therapy urges the government to halt this policy of ‘blaming the victim’ for its own failures and to look to providing what most benefit claimants need: jobs, decent living conditions and a living wage.

Dominic Davies
Fellow – British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy
UKRC Senior Registered Counsellor/Psychotherapist
National Council of Psychotherapists Accredited Psychotherapist
Chief Executive – Pink Therapy

www.pinktherapy.com 

Pink Therapy, the UK’s largest independent therapy organisation working with gender and sexual diversity clients, recently announced the launch of their new program offering a Post Graduate Diploma in Gender and Sexual Diversity Therapy.  The early response has been very enthusiastic.

June 4, 2015

With online education becoming more and more popular it has clearly become time for options to exist for students pursing working therapeutically with gender and sexual diversity clients.  Answering the call is Pink Therapy, the UK’s largest independent therapy organisation working in these spaces for over 15 years.  Pink Therapy recently announced the launch of their two year Post Graduate Diploma in Gender and Sexual Diversity Therapy which will be delivered online.  All in all 16 theory modules,  a five day residential intensive in London and regular case discussion groups round out the program.

“We’re delighted to be taking our training online to therapists across the globe who have been asking to take part in our cutting edge thinking around gender and sexual diversities,”  commented Dominic Davies, CEO Pink Therapy and Course Director of the program.  “It’s a win/win all around.”

Davies is an acclaimed figure in Gender and Sexual Diversity education in the UK, a psychotherapist, with near unmatched experience working with LGBT clients and co-editor of the first British counselling textbooks on the subject.

The Course is post-graduate training which can be taken by students who have already satisfactorily

completed a basic training to the equivalent of a Diploma in Counselling or Psychotherapy,

Counselling Psychology or Clinical Psychology or Psychiatry.

The early response from students has been incredibly positive.

J.C., from California, recently said, “This is really a dream come true.  Pink Therapy is the top queer therapy training organisation in the UK. I’ve been wanting to study with them for over a decade, but living in the United States has made it impossible. This is just what I need to develop my knowledge and expand my possibilities.”

For more information be sure to visit https://tinyurl.com/DipGSDT