Reflections on the role of trustees for tPCA.

Ailson Drury writes:-

I am writing here in my role as Chair of tPCA trustees.  Recent discussions in our meetings have led me to reflect on the trustee role in a membership organisation for person centred practice.  Just how can that role be faithful to the principles of person centredness whilst still discharging the duties that the Charity Commission have placed on us to ensure that tPCA is run in a professional manner with robust governance in place? 

Our rich discussions have led us to the following principles for how we want to work with the membership to ensure we remain faithful to our stated values for tPCA (which can be found on our website within our strategy: https://www.the-pca.org.uk/the-association/strategy-2024.html).  

I thought it might be helpful to share the following reflections. 

Governance 

We are accountable to our members and to the Charity Commission for the sound governance of tPCA.  That means (amongst other things):

• Having the correct organisational policies in place.
• Recruiting trustees and managing trustee meetings and conduct in the approved manner 
• Managing our finances in a transparent and robust manner and reporting on our annual activity and finances to the membership at our AGM.   

This role has a degree of “power over” in that we set the agenda for our meetings and some of these items are standing items to ensure we meet our obligations on your behalf.  Having said that, we welcome any member questions or commenst on finance or governance and are already responding to member comments, to improve our annual report for the AGM.  

Getting to know the trustees.

We are making trustee biogs and photos more prominent on the website so that members can have more of a sense of who we all are.  We felt that there might be a danger that we seem rather remote and mysterious rather than the reality that we are all person centred practitioners with a range of skills and passions which we bring to the trustee role.  We welcome enquiries from members at any time who would like to explore becoming a trustee.  We try to make the introduction to the role as friendly and gentle as possible, usually starting with an invitation to observe one of our monthly meetings to get a felt sense of the role. 

Meeting members in a person centered way

The more challenging and exciting aspect of our recent discussions has been our exploration of what it means to be a person centred trustee group.  Once we have accepted our formal governance responsibilities, what else do we do in the space?    

We have discussed the facilitatory nature of our role.  We want to ensure that members can get our support with whatever activity they want to explore in a self-governing, autonomous way.   We are not modelling a “command and control” structure.  Quite the opposite.  Our local groups and special interest groups are self-seeding and facilitated by members. They offer our community a place to meet to explore person centred theory and practice and spend time together with like minded colleagues.  Our role as trustees is to ensure that these groups are advertised and explained to members and that we can cover any relevant expenses incurred in running them.  

We see tPCA website as a gathering point for members to find other members and to identify activities that interest them.  We are undertaking a review of the website. We want to make it easier for potential members to see what the benefits of membership are and to encourage them to join us.  

Increasing our membership is something we have committed to in our strategy. It feels to us as if our person centred community is beleaguered at the moment and we would like to welcome new members into our supportive space. Our therapist directory provides access to all members to advertise their person centred therapy or supervision practice.  Our annual residential conference is a place we can meet, learn, share and encounter others face to face. 

We welcome all ideas from members who want support - to use the website and our social media channels to connect and share ideas and create or host encounters or other regular or one off meetings.  The richness and value of our community will be enhanced by what you bring to each other.  One further example of this is our forthcoming support for Rachael and Kate , two of our members, who have recorded a range of podcasts featuring encounters with person centred practitioners.  These will be signposted on our website soon.

We welcome contact from any member or members as a group, who want to bring forward new ideas for connection and who can commit to making those ideas a reality. 

Our trustee meetings

We see our monthly trustee meetings as our chance to hold ourselves to account.  We have an organisational strategy document as mentioned.  We have resolved that we will review this strategy  every six months as a live document, to check that our activities are meeting our aims, objectives and values for our person centred community.  

We aim to be congruent in our meetings – to show our workings – so that we sense check what we are discussing and how we are discussing it.  It is easy in a governance role to assume, to decide and to impose solutions.  In some governance settings this may be appropriate.  In the context of tPCA we want to ensure that we are conduit for your ideas and that we consult members if we are unclear as a group about what you might need or expect from us. 

I would like to thank my fellow trustees for the ways in which I experience us holding each other to account in our meetings. We demonstrably share a commitment to remain true to the principles of person centred practice in what we do and how we encounter each other.  I would also like to acknowledge the important contribution of our tPCA Information and Engagement officer, Kathy, whose work is vital for us to ensure we meet our various governance responsibilities in terms of policies, financial accountability and financial requirements for the Charity Commission.  Kathy also provides support for potential, new or existing members; answers any enquiries or difficulties they may have;  and provides support to members who have a new tPCA initiative to get off the ground.  We also have tech support behind us.  Nic helps to manage the website and support our membership CRM database

Please get in touch with us via admin@the-pca.org.uk if you have ideas you want to explore or a local or special interest group you want to set up or join. Or anything else you feel you could offer to help deepen our collective felt sense of belonging to a community whose values we share and which nourishes us all.