The Trustee Group
The Trustee Group (TG) are made up of the Person Centred Association members who volunteer to help in the development of the Association. There is a maximum of nine Trustees plus 3 co-opted members.
Trustees are elected for a two-year team and can be re-elected twice, so there is a maximum term of six consecutive years.
The TG meet monthly, online, and minutes are viewable to members here.
Who are tTPCA’s trustees?
You can read more about each of us, and why we choose to volunteer as a trustee, using the links below.
We also want to share a brief overview of who we are as a group. There is often a complaint against boards that they are white, middle-class, cisgender and heterosexual and so we are sharing something of our collective experience in the world.
As a group of trustees, we recognise that we could always be more diverse and we welcome enquiries from people interested in the person-centred approach, who would like to join us. At the moment, we have members of different genders (and none), different sexualities, different races and ethnicities. Several of us have disabilities of one kind or another, including neurodivergences. It can often be the case that one person is ‘the diversity’ in the group and we’re pleased to say that this is not the case in this trustee group!
If you are interested in becoming a trustee please email us at tg@the-pca.org.uk to find out more.
For those of you who are practitioners with a formal requirment for CPD and you are considering helping out by becoming a trustee, you may be pleased to know that acting as a trustee for the PCA yields 40 hours of CPD per year. The list of activities credited by BACP is here, and for UKCP sample guidance is here, and for National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society unfortunately it is behind their login page here.
I am a person centred counsellor working in an Oxford rape crisis charity to support survivors of sexual and domestic abuse. I am also a qualified clinical supervisor offering one to one and group supervision. I enjoy working with counsellors to help them develop their practice, their understanding of themselves and to ensure safe ethical practice for their clients.
My commitment to the person centre approach and my respect for its philosophy is ever growing. It has had a profound effect on the way I live my life – or try to – as well as proving itself time and again to be transformative for people much more accustomed to fearing stigma, prejudice, rejection and pathologising responses. I look forward to being a trustee of tPCA to add another dimension to my involved with the approach. Outside of my counselling work I work as qualitative social researcher primarily supporting charities and other non-profits. I also enjoy connecting with friends and family, theatre and the arts, singing and walking.
Oliver Thompson (he/him) is a Person-centred counsellor from West Yorkshire. My main client base is LGBTQ+ individuals, more specifically trans and non-binary people. I was a trustee for 3 years with TransLeeds, and was one of the founding members when they first constitutionalized. I stepped back from the organisation to focus on my studies. Now qualified, I want to spread awareness about trans and non-binary people so they have better experiences with therapy. I feel becoming a trustee with tPCA will be a great first step in achieving this, as well as allowing me to grow more as a person and as a counsellor.
I am thrilled to have joined tPCA’s board of trustees this year. As a recently qualified person centred therapist who has over 25 years of working in the field of inclusive education in HE, finding a place to work alongside others who are also passionate about the person centred approach is a real encouragement and delight. Much of my work around issues to do with inclusion, diversity and developing inclusive practice has focused on the importance of process and around finding ways for more relational ways of working that challenge assumptions around individual need and what counts as success. Roger’s Person-centred theory has much in common here; not least the idea of transformational healing as being a process and a journey, one that is unique to each client and in the hands of the client. I think it was this idea that counsellor and client are both on a level playing field as it were that attracted me to the theory more than 7 years ago and to this day, I think it is radical in its assertion. Indeed, this position of the counsellor as ‘non-expert’ and the emphasis on empowering the client remains a challenge to those medicalised approaches that seek to pathologise
behaviour and provide neatly packaged solutions for what is seen as wrong with the client. As a theory, the PC approach is not easily packaged which is something that sits well with me; there is plenty of scope for exploration and development and more recent developments around relational depth from Mearns and Cooper (2017) have only
served to emphasise the theory’s depth and mystery. I look forward to working alongside supportive colleagues in the PCA in furthering understanding of the person centred approach and its application in practice.
As well as reading and writing (and talking about reading and writing!) I love to walk our German Shepherd around the reservoirs up here in Bolton. I love to sing and being involved in choirs. I also love sitting in cafes drinking coffee.
I am a person-centred therapist working with children and young people predominantly. I also work with Asian people from the Indian subcontinent, mainly with adults who have language challenges.
My passion for the person-centred approach began at the trainee practitioner stage when I started my own therapy with a deeply person-centred therapist and being. The experience of change and transformation in the right environment, cemented my belief in the approach. Since then I have experienced numerous encounter groups, which are rooted in the person-centred approach. These are an experience in ongoing growth and development. The desire to support the person-centred approach has grown, hence. I am passionate about autonomy, personal power and acceptance. I strongly believe in trusting the process, which has brought me where I want to be in my private world. I am passionate about the person-centred approach which provides space to hold and contain varying views and co-exist. I want to be a part of tPCA so that I can contribute towards promoting this approach and spreading the love of it.
In my free time, I read, play with paints and pens, and write poems. I have been fortunate to be selected for many of my haiku and other forms of poems to be published in various anthologies, in print and online.