Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, which professional bodies provide accreditation for (a) counselling and (b) psychotherapy services for the NHS.

The Department has no statutory powers to compel professional bodies to sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). We are working closely with the group who drafted the MoU, currently led by the UK Council for Psychotherapy, which has successfully increased the number of signatories since the document was first published in February 2015. The group will continue to encourage others to sign up to their revised MoU, which will be extended to include transgender people, over coming months.

The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA) provides independent accreditation of voluntary registers for counselling and psychotherapy services.

Accreditation by the PSA allows commissioners, employers, and service users to assure themselves that the practitioners on these registers meet high standards of training, conduct and competence, and at all times apply high ethical standards to their work.

The PSA accredits the following voluntary registers relevant to counselling and psychotherapy:

Association of Child Psychotherapists;

Association of Christian Counsellors;

British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy;

British Association of Play Therapists;

British Psychoanalytic Council;

Counselling & Psychotherapy in Scotland;

National Counselling Society;

Play Therapy UK; and

UK Council for Psychotherapy.