Power, Diversity and Values‐Congruent Accountability in the Psychological Therapies: Report on an Emerging Dialogue

Abstract

This part‐academic and part‐dialogic paper is based on a seminar discussion of the same title, in which about 20 delegates participated at the annual PCSR Conference, “We're all in this together”? – Power, Inequality, and Diversity' held in London in May 2011. Three of the participants agreed to collaborate via a collective ‘e‐forum’ in writing up the following report and extending the initial discussion, in which we attempt to convey the richness and diversity of the workshop's enlivening conversation. With the recent demise of the long‐mooted state regulation of the psychological therapies field via the Health Professions Council, the responsibility for engaging fully and non‐defensively with the issue of accountability has thankfully now passed to the ‘psy’ field itself. Our discussion touched on many of the challenging and complex issues which any engagement with accountability must address, including the historical and cultural location of the ‘accountability’ notion itself; to whom therapists should (if at all) be accountable; how issues of power are inevitably played out, often unconsciously, in any accountability process; and what a values‐congruent approach to accountability might look like as a practical possibility for the field. The writing of this paper was a non‐hierarchical, collaborative process, aiming to represent our differences openly and creatively, and yet also seeking some common‐values ground from which we can seek to create a way of thinking about accountability which stays true to our core values, rather than betraying or subverting them. There is no pretence here that we are offering any neat conclusions or programmatic ‘quick fixes’ to the highly complex ‘accountability’ question. The inevitable result of our collaborative journey is therefore a somewhat uneven text, but one which we hope helps to stimulate a multiplicity of dialogues, discourses and creative thinking on these complex issues of accountability in our field.