Glossary

Accreditation
Professional bodies such as BACP, UKCP and HPC ask their therapists (in addition to their membership criteria) to provide evidence of their competency to practise before they can be accredited and to provide evidence of continuing professional development activities (see below) whilst they are accredited members.

BACP is the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy www.bacp.co.uk

CPCAB is the Counselling and Psychotherapy Central Awards Body

CPD (Continuing Professional Development) is a requirement which professional bodies such as BACP and UKCP make of their accredited therapists. Each therapist is asked to undertake a minimum number of hours of CPD activities each year and to send a record of these to their professional body in order to continue with their accreditation.

HPC is the Health Profession Council which regulates the profession of Arts Therapists in UK and its protected titles of 'art psychotherapist', 'art therapist', 'dramatherapist' & 'music therapist' www.hpc-uk.org

ISMHO is the International Society for Mental Health Online. Many of our ACTO members belong to this www.ismho.org

Membership Professional bodies such as BACP, accept as members, therapists who have completed some relevant training, are in regular supervision and who have professional indemnity insurance cover.

Psychodynamic, Person Centred, Integrative, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Solution Focussed Brief Therapy (SFBT) are different ways in which therapists may work and offer different approaches to your problem. Some will help you understand why your problem arose, e.g. by looking at your childhood to see whether things that happened to you then may be affecting the way you behave today, others may concentrate on re-framing the way you think about your problem and yourself. Your therapist will explain the way he or she works if you ask them.

Psychological therapies is an umbrella term which includes counselling, psychotherapy, arts therapy and psychology. Throughout this website we refer to a practitioner of any one of these therapies simply as a therapist.

Supervision takes place when a counsellor discusses his or her client work (making sure that client anonymity is protected) with another experienced counsellor who has undertaken additional training for this work. The same rules of confidentiality apply to supervision of counsellors. All ACTO therapists are expected to receive regular supervision for their online work.

UKCP is the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy www.psychotherapy.org.uk