A CRACKDOWN on the unregulated work of psychotherapists and counsellors is on the way.
By Alan O’Keeffe
New laws will tackle “serious issues” concerning the regulation of their work with vulnerable individuals, said Fine Gael TD Dan Neville. “At the moment, anyone can put up a sign stating they are a counsellor or psychotherapist and charge €80 an hour for a service which they might not be suitably qualified for,” he said. http://www.herald.ie/news/crackdown-will-target-fake-therapy-3003513.html “This is extremely dangerous for vulnerable people,” said Deputy Neville, who is president of the Irish Association of Suicidology. New legislation, due to be sent to Government next month, could help to address serious issues concerning regulation and registration, he said. “Currently, there are no statutory regulations in Ireland for the registration of psychotherapists and counsellors. “This means there is no State control over what qualifications are held by those practising in these areas…. We need a system of statutory regulation to ensure these professions are properly monitored and that adequate standards are met,” he said.
Complaints
Deputy Neville said: “The Taoiseach has confirmed to me that the Health and Social Care Professionals [Amendment] Bill is currently being drafted, and is due to be sent to the Government for consideration next month. “The Bill will amend the original 2005 Act, which provides for the registration of people qualified to use the title of a designated profession.
“It also deals with issues surrounding complaints relating to their fitness to practice. “Under the existing Act, there are 12 designated professions listed. This does not include the professions of psychotherapy and counselling.” He added: “I will be pushing for psychotherapists and counsellors to be included on the list of designated professions under the new legislation.” He acknowledged a psychological therapies forum — encompassing 22 organisations — exists, “but unfortunately this means we have been left with a system of self-regulation. This cannot be allowed to continue,” he said. “It is critical that the situation is addressed in the new Bill, to avoid vulnerable people in crisis being damaged by counsellors and psychotherapists who are not properly trained or qualified,” he added.
- Alan O’Keeffe
http://dialogueireland.org/site/dicontent/a2z/human/index.html
Filed under: Therapy Groups
Very glad to hear this development, it has been a long time overdue. The Governing Boards of Counselling and Psychotherapy (IACP & IAHIP) have been talking about this happening for years, but they are one of the worst offenders for dealing with offending therapists. Part of the problem is that many of the committee members are volunteers……. many if them want to be on Boards for some kind of personal recognition, but few want (or know how) to take on problematic members when trouble raises its head. On this forum alone there have been three such dysfunctional therapists “outed” for their unfitness to practice (Bernie Purcell of the Rowbuck Centre, Jeanette Rigney and John Sherwin of the Tabor Centres). Chances are that these three are not the only ones behaving in such a manner, and I for one welcome this move towards better regulation of the profession
. Thank you Deputy Neville for pushing for new legislation, and to you Alan O’Keeffe for writing about the subject.
well at long last someone is starting to listen to the truth about bad training centers in psychotherapy…..
yes the boards just seem to run for cover when a problem arises and tie and students up in red tape which makes complaining too difficult.
well done deputy Neville, journalists Colin Coyle and Alan O’Keeffe keep up the good work and lets hope this will start to see an end to this abuse of students…
What has become of Bernie Purcell (Rowbuck Centre), Jeanette Rigney (Tabor Centres) and John Sherwin (Tabor Centres) who were all seen as unfit to practice as therapists………… are they still practicing as therapists? If so, where are they……so we can avoid them.
Don’t know anything about Bernie Purcell,,,,, Tabor has two centers one in Tallaght (Belgard) in Dublin and one in Ballinafid in Mullingar… Rigney is still practicing and more students are being taken in for September/October rumor has it…… so yes they are very much still in business…..However they are keeping a very low profile…..
It is high time people like Rigney are shown up to be what they are; money grabbing con artists taking advantage of unregulated therapies. We need to flush them out of the system once and for all. They give genuine counsellors/therapists a bad name and, unfortunately, i have come across people who were vulnerable and taken advantage of and who are now wary of counselling in general. I feel uneasy about how the people in the newspaper articles were approached for very large sums of money. It reminds me too much of the Tony Quinn group.
Hello all.
I am thrilled to hear this news as i was in one of the above centers which I left because i was so traumatized. It has taken me two years to recover.
Hello Anonymous
I am interested to know what happened that traumatised you? I also was very traumatised by what happened to me. It happened in the Tony Quinn centre. I’m hoping it is possible to pinpoint the misuse of therapeutic approaches they use in centres like the above and the effects they have. It can take years to recover. It is also high time that counsellors who become aware of what is happening through client work become more active in reporting and publishing their findings. It is so frustrating when nothing happens. Too often we are left to cope with the trauma on our own.
Jeanette Rigney is still operating her psychotherapy course near Mullingar……….. still conning people out of money. She is like a chameleon, highly adapted to change her colour, and a parasite still feeding of her capture prey.
Fear not, I have more than a slight feeling that Jeanette Rigney will be getting her just desserts one of these fine days… Watch this space is all that can be said on the matter for the time being.
This issue continues to be a very real threat to client’s mental health. I have genuine concern about client’s attending counsellors/psychotherapists who practice and tutor in colleges who do not declare they were associated with the Tony Quinn centre or declare they have attended EDUCO seminars. They continue education, mainstream, with the intention of gaining further qualifications which gives the appearance they practice bone fide counselling when, in fact, they use inappropriate techniques unknown to their clients unless they are familiar with them which gives them the opportunity to discontinue with therapists and colleges.
Has it come to a point where HSE and government run counselling services are probably the safest at this time? Nothing is done about complaints because the law does not take care of people who have had the misfortune of abusive counselling. This, however, should not stop clients from posting about it.
The problem with cult therapy training is it focuses the mind on a cultish approach to the detriment of alternative approaches in psychotherapy. The amount of time given to practice was minimal in the Tony Quinn Centre and very little development of alternative approaches included in their methods of therapy. It may be very difficult for student therapist to take on other approaches when attending another college due to previous cult indoctrination techniques and plagiarised ‘philosophy’ being the focus of learning with hypnotic effect particularly when the psychotherapy courses were based on the student listening; the material was read very quickly by the ‘tutor’ with very little time to think about it.
When the cult approach is triggered it is automatic. As Tony Quinn’s technique has proved, repeating the same information, over and over again, can actually handicap a person’s intellectual faculties and undermines the ability to accept and put into practice alternatives approaches. To counteract the indoctrination it is necessary to become aware of the tendency to slip back into using often repeated phrases etc., getting stuck in thinking patterns developed from this type of learning environment is part of the course. There is also the possibility of a practicing therapist not remembering the content of what he/she has said to the client when information is given from the unconscious part of the mind. In the Quinn Centre they were led to believe that this was a higher form of therapy. One does not have to use their intelligence to repeat what they have heard and ‘tutors’ encourage this. Another disturbing aspect of this ‘training’ is when the student takes on mannerisms of the ‘tutor’. The original personality gets worn away and another personality taking over. This is understood as the cult personality. Unfortunately, there is very real danger of not being able to distinguish between the two and ‘enlightenment’ versus indoctrination as discerning the difference is sometimes quite difficult for the person in question. Periods of seeming unconscious of their surroundings and what is being may seem unusual but actually quite common. In too many cases they are not aware of the changes taking place.
Bearing in mind that students who studied with the EDUCO cult or any other alternative ‘therapy’ group do not disclose this information I would err on the side of caution as a potential client choosing a counsellor/psychotherapist.