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Statutory Regulation - Latest Updates

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Statutory Regulation - Latest Updates

Update 29 April 2008

Last Monday (21 April) I sent a letter was sent to a group of MPs, MSPs and Peers outlining the Society's concerns about the government's proposals for statutory regulation of psychologists.

This follows up our formal response to the Department of Health's public consultation on the Section 60 Order. Attached to the letter was a one page summary of our response to the S60. I have included this below for your information.

Liz Campbell signature

Summary of the Society's response to the Department of Health's S60 consultation

Update 20 March 2008

I am delighted to let you know that our response to the Department of Health's (DH) public consultation on the proposed regulation of practitioner psychologists has been submitted to the DH today and is available on the link below. Again I must thank the many individual members and our member networks who have contributed to the Society's official, single response. Thanks must also be given to the Trustees and staff who had the task of drafting and collating the document.

The next steps are not altogether clear as the DH have not given dates - we are not expecting the legislation (the Section 60 Order) to be tabled until October, and it is unclear as to whether a full response to this consultation exercise will be published. In the meantime we will continue to press for dialogue with the Department of Health and we will continue our discussions with the staff at the Health Professions Council (HPC).

Our Annual Conference in Dublin is fast approaching and I would like to remind those of you who will be there, that there will be an open Statutory Regulation meeting on Thursday 3 April at 17:50, where I will be happy to answer any of your questions.

The Conference will see my last official duties as President and I will be handing over the baton to Liz Campbell. Liz has been involved with every aspect of our statutory regulation work over the past year in her role of President Elect. As more news emerges from the DH or the HPC I'm sure that Liz will bring it to you.

Thank you all for your correspondence and comments on statutory regulation throughout my year as president.

Yours sincerely

Pam Maras signature

Professor Pam Maras
President

Society S60 consulation response (final version)

Update 13 March 2008

Draft Society response to the Department of Health's Section 60 Order public consultation

The Society's draft response to the above is available via the link below. We have taken into account the very many contributions from members and the member networks and are grateful for those inputs.

The document is available now for your information and in case there are any gross errors of fact. The final submission date is 22 March, therefore if you have inputs relating to gross errors of fact please can you ensure that they are sent to the Leicester office (e-mail: statreg@bps.org.uk) by 9 a.m. on Monday 17 March. Following submission to the DH our final, official Society response will be available on the web. Once again many thanks for the many inputs and may I remind you that as this stage this document should be treated as confidential to Society members.

Professor Pam Maras
President

S60 consultation and responses

Update 11 March 2008

Just two brief points:

The Health Professions Council (HPC) have informed us that the Department of Health are unlikely to be able to table the necessary secondary legislation (the Section 60 Order) until the autumn of this year. This, therefore, means that the earliest date that psychologists could be regulated via the HPC is now February 2009. Of course, this is dependent on the secondary legislation being passed by both the Westminster and Edinburgh parliaments.
The Trustees met last Friday (7 March) and considered the draft response to the Department of Health's consultation document on the proposed secondary legislation (the Section 60 Order). The main task was to review the many contributions that have been sent in by individual members and the various Boards, Divisions, Sections, Special Groups and Branches. Work is continuing to produce a final draft, which I hope will be available on the Society's web site within the next few days. The final deadline for responding to the consultation is 22 March. Again I would like to thank all the members and the member networks for their submissions.

Professor Pam Maras
President

Update for 4 March 2008

First I must thank the very many of you who sent comments on the draft response to the Department of Health's (DH's) consultation. Your inputs are now being collated into the next draft and that will be posted on our website as soon as it is available.

As part of this process we promised to post on the web selected inputs from the Member Networks (formerly Subsystems) and these contributions can be found via the link below.

Thank you once again for your inputs and keep your eye on the web for the next draft of our response.

Pam Maras signature

Professor Pam Maras
President

Section 60 consultation and responses

Update for 11 February 2008

Dear Colleagues

I am pleased to inform you that the Society's responses to the two Health Professions Council (HPC) public consultations - Standards of Proficiency; and, Threshold Entry Levels - were submitted on Friday 8 February and are now available via the link below. I would like to thank all the many Society members, Boards, Committees and subsystems for their inputs to these two technical documents and especially to the staff and Trustee members who collated and drafted our responses. As soon as we hear the outcome from the HPC I will bring you that news.

May I also remind you that the public consultation from the Department of Health on the Section 60 Order is still open and the deadline for responses to the Society's draft is Friday 22 February.

Professor Pam Maras
President

HPC standards of proficiency consultation - Society response (final version)
HPC threshold level consultation - Society response (final version)

Update for 28 January 2008

Draft response to the Section 60 Order (S60)

The Society's first draft response to the Department of Health's (DH) public consultation on the Section 60 Order (S60) is now available.

This is our first official opportunity to comment on the DH's legislative plans for the statutory regulation of practitioners psychologists.

I have no need to impress on you how important this document set is to the future of the profession, and therefore, how important it is that we respond with a clear view from the Society.

The draft response was seen and discussed, in general, by Representative Council, last Friday (25 January 2008). The agreement there was that inputs from the Boards, Divisions, Branches, Sections, Special Groups and individual members on the Society's draft response is essential.

There are just a few further points I have to make:

the Representative Council have agreed that only one official Society response will be made to the public consultation;
the absolute deadline for the receipt of your inputs to the draft response is 22 February 2008;
please respond either directly, using the template form you will find on the web, or via your subsystem;
Please make your comments on the draft response rather than the original DH documents, unless you feel that a fundamental point has been missed.

As this is a working draft please keep it confidential to members of the Society.

Once all your comments have been received a final draft response will be posted on the web, around 3 March, for any further and final views.

And finally... I would like to thank you in advance for your comments and inputs to this draft response to the S60 - please remember that they have to be in by Friday 22 February at the latest.

Professor Pam Maras
President

Update 21 December 2007

The public consultation concerning the Section 60 Order (S60) - the draft secondary legislation, which would take practitioner psychologists into regulation by the Health Professions Council (HPC) - has just been published by the Department of Health, following several delays.

The public consultation is open for only 12 weeks. Our process to respond to the S60 will be the same as we are employing to respond to the two consultations from the HPC:

the office will prepare a draft response by 25 January 2008
a briefing meeting will be held for Representative Council
the draft response will be posted on the members' area of the website and therefore available for subsystems and individual members to make their response
the final deadline for those responses will be 22 February 2008
the office will then revise the draft response, this will be available for a final review by the membership, and the Trustees will sign-off the document before submission.

I just need to remind you again that the Society's policy is that there will only be one official Society response to the consultation.

A link to the DH S60 consultation is below, but at this stage just make yourself familiar with its content and wait until our draft is available before fully considering your possible response.

Download documents from Department of Health website

Professor Pam Maras

President

Update 18 December 2007

Dear colleagues

This is likely to be the final update of 2007 before the Christmas break overtakes us, I have four quite brief points:

As yet the Section 60 Order (S60) public consultation from the Department of Health has still not arrived, but it has been promised for 'before Christmas'. As the office is closed from midday on 21 December until 2 January 2008, I may not be able to bring you news of the public consultation until the New Year.
Should the S60 be published as promised then a briefing meeting is planned for Friday 25 January 2008 for all members of Representative Council.
I would like to thank all the members who have already sent in comments on the two draft responses to the two Health Professions Council (HPC) public consultations. The tenor of them all is supportive, constructive and thoughtful. Please remember that all comments must be with the office by 18 January 2008 at the latest.
And finally... season's greetings and best wishes for the New Year, it is likely to be a significant one for all of us.

Professor Pam Maras
President

Update 12 December 2007

The Society's draft responses to the two HPC public consultations

Our draft responses to the two public consultations - Threshold entry level and Standards of Proficiency - are now available for members to download. And now we need your help and input. The total consultation period is only 12 weeks long, so in order to hit the final deadline we have to receive your comments and/or suggested changes no later than 18 January 2008.

This will allow the office staff time to revise these drafts based on the various inputs; allow the Trustees time to sign these off on your behalf; and, allow time to send them off to the Health Professions Council (HPC) by 8 February 2008.

There are two ways that you can respond to these drafts:

Your subsystem Chair and Secretary (Division, Branch, Section, Special Group) have been notified that these comments are available and you can send your comments to them for collation into their response back to the office (I imagine that they will want your inputs well in advance of the 18 January 2008 deadline); or
If you are not a subsystem member, or you want to reply directly to the office, please click on the link below to submit your comments.

Whichever route you choose, please can you be very clear which of the consultations your comments are directed at, and the earlier we have your comments the better. I want to thank you in advance for your comments and/or suggestions and/or amendments.

Please keep an eye on these web pages for further updates - we will be posting subsystem responses to these drafts as they come through. The final official Society responses to the public consultations will be posted on the web by the deadline, 8 February 2008.

By this time we had hoped to have received the public consultation document from the Department of Health concerning the necessary secondary legislation to bring psychologists under statutory regulation, but this has been delayed, now several times. I will provide further news of this as soon as it is available.

Professor Pam Maras
President

Download draft responses to the consultation document(s), the two HPC consultation documents and/or submit response(s)

(A member login is required to download the documents or submit a response; if you do not have one, you will be prompted to create one - you will require your membership number to do this)

Update 30 November 2007

Despite assurances from the Department of Health (DH) that the public consultation on the secondary legislation (to bring in regulation for psychologists) - the Section 60 Order - would be published this week the latest information is that it will not. The information that we have is that the DH are still 'negotiating the content' with the Scottish Executive and that it may take another 'few weeks' before they are ready to publish the public consultation. This is extremely frustrating as it potentially means that the documents could emerge just prior to the Christmas break and could lose us valuable time in both drafting a response and consulting with you, the members.

Meanwhile the draft responses to the two Health Professions Council (HPC) public consultations are proceeding and they should be available via these web pages for you to view and comment back on in the week beginning 10 December - I will bring you further news as soon as I have it.

Professor Pam Maras
President

Update 23 November 2007

The latest information from the The Department of Health (DH) is that the consultation on the Statutory Order to regulate psychologists has again been delayed. The indications are that it will be published in the week beginning the 26 November, but this is entirely in the hands of the Department of Health and no certain dates have been passed on.

As soon as we have further information it will be announced here, with a link to the draft order and consultation section of the Department of Health as soon as it appears.

Update 16 November 2007

The Department of Health (DH) have now informed us that the consultation on the Statutory Order to regulate psychologists is unlikely to published until the week commencing 19 November (most probably 23 November) two weeks later than we were originally advised.

Our intention was to hold a briefing meeting of all the Division Chairs, Chairs of the Training Committees, Chairs of the Boards of Assessors and Representative Council on 23 November to consider:

1. The two consultation documents from the Health Professions Council (HPC) that have already been published (one concerning the Threshold 'educational' level for entry to regulation, and the other standards of proficiency required by regulated psychologists).

2. The DH consultation documents on the legislation to regulate practitioner psychologists (section 60 Order).

Given the lateness of the DH consultation I have therefore decided that it is prudent to allow all of those who were invited to the meeting to have sufficient time to consider the consultations before we meet to discuss the Society's response. The meeting planned for the 23 November is therefore being moved to Monday 10 December 2007. All of the original invitees should have now been informed of this.

Please continue to check the website as we will notify you all as soon as the section 60 Order is released by the DH for consultation.

Professor Pam Maras
President

Update 9 November 2007

This week sees a partial culmination of an enormous amount of work, although not the end - at the bottom of this update you will find the two consultation documents. They are from the Health Professions Council (HPC) - one concerns the Threshold 'educational' level for entry to regulation, and the other concerns the 'standards of proficiency' required by regulated psychologists. The consultation period lasts for 12 weeks.

I need to tell you how we are going about responding to these crucial documents and also how you can be involved and help - and we need your help.

1. The first point I need to make is that the Trustees and Representative Council have agreed that the Society will only submit a single official response to each of these consultation documents, therefore the Divisions, Sections, Branches and Special Groups, etc. will be asked to feed their views into this single response. However, this decision does not prevent individual members from submitting a response.

2. On 23 November we are holding a briefing meeting of all the Division Chairs, Chairs of the Training Committees, Chairs of the Boards of Assessors and Representative Council.

3. A draft response to each consultation will be prepared by the office. These drafts will be posted on the website and circulated to all the Society's Boards, Committees and subsystems for their input. Selected inputs will be posted on our website to ensure transparency of the process.

4. Once those inputs have been received then a final draft response will be prepared for sign off by the Trustees and the final documents will be posted on the website.

All this has to be completed within the very tight consultation window - 12 weeks.

So, for now please don't do anything except carefully read the two documents. When we post the draft responses on the web (scheduled for 10 December 2007) please read the drafts and submit your comments either direct or via your subsystem - the deadline for the receipt of your comments is 18 January 2008.

I must emphasise how important these documents are to both the future of the discipline and our Society and I can assure you that the Society responses to these consultations will be guided by your inputs.

It is expected that our draft responses will be available on the web site by 10 December 2007 - please check the site around that time.

And finally, we are still waiting for the public consultations from the Department of Health (DH) concerning the actual draft legislation that will be necessary for regulation - the best guess is that it will emerge around 14/15 November - as soon as it does I will let you know.

Professor Pam Maras
President

Applied psychologists - threshold level of qualification for entry to the Register (HPC information and full document)

Applied psychologists - Standards of proficiency (HPC information and full document)

Update 8 November 2007

In several previous updates I have mentioned that we have had meetings with Department of Health (DH) officials and I have promised to post the minutes/notes of those meetings when they have been finally signed off. The minutes/notes of three such meetings (27 July, 6 September and 21 September) have now been signed off and they are below.

It is likely that the three public consultations that we are waiting for from both the Department of Health (DH) and the Health Professions Council (HPC) are likely to emerge within the next ten days - I will bring you news as soon as I have it - please keep checking these pages.

Professor Pam Maras
President

Stat Reg meeting notes BPS and DH, 27 July 2007

Stat Reg meeting notes BPS and DH, 6 Sept 2007

Stat Reg teleconference notes BPS and DH, 21 Sept 2007

Update 24 October 2007

At the end of last week (19 and 20 October), both Representative Council and the Board of Trustees met and specifically discussed three separate and important public consultations related to statutory regulation.

From the Department of Health (DH) - the Statutory Instrument to put in place the secondary legislation to regulate psychologists;
From the Health Professions Council (HPC) - the threshold 'educational' levels for entry to regulation; and,
Also from the HPC - the standards of proficiency, which sets out what psychologists will have to achieve to be regulated.

Both the Representative Council and the Trustees agreed that the Society would submit only one official Society response to the three consultations and that we would put in place a process so that our subsystems (the Divisions, Sections, Branches and Special Groups) could feed their comments into this one official response.

It is still not absolutely clear exactly when the final versions of the three consultation documents will emerge but early November is the current best guess. To ensure that members, through their subsystems, have the opportunity to feed into the Society's three responses we are planning a briefing meeting with the Divisions, Training Committees, Boards of Assessors and Representative Council members towards the end of November.

We have two important meetings this week. The first, on Wednesday 24 October, was between our Chief Executive and other members of the Senior Management Team with senior staff at the Health Professions Council to look at potential operational planning issues. The second, on Thursday 25 October, is with Department of Health officials - this may be the last chance we have to discuss with them the public consultation on the Statutory Instrument before it comes out.

I'll bring you more news just as soon as I have it...

Professor Pam Maras
President