Hi everyone,
We are sending this newsletter to everyone who registered via Eventbrite for the uACT’s online launch in January 2022. If you don’t want to receive uACT emails, please let us know by return and we will delete you from the database.
We had over 600 people registering and about 250 people attending the launch, and perhaps 20 or so have engaged one way or another with developing campaigning projects towards the goals of uACT’s Manifesto statement.
Organising meetings
Since Jan ’22 we have had an organising group, media and website groups, a London local group, an IAPT and the NHS campaigning group, a politics of training group. Laura Spreitzer has done terrific work running the website.We held a second online general meeting in October 2022. You can find notes from that event here.
Identifying campaigns and drawing together people wanting to work under the uACT banner has been slow though and we’ve had to accept that if anything effective is going to come out of the project it’s going to take time. Potentially uACT could provide an umbrella for many of the organisations and campaigns already underway among psy-activists. That’s yet to happen.
Undoing the IAPT/NHS Talking Therapies monopoly
A group of us in London, Bristol, Sheffield and Newcastle, through an alliance of uACT, PCU, SHA and KONP members, have been working on challenging the NHS TT monopoly on therapy in the public sector – the reality of its ineffectiveness v the propaganda, the dominance of short-term behavioural practice, the lack of relational and long-term options for clients, its cost, the waste of its drop-out rates, its refusal to recognise most trainings in the profession, the pressure on its workforce in terms of low pay and workload, the pressure to manipulate outcomes, the growth of online and digital therapy, the lack of follow-up studies and so on.
In Bristol, Ruth Jones and colleagues in the local Protect our NHS group have been taking the IAPT private provider Vita Health to task. They have organised a national petition calling for an independent audit of Talking Therapies in the NHS.
“We are calling for:
- A thorough independent review and audit of the NHS Talking Therapies
- A diversity of talking therapies, including relational therapies, to be made available
- A genuine response to community need
- Improvement in staff pay and conditions”
Over 3000 people have signed so far. If you haven’t already, please sign up here https://keepournhspublic.com/nhs-talking-therapies-petition/ and circulate this link as far and wide as possible.
The Bristol group have also produced a campaign leaflet, a template for similar action in other parts of the country. See below:
In London, Paul Atkinson has been campaigning to get the failings of NHS TT provision on the political agenda. He recently wrote a detailed open letter to the NE London joint scrutiny committees laying out the ways IAPT is failing to provide local people with the therapeutic support they need. Read it here. You can view his 3 minute (committee rule!) presentation to the committee in July at the beginning of this video of the meeting – with more to come!
Paul has now presented similar reports on the failings of IAPT to several London SHA and KONP mental health groups. He’ll be talking about NHSTT in Hackney in October. He’s also produced two Youtube videos on how to research IAPT’s very detailed annual reports which offer a pretty enlightening insight into local as well as national IAPT statistical smoke and mirrors. See videos here::
Dylan Knight in Sheffield and Sarah Liddell in Newcastle are also working on local IAPT services.
The Common Good – new Youtube channel on the politics of mental health
Three uACT members – Alia Butt, Andy Metcalf and Paul Atkinson – have started a new Youtube channel on the politics of mental health called “The Common Good”. Part of its vision is to develop the links between the ‘crisis’ in common mental health distress and the politics of more severe mental ill-health and its treatment. We want to be talking about counselling and psychotherapy in the context of the broader meanings and issues of psychological pain and distress in capitalist society.
There are two episodes of The Common Good out so far. The first is a conversation with Margery Hunter and Sarah Liddell talking about their work with the North East Counselling Services, which has been providing relational counselling to a predominantly working class population in Gateshead since 2006. The second is a conversation with Vincenzo Passante about his experience in the mental health services in Trieste, Italy and in the UK. Future videos will regularly feature the issues at the heart of uACT’s campaigning agenda.
Check out the current episodes on the two links below:
If you would like to join us on the Youtube project, help with production, have ideas about topics/people to interview – please get in touch
Feminist Therapy Network
From Rebecca Greenslade:
Following a wonderful launch event in May, the Feminist Therapy Network’s (FTN) website is now live and the inaugural newsletter was recently sent out. The FTN is an opportunity to learn more about feminist perspectives in therapy and an invitation to be involved in a feminist community of therapists, at any stage of training and practice. To find out more and to sign up to the FTN newsletter to stay updated on upcoming workshops, trainings, book clubs, consciousness-raising groups and events, visit the website.
The next FTN newsletter is coming out in a few days and we’re including links to Ruth Jones’ petition and to uACT – do also send on anything we can share.
Surviving Work: The Digital Therapy Survey
“The Digital Therapy Project seeks to understand experiences of teletherapy, online therapy platforms, and digital mental health tools from the perspectives of therapists and consumers/users of these technologies.
We are interested in any digital tools that you consider to be therapeutic including mindfulness and wellbeing apps, mental health chatbots, text based support, teletherapy with/as a therapist in private practice or via an online therapy platform. Anything you consider to be therapeutic we are interested in.”
Find out more and participate in the survey here
“Making Sense of the Madness” Podcast Series
Professional psychotherapist Merryn Jones and her therapy-curious son-in-law Rob Thorman explore what’s going on and what’s going wrong with the provision of mental health treatment in the UK today in this eight-part limited series.
Episodes include:
Closure of the Three Boroughs Personality Disorder Service
The CBT Tsunami
The Politics of Managerialism
For a full list, see the link here
The Working Class Psychotherapists Association (WCPA)
The Working Class Psychotherapists Association (WCPA) is a new network established by, and for, psychotherapists and counsellors who identify as working class. We aim to improve representation within our profession and grow solidarity in a supportive community of practice for professionals who are, or have ever been, effected by socio-economic exclusion. Embracing the related issues of intersectionality and decolonisation within a spectrum of classed experience, we believe that promoting an understanding of our proud working class history, traditions and cultures of resistance will improve accessibility and inclusion for both professionals and those seeking therapy.
If you’d like to be register your interest please email:
Victoria Childs
The Free Psychotherapy Network (FPN)
FPN was set up in 2014 to combine political and practical action by offering qualified relational therapy to people on benefits and low incomes. Our intention is to challenge the two-tier therapy structure here in the UK – open-ended relational therapy in the private sector for people who can afford to pay the fees, and short-term behavioural therapy on the NHS. The FPN model is simple. If you are a qualified counsellor/psychotherapist and want to express a commitment to relational, co-negotiated therapy for all and you can afford to offer one or more weekly spaces for free to someone on benefits or a low income, you can apply to join our website directory. FPN has peer supervision groups and a blog on therapy politics.
See our mission statement here.
For more info on how to join us see here.
Our directory of therapists is here.
Campaigning for universal access to relational counselling and psychotherapy
uACT are campaigning for people to have access to a wide range of counselling and psychotherapy in the NHS, and for it to be available through local community services and charities, as well as in schools and colleges. We want services to respond to the needs of local communities and to be client-led rather than provider prescribed.
If you’d like to help organise the campaign, have ideas for new initiatives or want some help setting up your own organisation/action please get in touch with us:
uACT 