Surviving Complaints Against Counsellors and Psychotherapists: Towards Understanding and Healing

Over the past twenty years governmental initiatives have resulted in the encouragement of higher expectations of professionals and the seeking of redress when standards are not met. Much is good about this, but when parallelled with unreasonable expectations, society has become dissatisfied and, as a result, more litigious. It is in this environment that the professional associations of psychotherapists and counsellors were formed: setting up complaints procedures to protect the general public from incompetent practitioners and malpractice. Procedures have been developed with care but neither therapists nor clients have any idea of the impact that involvement in these processes will have on them. Surviving Complaints Against Counsellors and Psychotherapists sets out to prepare therapists for this impact and to help trainees think about their practice from the start, so that unnecessary complaints are avoided. However experienced we are, we will all make mistakes at some time. Whilst not defending malpractice, this book does help all therapists to think about why complaints arise and to reflect on their practice. This will not necessarily prevent a complaint occurring, for that will happen: rightly if malpractice has occurred, wrongly because of a vexatious act on the part of a client, or as part of a very painful therapeutic process for both therapist and client. Support is essential for any therapist involved in a complaints process and this book, drawing upon the extensive expertise of experienced and successful practitioners, does this very effectively. Gabrielle Syme, Past Chair BACP