Outrage at failure to prosecute sex abuse of mentally ill woman

In 2013 I reported on the case of Geoffrey Pick, a psychotherapist who was found to have committed serious sexual misconduct with a mentally ill client. The allegations were found proven by the Arbours Association of Psychotherapists, a member organisation of the UK Council for Psychotherapy, and he was dismissed from his NHS post. Disgracefully, Arbours gave him a one-year suspension instead of a striking off, and then he was allowed to re-register as a psychotherapist. He subsequently resigned his registration after being contacted by a broadsheet journalist. The UKCP has since changed its rules so that member organisations are no longer allowed to investigate complaints themselves. All complaints now have to go through a centralised Complaints and Conduct Process.

I’ve since been told that a criminal prosecution of Mr Pick has been dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service, for reasons that seem both shocking and farcical.

UKCP fails to strike off yet another therapist who committed sexual misconduct

A few months ago I noticed that a Jungian psychotherapist called Rob Waygood had been suspended from the UK Council for Psychotherapy. His suspension noticed briefly disappeared and then reappeared from the UKCP complaints page, and his website also reappeared then disappeared. I took this to mean there had been a ruling and then an appeal.

The ruling has now been published, and it turns out that Waygood had a sexual relationship with a client, which caused the client harm. Concerningly, he hasn’t been struck off but instead has been given a 6 month suspension.

As it happens there was indeed an appeal, though it was the UKCP who appealed rather than Waygood, on the grounds that the original sanction was unduly lenient. Incredibly, the panel simply ordered a warning letter.

The details in the online ruling are fairly scant, but they state that Waygood started a sexual relationship with his client a short time after the therapy ended. It sounds like there were some precursors happening during the therapy, such as Waygood commenting on the client’s femininity during a session.

This isn’t the first time that a UKCP psychotherapist has committed the worst possible breach of boundaries and not been struck off. In May 2011 Geoffrey Pick was suspended for a year after sexually abusing a client. He was then put back on the UKCP register, and later resigned when the media started taking an interest. Stuart Macfarlane is currently serving a two year suspension from the Guild of Analytical Psychologists and UKCP, again for sexually abusing a client. He could be practising again after September. In both the the Pick and Macfarlane cases, their victims suffered massive psychological trauma.

The UKCP seems to have extremely poor timing in making this decision. They’re an “assured voluntary register” with the Professional Standards Authority, and their complaints procedure is due to be audited soon by the PSA to ensure quality control. Meanwhile, Geraint Davies MP has a private members bill before Parliament, calling for statutory rather than voluntary regulation for counsellors and psychotherapists. The second reading is later this month.

The Waygood decision states that, “The Panel determined that the Registrant’s behaviour was so serious that the reputation of both the profession and that of the regulators was at enormous risk.” Those reputations certainly are at risk, not only by his behaviour but by this lenient decision.

The Stuart Macfarlane case – the UKCP responds

Today I published the story that Stuart Macfarlane, a psychotherapist registered with the Guild of Analytical Psychologists and UK Council for Psychotherapy, had been suspended for two years due to serious sexual misconduct with a mentally ill patient. The normal sanction for this kind of misconduct is a striking-off, not a suspension.

Earlier in the week I’d e-mailed the UKCP. This is what I asked them.

Thanks for your e-mail. I was just about to contact you as it happens. The story is regarding Stuart Macfarlane, who is currently suspended for two years by the Guild of Analytical Psychologists (formerly the Guild for Analytical Psychology and Spirituality).

Can you confirm that this was for serious sexual misconduct with a patient (a vulnerable adult with mental health issues)? 

Does the UKCP have an opinion on GAP’s decision to suspend rather than strike off Mr Macfarlane?

Is there a reason why Mr Macfarlane’s case is not on the UKCP complaints archive?

Will Mr Macfarlane be allowed to re-register with the GAP/UKCP at the end of his suspension?

I’ll be aiming to publish on this story on Friday, so I’d appreciate any response from the UKCP before then.

The UKCP’s response arrived Friday lunchtime, so wasn’t included in my original post. That said, it’s quite a long response, so it’s probably worth giving it a post of its own.

The complaint against Stuart MacFarlane was handled by a UKCP member organisation. I am sure you will address your questions about the detail of the case to that organisation. We are unable to comment on their complaints process or details of the case because we are an appeals body.

We do not publish decisions made by other organisations because this falls outside our policy on the publication of decisions. This policy is available on our website:http://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/ukcp_standards_and_policy_statements.html

We are unable to make speculative comments on whether a named individual would be allowed to re-register. We have a proper process for cases to be considered. What we can say is that for any member wishing to re-register at the end of a sanction, UKCP’s Registrar would consider the possibility in light of whether the sanctions were complied with, along with other factors.

The UKCP member organisation that has made decisions about Mr Stuart MacFarlane, has issued public statements about the case which you can find here:

http://www.analyticalpsychology.org/simpleblog/upload/file/Decision%20regarding%20Stuart%20MacFarlane%282%29.pdf

We are utterly in favour of strong regulation. We have regulatory systems to protect the public and the privacy of those involved. Those systems include controls on qualifications, entry to our register and fair systems for dealing with those cases where there is reason to question whether someone should be allowed to continue on the register. And within these strict processes we have lay and professional involvement, and access to appeals where someone feels a case has not been handled properly. For that reason we can’t engage in speculation about cases or trial over the internet.

So, if a UKCP-registered therapist is disciplined by a UKCP member organisation, this doesn’t get published by the UKCP? That’s surprising, to say the least. I looked up their publications policy for fitness to practise decisions, and there it indeed is.

Decisions of Member Organisations
22. UKCP will not publish the determination of an organisational member, where complaints had originated from the organisational member complaints process.

The policy is dated 29th November 2012. I presume this must be a change in policy, because they’d previously published the determination for Geoffrey Pick, suspended by the Arbours Association in May 2011, also for serious sexual misconduct (he was subsequently allowed to re-register both with Arbours and UKCP, and then resigned when the media started to take an interest).

Admittedly this is an issue that eventually should become moot for future cases as all the member organisations sign up with the UKCP’s new centralised Complaints and Conduct Process. However, that doesn’t protect the public in this particular case.

I think I’ll address their final comment about “trial over the internet”. I’m not a fan of trial by internet either. I’m a fan of trial by…well, trials. Or at least trial by fitness to practice hearing. And Mr Macfarlane has indeed had a hearing where there was a finding of fact. I’ve e-mailed the GAP, the UKCP and Macfarlane, and so far none of them have disputed the facts that I’ve queried. Admittedly that’s partly because they didn’t tell me much anyway. Even so, none of them have e-mailed me back saying, “No, no, it definitely wasn’t serious sexual misconduct!”

What concerns me here isn’t so much the fact finding as the way it was published (or wasn’t), and the kind of sanction imposed. At the risk of repeating myself from previous posts, here is the indicative sanctions guidance that the Nursing and Midwifery Council uses.

 In all cases of serious sexual misconduct, it will be highly likely that the only proportionate sanction will be a striking-off order. If panels decide to impose a sanction other than a striking-off order, then they will need to be particularly careful in explaining clearly and fully the reasons why they made such a determination, so that it can be understood by those who have not heard all of the evidence in the case.

Given that this is not only a case of serious sexual misconduct, but one in which significant harm was inflicted on a vulnerable adult, it seems inconceivable that this wouldn’t have resulted in a striking-off anywhere else. And even if it was conceivable, there’s that line about how panels should be “particularly careful in explaining clearly and fully the reasons why they made such a determination.” The GAP’s statement is clearly not particularly careful to explain this. If anything, it’s particularly vague. If I hadn’t gone digging, it wouldn’t be clear at all that it was a case of this severity.

For that reason, what I’m engaging in here is not trial by internet, but the use of Google as safeguarding by other means.

What future for the UK Council for Psychotherapy?

Back in January I warned of a potential crisis at the UK Council for Psychotherapy. Unlike doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers or, for that matter, chiropodists, there is no statutory regulator for psychotherapists. There are only self-regulating bodies like the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) or the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). When the Coalition took office, they shelved plans for state-regulation in favour of “voluntary assured registration”, whereby organisations like the UKCP and BACP could be accredited by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA). But only if they were doing a good job of handling complaints and dealing with rogue therapists.

The BACP has already achieved PSA accreditation. The UKCP has not – and for good reason. The UKCP acts as an umbrella body for 75 psychotherapy organisations. These organisational members (“OMs”) have in the past each had their own separate complaints procedure, some of which are shockingly awful. Patients looking to make a complaint have found that they can’t find out how to make a complaint, or that an organisation might not follow its own procedures, or  they might be greeted with hostility and unhelpfulness. In some organisations, patients have even been told that if their complaint is rejected then they’ll have to pay the cost of the investigation!

The disregard for safeguarding has been absolutely appalling. For years, people raised concerns with the UK Association of Humanistic Psychology Practitioners about Derek Gale. He was running a therapy cult in which he sexually, physically, emotionally and financially abused his clients. Their complaints fell on deaf ears. The UKCP eventually struck him off, but only after he was first struck off as an arts therapist by the Health Professions Council.

Or there’s Geoffrey Pick of the Arbours Association. He was found to have committed serious sexual misconduct with an NHS patient. The NHS trust admitted liability and settled out-of-court for five-figure damages and an unreserved apology. The patient remains deeply traumatised by the experience and continues to receive therapy for this. The Arbours Association simply suspended him for a year and then allowed him to re-register with them as a psychotherapist. In any other profession, anything other than a striking-off would have been unthinkable.

Unsurprisingly, the PSA is not going to rubberstamp this. In an attempt to improve standards, the UKCP has developed a new Complaints and Conducts Process (CCP) to take over complaints-handling from the member organisations. The first time it was used for a Jungian analyst called John Smalley. It was an absolute shambles, taking over three years to decide he had committed serious misconduct (his member organisation, the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists, had simply declared there was “no case to answer”) but they decided not to sanction him anyway. He now seems to have quit psychotherapy.

Since then two psychotherapists have been sanctioned and one suspended under the CCP. These appear to have been handled much more rigorously and professionally than the Smalley case (though Derek Gale remains the only psychotherapist ever struck off by the UKCP in recent years). The trouble is though, not all the member organisations have signed up to it. Back in December 2012, the UKCP chief executive David Pink complained,

I am disappointed that many of our member organisations seem to be reluctant to engage with the central complaints scheme…By this time next year we need everyone to be signed up to the central complaints or in the process to becoming signed up. By then, other leading reputable therapy organisations (including BPC and BACP) are likely to be fully PSA accredited. Employers, referrers, commissioners and clients will begin to expect practitioners to be on  a PSA-accredited register as a minimum requirement. We must not fall behind.

In January I wrote about what would happen if the UKCP organisations failed to sign up, and hence the UKCP couldn’t achieve PSA accreditation.

The UKCP have been failing for years to protect the public from rogue therapists. It now looks like they’re having trouble getting their member organisations to sign up to their new complaint system…No wonder they’re getting worried that rival bodies like the BACP will get the PSA accreditation and they won’t.

If that does happen, the results will be utterly predictable. All the reputable psychotherapists will promptly sign up with the BACP, leaving the UKCP to shrivel into a rump organisation housing the quacks, hucksters and chancers of the therapy world.

So, how’s that going? Again, David Pink gives the answer, in the latest UKCP bulletin.

But there is one area which has attracted [the PSA’s] particular concern – that not all our individual members are covered under UKCP’s complaints and conduct process (CCP). The indication we were given is that our application is at risk because we are unable at present to declare when, or even if, we will have all UKCP registrants covered by CCP…Only one or two organisations have expressed fundamental concerns about CCP in principle. But there are many other organisations who have said they will join, probably, sometime soon – mañana!

I think I know the “mañana” of which he speaks. Back in May 2012 when I was investigating the John Smalley case, I contacted the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists who had dismissed the subsequently-proved claims of misconduct. I asked them if they planned to join the CCP. This was their reply.

Since the UKCP Central Complaints Process is not yet finalised, it is too early to say if IGAP will sign up to it or not, but is likely to do so if it is felt to match our professional standards and has nothing that contradicts our existing Code of Ethics.

Or, to put it another way, mañana!

Incidentally, if you go to the IGAP website, there’s no information at all about how to make a complaint. When I asked for a copy of their Code of Ethics (which also isn’t on the site) they didn’t send me one. They did however admit that they haven’t sanctioned a therapist for misconduct in years.

I’ve been harshly critical of the UKCP in the past couple of years, and I don’t apologise for that. However, to be fair to them they do now have a system in place for dealing with misconduct. and which after a dreadful start now seems to be getting results. But it can only truly work if everyone is signed up to it.

Clearly, there are now two possible futures for the UKCP. There are those who see a future in which its practitioners are accountable and where a UKCP registration is a stamp of reassurance for the public. However, there seems to be also those who may be happy for the quacks, incompetent, cultists and outright abusers of the therapy world to carry on with free rein, even if this means that the UKCP becomes officially second-rate to rival bodies like the BACP.

Of course, of these two possible futures, in only one outcome could the UKCP genuinely expect to have a future.

The Geoffrey Pick Case: The UK Council for Psychotherapy Responds

Last week I broke the news that a psychotherapist who had sexually abused his patient had been allowed to re-register with the UK Council for Psychotherapy. Yesterday that the UKCP issued a statement on their website.

 

A UKCP complaints case has attracted interest in the blogosphere. We would like to issue the following statement.

*waves*

The next part is more-or-less identical to the media release they e-mailed me last week:

In January 2011 Mr Geoffrey Pick was dismissed by his employer for gross professional misconduct. Following on from this his UKCP organisation, the Arbours Association of Psychotherapists (AAP) considered the matter in relation to his fitness to practise. It found Mr Pick to be in breach of Article 6 of the AAP Code of Practice, and Mr Pick was suspended from the membership of AAP and, therefore, UKCP for a period of one year from 16 May 2011.

AAP notified us of the decision and this was published on the UKCP website.

At the end of the suspension period AAP confirmed that Mr Pick had complied with the conditions imposed during his suspension and that it was now permissible for Mr Pick to resume membership of AAP and, therefore, UKCP.

In April 2013 Mr Pick informed us that he was resigning from AAP and UKCP with immediate effect. In compliance with this notification his name was removed from the UKCP Register again.

Plus there’s this bit about what’s happening in UKCP.

How UKCP is improving its complaints system

We are now working with our members to implement an improved central complaints and conduct process. This new system has been designed to be clear, fair and independent. Cases involving serious allegations, including gross professional misconduct will receive the highest priority in terms of both speed and depth of enquiry.

The complaints and conduct process was launched at the end of 2012 and we aim to cover all members by the end of this year.

The Geoffrey Pick case highlights the contrast between old and new ways of doing things. Under the old system, complaints about a therapist were directed to the therapist’s UKCP member organisation. Pick’s organisation, the Arbours Association, is still using the old way. It seems they thought that an appropriate sanction for the worst possible betrayal of a duty of care was to exile him from the club for a year, and then all would be forgiven.

The UKCP knows that this way of doing things is untenable. They also know it won’t pass muster to get accreditation from the Professional Standards Authority, which they need in order to compete with rival bodies such as the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. Hence the new central complaints and conduct process which they mention.

The first time the new process was used was for a Jungian analyst called John Smalley. It was a total shambles. The process took over three years to complete. At the end of it seven allegations were found proven, but the panel declined to issue a sanction: not even a caution.

Last week a second decision was published under the complaints and conduct process. This one seems to be a much more rigorous hearing. The process was resolved in less than a year. Aggravating and mitigating factors appear to have been taken into account. What looks like a proportionate sanction (a conditions of practice order) was issued. Let’s hope this means the UKCP has learned some lessons from the Smalley case.

The Arbours Association has not yet signed up to the complaints and conduct process, but it seems clear that they are simply incapable of dealing with misconduct. They’ve shown this not only in their handling of Geoffrey Pick. As I previously mentioned, they also showed it in their co-authorship of the Maresfield Report, a 66-page work of steaming bullshit in which they’re kind enough to detail the various ways in which they simply don’t understand safeguarding and fitness-to-practice issues.

The Arbours co-authored the Maresfield Report with 9 other psychotherapy organisations. Those other bodies, so you know to avoid their therapists like the plague, were:

Association for Group and Individual Psychotherapy
Association of Independent Psychotherapists
Association of Psychoanalysis Users
Cambridge Society for Psychotherapy
Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research
The College of Psychoanalysts-UK
The Guild of Psychotherapists
The Philadelphia Association
The Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis

Geoffrey Pick, UKCP and the Arbours Association: A Failure of Safeguarding

[Trigger warning: sexual abuse]

A few days ago I broke the news that a psychotherapist, Geoffrey Pick, had been allowed to return to practice after sexually exploiting a patient. His professional organisation, the Arbours Association, had given him a one-year suspension instead of a striking-off. When the suspension ended he was re-registered with both the Arbours Association and the UK Council for Psychotherapy. It was only after being contacted by a journalist that he resigned his registration.

Mr Pick caused enormous harm to the patient involved, who is still in therapy for the trauma. Having posted the news, I’m now going to consider how this could have happened.

I noticed something about the press release the UKCP sent me:

In January 2011 Mr Pick was dismissed by his employer for gross professional misconduct. Following on from this his UKCP organisation, the Arbours Association of Psychotherapists (AAP) considered the matter in relation to his fitness to practise, and found Mr Pick to be in breach of Article 6 of the AAP Code of Practice, and Mr Pick was suspended from the membership of AAP and UKCP for a period of one year from 16 May 2011.

AAP notified us of the decision and this was published on the UKCP website.

At the end of the suspension period AAP confirmed that Mr Pick had complied with the conditions imposed during his suspension and that it was now permissible for Mr Pick to resume membership of AAP and UKCP.

In April 2013 Mr Pick informed us that he was resigning from AAP and UKCP with immediate effect. In compliance with this notification his name was removed from the UKCP Register.

Maybe I’m reading between the lines a little, but there seems to be quite a bit of, “the Arbours Association of Psychotherapists considered the matter…”, “AAP notified us…”, “AAP confirmed that…” Almost as if the UKCP are keen to hand ownership of this almighty screw-up to the Arbours.

The matter of psychotherapy regulation is currently living in interesting times. At present the discipline is mostly self-regulated by its own professional bodies. Under the previous Labour government, there were plans for psychotherapists to be state-regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council. This was shelved when the Coalition took office in favour of “assured voluntary registration”. Self-regulators like the UKCP would be able to apply for official accreditation from the Professional Standards Authority, if they were deemed to be doing a good enough job at maintaining standards and dealing with complaints.

The UKCP have a problem here. Their main rival organisation, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, has been granted PSA accreditation. Another rival, the British Psychoanalytic Council, hasn’t been accredited yet but is expected to get it in the not-too-distant future. The UKCP, however, haven’t been accredited and probably won’t be for some time. There’s a blunt reasons for this: its complaints procedures simply aren’t up to scratch.

Back when HCPC regulation was being mooted, there were some vociferous opponents who insisted that state regulation would bring free-market values into psychotherapy (they didn’t do a very good job of explaining why, but that was their argument). Those opponents within the UKCP may well get a nasty lesson on what happens in a free market when your product is visibly inferior to the competition.

The UKCP is essentially an umbrella body for 75 smaller “member organisations”. Previously if you wanted to make a complaint against a UKCP therapist you first had to complain to their member organisation, many of which have shockingly bad complaints procedures. If your complaint was rejected you could then appeal to the UKCP.

The UKCP is aware that this “two-tier” complaints system is riddled with “cronyism and amateurism” (not my words, but the words of the UKCP former chair) and is unacceptable to the Professional Standards Authority. In order to get PSA-accredited, they need to bring in a “single-tier” central complaints service. The new system has only been tried once, with a Jungian analyst called John Smalley. It was a shambles from beginning to end. They need it to be more effective and credible in future.

There’s an article about this in the current edition of the UKCP magazine The Psychotherapist, by their new Complaints and Conduct Manager, Sultana Khanum. (Click here and go to pages 28-29) I wish Ms Khanum well in her new role, and don’t doubt her sincerity, but oh Lord has she picked up a poisoned chalice. This is alluded to in the article.

We believe that the system we have developed is robust and meets PSA requirements. However, to secure PSA accreditation, we need maximum sign-up from you…A number of individual and organisational members have signed up to our new scheme and we look forward to working with them. But several of you haven’t.

This problem is also alluded to in the December 2012 UKCP bulletin. According to the chief executive David Pink:

I am disappointed that many of our member organisations seem to be reluctant to engage with the central complaints scheme…By this time next year we need everyone to be signed up to the central complaints or in the process to becoming signed up. By then, other leading reputable therapy organisations (including BPC and BACP) are likely to be fully PSA accredited. Employers, referrers, commissioners and clients will begin to expect practitioners to be on a PSA-accredited register as a minimum requirement. We must not fall behind.

The Arbours Association is one of those organisations that haven’t yet signed up for central complaints. This is entirely speculation on my part, but I’m wondering if that was why the UKCP were so keen to tell me that it was Arbours who handled the complaint, not them.

So, what sort of an organisation is Arbours?

I can’t claim to have an insider perspective on the Arbours Association, but it was founded in the 1970s by Joseph Berke and Morton Schatzman, former colleagues of that old psychiatric rogue and 60s counter-culture icon RD Laing. Berke and Schatzman were both involved in the famous (or infamous depending on your point of view) Kingsley Hall community. This was sort of a cross between a therapeutic community and a hippy commune where psychiatrists and patients shared a roof and an “anything goes” ethos. The Arbours Association still runs therapeutic communities and also trains psychoanalytic psychotherapists.

As so often seems to be the case with these organisations, I couldn’t find details anywhere on their website of how to make a complaint against a therapist. However, if you want an idea of how rigorous their standards are likely to be, some hints can be found in a little-known report.

Back in 2009 the Maresfield Report was published, supposedly a rigorous analysis showing how HCPC regulation would be completely wrong for psychotherapy. The Arbours Association was one of the organisations behind it, along with various psychoanalytic bodies such as the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, and other Laingian groups such as the Philadelphia Association. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend you read the whole thing. For one thing, it’s long and quite spectacularly boring and badly-written. It contains all sorts of straw-man arguments, leaps of logic and reductio ad absurdum claims. I’m rather fond of Jo D Baker’s description of the report as, “the most self-incriminatory piece of evidence since the discovery of human remains under Dr Crippen’s basement floor.”

Just to give you a brief flavour of the report, here’s an example from page 49. The report discusses a set of draft standards that the HCPC (then known as the Health Professions Council) had proposed for the regulation of psychotherapists.

Psychotherapists and counsellors are required here to ‘understand their duty of care with regard to the legislation on safeguarding children, young people and vulnerable adults’. There is a question here of differentiating the duty of care of the healthcare professional and the responsibility of a therapist. Many therapists would believe that they certainly have a duty in relation to their clinical work, but this duty must be differentiated from the standard of notion of duty of care, especially when it concerns questions such as confidentiality.

Do I even need to deconstruct this? Within a relatively short paragraph there’s several glaringly obvious statements of concern. For one thing, they seem to have assumed that the legal concept of duty of care only applies to healthcare professionals (it doesn’t). The bit about “with regard to the legislation” seems to have completely slipped by them, apparently blissfully unaware that the law doesn’t end at the consulting-room door. As for the suggestion that confidentiality overrides safeguarding obligations – no, no, no!

In this paragraph alone (never mind the rest of the report) there’s a message that might as well be flashing in great big neon letters about the authors. That message is, “We don’t understand our obligations with regard to safeguarding, and we don’t understand the concept of duty of care either.”

I’d suggest that this is how an organisation can believe that a therapist who sexually exploited his patient doesn’t need to be struck off.

Therapist who sexually exploited patient allowed to re-register with UK Council for Psychotherapy

[Trigger warning: sexual exploitation]

Last year I noticed that the UK Council for Psychotherapy had this listing on its online complaints archive.

Geoffrey Pick of The Association of Arbours Psychotherapists (AAP) has been found to be in breach of Article 6 of the AAP Code of Practice. Article 6 of AAP’s Code of Practice provides that ‘a member should maintain appropriate boundaries with their patients and take care not exploit their patients in any way, financially or sexually’.

In view of the above decision Mr Pick is:

1) suspended from the membership of AAP (and UKCP) for a period of one year from 16 May 2011;

2) required to enter therapy at least once a week with a therapist approved by AAP’s Ethics Committee and reports from the therapist are to be submitted to the AAP’s Ethics Committee once a quarter;

3) required to engage in further professional development as agreed between him and the AAP’s Ethics Committee liaison; and

4) required to meet a member of AAP’s Ethics Committee once a quarter.

There wasn’t any more detail than that, which left me wondering what he did.

At the end of his suspension period the above entry disappeared from the UKCP website, and Mr Pick’s name was put back on the UKCP’s online register of therapists. He was free to practice again.

I can now reveal that Pick was having a sexual relationship with one of his patients, a vulnerable adult under the care of mental health services.

I have a media statement from Surrey and Borders NHS Foundation Trust, which reads.

“Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust dismissed Geoffrey Pick from his role as a psychotherapist with the organisation on 27 January 2011 following an inappropriate relationship he had conducted with a client.

“We take our duty to protect the people that we serve very seriously and reported Geoffrey Pick to the local authorities, the Independent Safeguarding Authority and to the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapists. We also undertook an investigation into the practice of Geoffrey Pick which included talking to his manager and other team members to identify any lessons to be learnt.

“We have spoken directly with the client and continue to offer her our sincere apologies.”

The patient in question reports having been severely traumatised by the episode. She suffered a catastrophic deterioration in her mental health, spent several months under the care of a Home Treatment Team and took two overdoses. She subsequently sued Surrey and Borders for the damage inflicted upon her. The NHS trust admitted liability and paid a significant sum in an out-of-court settlement. She continues to receive mental health treatment, but does so from a neighbouring NHS trust, and is still in psychotherapy to come to terms with what happened.

The UKCP sent me this press statement.

In January 2011 Mr Pick was dismissed by his employer for gross professional misconduct. Following on from this his UKCP organisation, the Arbours Association of Psychotherapists (AAP) considered the matter in relation to his fitness to practise, and found Mr Pick to be in breach of Article 6 of the AAP Code of Practice, and Mr Pick was suspended from the membership of AAP and UKCP for a period of one year from 16 May 2011.

AAP notified us of the decision and this was published on the UKCP website.

At the end of the suspension period AAP confirmed that Mr Pick had complied with the conditions imposed during his suspension and that it was now permissible for Mr Pick to resume membership of AAP and UKCP.

In April 2013 Mr Pick informed us that he was resigning from AAP and UKCP with immediate effect. In compliance with this notification his name was removed from the UKCP Register.

I’m absolutely shocked that the Arbours Association, and by extension the UKCP, didn’t strike him off. I was curious to see what my own regulator, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, has to say about such acts of misconduct. I looked up their Indicative Sanctions Guidance.

In all cases of serious sexual misconduct, it will be highly likely that the only proportionate sanction will be a striking-off order. If panels decide to impose a sanction other than a striking-off order, then they will need to be particularly careful in explaining clearly and fully the reasons why they made such a determination, so that it can be understood by those who have not heard all of the evidence in the case.

Well, this was certainly within the category of serious sexual misconduct. Even worse, it was sexual misconduct with a vulnerable adult. Worse still, the patient endured significant harm as a result of his misconduct, and her life was endangered due to the overdoses. I don’t have any doubt that if this was heard by the NMC instead of the UKCP this guy would have been struck off.

I decided to find out whether Pick was still accepting patients, so I created a bogus e-mail account under the name “Clare Stiller”. On 21st March 2013 I sent him an e-mail posing as a vulnerable adult looking for a therapist.

Dear Mr Pick

I found your details from the UKCP website.

I have a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, though I feel that my main issue is a period of sexual abuse that happened when I was a child. I don’t think think I’ve ever properly come to terms with it, and this is what I’d like to work on in therapy.

Do you work with these sorts of issues? If so, in what way do you do so?

I’m still “shopping around” and trying to work out what sort of therapist I want, so it would be helpful if you could send me some information on your qualifications and experience, and in what ways you tend to work.

regards

Clare Stiller

On 23rd March I received a reply:

Dear Ms Stiller

I do have experience of working with the issues you describe but, unfortunately I do not have a vacancy now until the end of May. If you are still looking for a therapist then contact me again . In the meantime if you let me have your address I will post details of my practice to you.

yours sincerely

Geoff Pick

In late March 2013 Pick was contacted by a journalist from a national newspaper. He responded by announcing his resignation from both Arbours and the UKCP, and stated that he would now retire from psychotherapy.

On 3rd April 2013 I took this screenshot from the UKCP online register.

The day after I took the screenshot, Pick’s details were removed from the register. On 6th April I sent Pick another e-mail from “Clare Stiller” asking for further details of his practice. I received a reply back stating that he has now retired from psychotherapy.

I’ve previously covered the ways in which the UKCP’s fitness-to-practice procedures are utterly failing to deal with complaints effectively. The John Smalley case, which I’ve covered extensively, wasn’t so much shocking for what he did, but for the myriad ways in which the UKCP procedures failed.

This case is of a different order altogether. The misconduct involved is far more serious. Mr Pick was found to have abused his position of trust in the worst possible way. Terrifyingly, he was allowed to return to practice. It would seem that the only reason he has now retired is because the media started taking an interest.

Unbelievable. Utterly unbelievable.

UKCP takes 3 years to find therapist guilty of misconduct, another year to publish its findings

Over the last few months I’ve been chronicling the series of mishaps and cock-ups over the John Smalley case. This was a fitness to practice investigation by the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy. The hearings found him guilty of seven allegations. I can now reveal that this won’t be published until a year after the ruling.

The story so far…The UKCP took over three years to investigate complaints about Mr Smalley, a Jungian analyst with the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists. At the end of a long sequence of delays, they decided that seven allegations had been proven. This included smoking during therapy, inappropriately setting two clients up in a business relationship with each other, and making a sexual suggestion about one client to another. Despite this they decided not to sanction him. The fact that he admitted in the hearing that he destroyed his notes doesn’t seem to have prompted a sanction. The UKCP’s laughable response to this is that they didn’t sanction him for destroying his notes because there wasn’t a complaint about destroying his notes.

The final ruling was in March 2012. The outcomes of fitness to practice rulings are supposed to be published in the UKCP’s magazine, The Psychotherapist, which comes out three times a year. The Smalley ruling hasn’t been published yet. I have since been informed that it’s currently scheduled to appear in the Spring 2013 edition.

Seriously, Spring 2013? That’s a year after the final ruling! I e-mailed the UKCP to ask them why there’s such a long delay, and also to ask if there are any other fitness-to-practice outcomes that haven’t been published yet. They declined to comment.

John Smalley is no longer a UKCP member, as he resigned his registration during the hearings. However, he’s still registered with the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists, and continues to advertise his therapy services on their website. To date, the only place where you can find out that he’s had allegations proven against him is on this blog. There’s nothing on either the UKCP or IGAP websites to suggest there’s anything wrong with his practice.

For comparison purposes, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy has hearing outcomes up on its website, the most recent of which are from last month. Or, if you look at the Nursing and Midwifery Council website, they get hearing outcomes up within days.

The UKCP also has an online complaints archive. It looks pretty lonely. In fact, there’s only two decisions on it, neither of which are for John Smalley. One of them is Derek Gale. He was a notorious abuser who emotionally, sexually and financially exploited his patients, and was struck off by the Health Professions Council as well as by UKCP.

The details on the UKCP archive are also pretty scanty by the standards of regulators. For comparison, have a look at the HPC ruling for Derek Gale, which gives a long and detailed account of why you wouldn’t trust him to look after your cat, never mind a vulnerable adult. Meanwhile, the other decision on the UKCP website is for an Arbours Association therapist called Geoffrey Pick. It simply says:

Geoffrey Pick of The Association of Arbours Psychotherapists (AAP) has been found to be in breach of Article 6 of the AAP Code of Practice. Article 6 of AAP’s Code of Practice provides that ‘a member should maintain appropriate boundaries with their patients and take care not exploit their patients in any way, financially or sexually’.

In view of the above decision Mr Pick is:

1) suspended from the membership of AAP (and UKCP) for a period of one year from 16 May 2011;

2) required to enter therapy at least once a week with a therapist approved by AAP’s Ethics Committee and reports from the therapist are to be submitted to the AAP’s Ethics Committee once a quarter;

3) required to engage in further professional development as agreed between him and the AAP’s Ethics Committee liaison; and

4) required to meet a member of AAP’s Ethics Committee once a quarter.

 

Really not a very clear account of what he the misconduct was. Incidentally,  if anyone out there is reading this and knows what he did, my e-mail address is thus_spake_z at hushmail dot com.