Facilitating the training of disabled students (not discriminating against them)
by LJ
I am a disabled therapist. I was a disabled trainee. I currently co-facilitate tPCA’s disabled therapists’ group with Paula Williams. If anyone who is disabled, is reading this as a member of PCT Scotland or tPCA and would like to join us, please email one of the contact emails on the link above. We have a Whatsapp community group and an email group and we meet every 2 months on zoom. You're welcome to be part of any or all of these
As a result of what I hear, as a tutor, and as a disabled therapist, I've started an open letter to the PSA-registered counselling bodies in England, to demand reasonable adjustments for students unable to access in-person placements. You can read that letter and sign here: Demanding equality for disabled counselling trainees.
We hear in our group on a regular basis, the impact that our membership bodies and training institutions have on our members. It’s never positive – it’s usually about fights for accessibility – for reasonable adjustments that are sometimes given, and sometimes not. A lot of the time, what we’re hearing about is the institutional barriers that have been put in place, but these are underlined by a complicit demanding membership body that has spurious requirements.
I say spurious because in order to qualify as a therapist who can work online and face to face, you must have passed a test to work online, but needn’t have any placement hours. That is enough for BACP and NCPS to say you're competent to work online. However, the inverse is not true. You cannot pass the training course, let alone simply the ability to work face to face, without completing in-person placement hours. No ‘test’ is available (unlike when students were prevented from attending in person due to COVID).
Considering online work, BACP requirements prevent courses from spending more than 30% of their teaching time online (other bodies may vary), and many courses will spend much less than this. This means that students who passed their 'online test' will potentially have conducted fewer than 12 ‘skills practice’ sessions online throughout their course. Conversely, they will have been in almost weekly face to face skills sessions. I’m not suggesting skills practice and placement are interchangeable. But in allowing students to qualify with an online qualification without doing any online placement, BACP seem to be suggesting this is the case (except that when it is the inverse, they’re saying it’s not the same). Which is it?
Neither BACP or NCPS has a requirement of personal counselling hours. Whatever your individual thoughts on that for the moment, courses are welcome to add that in if they wish. Courses can choose to require that individuals have in-person therapy. This is not a BACP or NCPS requirement, yet BACP and NCPS will not intervene where this is mandated by the course, instead referring the student back to the organisation who are free to say 'you must see an in-person therapist' with no recourse from the membership body - even for accredited courses.
Disabled students unable to find/access a face to face therapist will be told that ‘online’ is not a reasonable adjustment. It is unknown why it would not be a reasonable adjustment from a pedagogical stance.
Are we saying that in some hitherto undefinable way, in-person work is “better” than online work? If so, in which ways? Why? Where is the research base for this? Are we saying that working online takes less skill? Again, what is the research base? Because I don’t believe there is one.
As a student, you shouldn't be prevented from joining a course simply because of disablity, where you would otherwise be welcome.
As a student you will likely have to find your own placement
As a student you cannot demand that a placement become accessible
As a student you cannot pass a course if you have not been able to access a placement
As a student you have fallen between the cracks of an institution who doesn't want to discriminate against you, a placement who cannot become accessible, and a membership body who does not want to allow an online placement as a potential reasonable adjustment.
All this does, is add a burden on to the already more complicated training process that many disabled students face. As a lecturer and a fellow disabled person, I’m tired of it. So I wrote an open letter to our PSA-accredited bodies and I’m asking you to sign it and share please.