Enough is enough

Why I have (finally) resigned from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).

This is a departure from my usual subject matter – the current plight of children and families – although it illustrates clearly why we need to be concerned.

Should I stay, or should I go now?

Should I stay, or should I go now?

If I go, there will be trouble

And if I stay, there will be double

So come on and let me know.

The Clash, from the album Combat Rock, 1982.

The only way is out

Last month, I took the plunge. I have been standing, shivering on the side for some time, but I have finally jumped. I have resigned from my professional membership body, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).

In short, to use a phrase currently in vogue, the BACP no longer ‘aligns with my values’. Many of my colleagues are admirably continuing to fight the good fight. I salute them, and will continue to do all I can to support them. I just wish that more of them had the option to leave – but more on that later.

Deciding whether or not to walk away from any organisation, rather than continuing to try to change it from within, is always a difficult call. A couple of years ago, psychologist and social commentator Rob Henderson wrote an essay [1], critiquing a 1970 book, called Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States by Albert Hirschman. He observes, “people’s decisions to exit are often determined by the effectiveness of their voice” – and this, for me, is key.

Despite, assurances that all members’ views matter to the BACP, I have received thoroughly inadequate answers to every concern I have raised. Regardless of whom I have contacted, responses have failed to engage with real and important issues. Replies have been disingenuous, and sometimes duplicitous, as all efforts are made to defend an increasingly indefensible position.

Henderson explains that, “if in response to decline, discontented members use voice rather than exit, then voice will become more effective. But only up to a point”. For me, that point has been reached. Below, I set out some examples of why, for me, the only way is out.

About the BACP

The BACP is the UK’s largest professional organisation for counsellors and psychotherapists, with around 70,000 members. While not a regulatory body – the profession is unregulated – in the absence of any other oversight, the BACP holds a register of members for the Professional Standards Authority (PSA). This is a government-backed initiative that is supposed to ensure that professional membership bodies maintain “rigorous standards of practice, ethics and public protection”.

BACP members must hold a recognised qualification (or be working towards one), as well as having insurance and regular supervision and a commitment to continuing professional development. For some, like me, joining the BACP was a prerequisite for enrolling on a course, as my training course was accredited by the Association. Many employers, voluntary organisations and counselling directories require that therapists belong to the BACP (or one of a number of similar bodies). Leaving voluntarily is widely considered a form of career suicide. Several colleagues’ initial reaction has been “you’re brave”, which tells its own story.

So why did I do this?

1. Safeguarding children

I was not always a therapist. I was prompted to retrain, while witnessing the struggles of so many young people when my own children were adolescents. Being able to come alongside a distressed child, to listen to their story, to give them time and attention, and to offer them a place to explore their experiences and feelings in a non-judgemental environment has always been my primary aim. I have spent thousands of hours in the company of hundreds of young people.

Surely the BACP would recognise a therapist’s role in protecting children and prioritise working safely with young people? Based on the evidence, I remain unconvinced.

The most glaring omission on the part of the Association is its comprehensive failure to acknowledge – let alone endorse – the landmark Cass Review into gender identity services for children and young people. This matters, because the impact of gender ideology and the attendant early sexualisation of children underlies a great deal of distress. These two issues currently pose some of the greatest threats to child welfare.

Over a year after publication, there has been no statement from the BACP on the review and no revision of guidelines for woking with gender-confused children. Representatives of the BACP hide behind the assertion that the report deals with medical issues, which don’t affect the Association’s members, despite full psychotherapeutic assessment and intervention now being recommended for all referrals. Much of this work is likely to be done by BACP members.

Critiquing current preferred approaches, Dr Cass states that “the adoption of a treatment with uncertain benefits without further scrutiny is a significant departure from established practice”. She points out that even social transition “is not a neutral act”. Nonetheless, the BACP, while carefully steering clear of the term itself, gives plenty of exposure to practitioners offering ‘affirmative’ therapy to children, despite known risks.

This is extraordinary. In no other circumstance would a responsible practitioner collude with a client’s delusions. We would not affirm that a person with anorexia is obese and agree that they should restrict their food intake; we would not agree with a child’s belief that they are ugly and worthless, and that self-harm is a logical next step; and ultimately, we would never endorse suicidal ideation, and agree that the world would be better off without our client.

This departure is part of what Dr Cass calls the ‘exceptionalism’ with which anything to do with gender confusion is treated. It lies in a wilful disregard of the facts. It is not possible to be ‘born in the wrong body’. There is no such being as a ‘transgender child’. When a child or young person turns against their body, this is always a safeguarding issue and indicative of emotional distress which needs to be carefully, gently and thoroughly explored. To do otherwise – to carelessly and casually ‘affirm’ an adolescent’s beliefs – is the height of irresponsibility. The BACP evidently disagrees.

2. Institutional capture

So how is this happening? How can the UK’s largest representative body for mental health professionals get away with throwing caution to the wind, ignoring the recommendations of the Cass Report, apparently disregarding draft government guidelines on working with gender-confused children and promoting the work of those who wish to offer highly contested theories about sexuality and gender, even to primary school children?

The answer is simple – ideology. Like so many other institutions, the BACP has swallowed ideas rooted in ‘queer theory’ in one gulp, without even so much as the self-reflective burp which you might expect from a group of psychotherapists. Everything is now viewed through the rainbow lenses of critical social justice, critical race theory and above all, gender ideology. Rooted in Marxism, these theories are both divisive and destructive.

A key document to which the BACP is committed (and thereby all BACP members are too) is the Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy (MoU). This document seeks to outlaw ‘conversion therapy’ within the UK, despite little evidence of such practice happening here. Significantly – and highly unusually – this document fails to make any distinction between working with adults and with children, and does not distinguish between addressing sexuality and gender, despite these being entirely different matters.

The Memorandum tells us, “for people who are unhappy about their sexual orientation or their gender identity, there may be grounds for exploring therapeutic options” [2]. However, where a young person claims to be certain – and many in early adolescence claim to be certain – standard exploratory therapy is increasingly likely to be interpreted as ‘conversion therapy’.

In fact, in an article in the most recent edition of the BACP’s divisional journal for Children, Young People and Families (CYPF), ironically titled “Language Matters”, therapist Sam Clark makes an ill-disguised attempt to equate standard approaches to therapy with ‘conversion therapy’. In conversation with the journal’s editor, she challenges us “to take a clear-sighted and critical look at what is unsaid or obscured behind words such as ‘exploratory’ or ‘thoughtful’” [3]. Until about five minutes ago, all therapists were expected to be both exploratory and thoughtful.

The United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), another membership body for psychotherapists, bravely left the Memorandum of Understanding in April 2024, on the grounds of “concerns around child safety”. This led to great upheaval within the organisation, attempts to unseat the Board of Trustees (which failed) and the resignation under enormous pressure of the UKCP Chair. The BACP, meanwhile, remains committed to this highly questionable approach.

The use of phrases such as ‘assigned at birth’, ‘cisgender’ and ‘heteronormative’ pepper the BACP’s communications. Not content with a guide to Gender, Sex and Relationship Diversity (GSRD) which accepts without question the existence of multiple genders and a growing number of newly-minted sexualities (and covers predilections such as kink and BDSM with neither curiosity nor care), publications regularly drip-feed radical ideas to a captive audience.

In the June 2023 edition of the BACP’s monthly magazine, Therapy Today, an article asks “Are you GSRD competent?”. Writer Silva Neves, a psychosexual and relationship psychotherapist, tells us that “it is good for us all to check our heteronormative, mononormative and cisgender biases. We all have these because they are so pervasive in our society” [4]. Nobody apparently stops to wonder why this is – it is as if millennia of social history and human flourishing can be erased on the say-so of a few deranged academics.

The urge to re-educate us all on these issues is resulting in the premature and damaging sexualisation of children. “Imagine if every seven-year-old felt good enough and like they didn’t need to change their identity”, writes Jack Lynch in an article entitled, “Pride as a verb”, also in the June 2025 edition of the BACP’s Children, Young People and Families (CYPF) journal. Lynch goes on to say, “Imagine if this was the message they received from the world around them; that no matter who they are and what they look like, they are accepted. This is the power of LGBT+ inclusion work with children”.

Seven-year-olds do not have an ‘identity’ in the sense to which Lynch is referring – childhood should be a magical time when anything and everything is possible. Without that time of unfettered fantasy and make-believe, in and out of which children naturally switch, it is much harder to get a grip on reality later. This is currently a significant issue for a lot of teenagers. It is entirely possible to teach children about respect and acceptance for each other, and themselves, without prematurely raising the issues of sex and sexuality. It is particularly reprehensible to draw upon children’s freedom of imagination, natural sense of fair play and colourful creativity, to introduce topics which they cannot begin to understand.

Despite apparently working in schools, writer Lynch (who goes by the pronouns they/them) seems to have precious little grasp of child development. Lynch is workshops and training lead at Pop’n’ Olly, which is an “LGBT+ educational resource for children, parents, carers and teachers to support a diverse and inclusive education”. Olly Pike, Lynch’s colleague, appears in videos wearing cat ears and seemingly teaches queer theory and gender identity to children.

Interestingly, the article emphasises the need for children to be accepting and kind. Who could argue with that, any reasonable person will ask. I would, however, offer a word of caution. Much is happening under the banner of ‘be kind’ which is not in fact kind at all. This includes misleading young people, sexualising children and requiring others to suspend their disbelief (along with the evidence of their own eyes), in order to sustain an individual’s private fantasy. Too often, ‘be kind’ is used to shut down very necessary debate, or defer the kind of judgements about right and wrong on which safeguarding and child protection depend. The BACP evidently does not understand this.

3. Misunderstanding and malpractice

It is becoming increasingly clear that ideological capture is moving therapy away from the traditional model, where the client and their needs were central to the process. The therapist would respond to a unique story with an open mind, and explore the client’s experiences and relationships, in order to help facilitate a new way forward. Several aspects of this approach now appear to have been discarded.

Whereas therapists used to be cautious about self-disclosure and sharing aspects of their own life, increasingly being able ‘identify’ with the client – or sell your services based on the experience you share with them – is becoming not just common, but almost a prerequisite. Where issues around sexuality and gender are concerned there are voices, given space by the BACP, who argue that only those with ‘lived experience’ (incidentally, there is no other kind) should work in this area.

Even the most cursory survey will show that many of those offering counselling for gender issues are ‘from the community’. In addition, related charities mentioned in BACP publications are invariably ‘trans led’ or have a ‘queer workforce’. Others demand that ‘allyship’ (or rather a very particular sort of ‘allyship’) is demonstrated through the display of Pride-style ephemera in counselling premises. This makes it very hard to provide the neutral space on which successful therapy depends. It makes me suspicious that neutrality is not what is intended at all.

At the same time, a lack of curiosity about the client is presented as the way forward. Returning to the article by Silva Neves, he writes, “helping clients shift their mindset from ‘I am broken’ to ‘heteronormativity is hurting me’ reduces clients’ shame about their struggles and helps them relocate the source of their distress in the appropriate place which is is external oppression, and not within themselves.” That is a very sweeping statement. How does a therapist discover the source of a unique individual’s distress without building a trusting relationship and exploring all aspects of the person’s life? Later, the article links possible trauma symptoms with “bullying, attacks and surviving conversion practices”. Again, without exploration, how can he know this?

Therapists should be self-aware, wise to coercion, to the nuances of language and to concepts such as ‘gaslighting’. An astonishing example of the abandonment of these principles appears in the conversation already cited above, between the BACP’s CYPF journal editor, Jeanine Connor, and another female therapist, Sam Clark. Essentially it is a thinly-veiled attack on gender-critical therapists, who believe in the reality of sex, suggesting that they should not be working with gender-confused young people.

Without a hint of self-awareness, Jeanine Connor – remember, the CYPF journal’s editor – says that her support for transgender young people “has been described publicly by some people with gender critical beliefs as disturbing and destructive. They cite ‘safeguarding concerns’ and ‘gender ideology’ as reasons for their concerns about my trans-allyship”. I wonder why that might be?

Sam Clark then declares, “the words ‘safeguarding’ and ‘vulnerable’ abound, suggesting that trans folk are somehow less competent to manage their own lives and bodily autonomy, and to define who they are.” Given that this article appears in the CYPF journal, it is important to remember that we are talking here about children – yes, children – some of whom, as we have already seen, are introduced to these ideas in primary school. Presumably, we are supposed just to nod and say “yes, dear”, when a distressed child – possibly same-sex attracted and experiencing other mental health issues – wishes to rid themselves of healthy body parts and commit themselves to lifetime of damaging medical intervention.

Jeanine Connor comments that it is difficult for trans-identifying children and their parents to know which therapists are allies or not – the clear implication being that those who do not thoughtlessly ‘affirm’ a child’s delusions somehow cannot accept the child. This is a common ploy, when in fact it is entirely possible to be fully supportive and engaged with the child, or an adult, while gently challenging their behaviour and assumptions about themselves – including with regard to gender.

In fact, BACP publications should be explaining that in most therapeutic encounters, some form of challenge is both desirable and necessary in order to facilitate change. But no – for Jeanine, this could apparently be “terrifying”. She goes on to suggest that parents “with the best of intention, are playing a version of Russian roulette when they choose a therapist for their transgender child”. The risk, presumably, is that the therapist might actually do their job.

Negligently for a membership body which is supposed to uphold professional standards and best practice, all of this output seems strangely dated – stuck in a moment in time. It is as if the Cass Review never happened, it overlooks the horrendous revelations in the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) files, it ignores the draft guidance for schools on gender-questioning children, and indeed the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the immutability of biological sex. The BACP evidently does not wish to be confused with the facts, its mind is made up.

4. The power and the glory

Ironically, the BACP frequently refers negatively to ‘power structures’ – another favourite of critical social justice warriors. It is, in fact, the BACP which could be accused of an abuse of power and, indeed, of gaslighting members who are rooted in reality.

There is an unwarranted arrogance about being ‘on the right side of history’, allied with an unwillingness to acknowledge that there are other legitimate viewpoints, which in fact align far better with what are widely understood to be therapeutic principles. Any attempts to provide counter arguments are, however, greeted with anodyne replies about the Association’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and respect for all members. Articles, letters and blogs submitted are quietly sidelined if they don’t fit the narrative. Even my resignation email received a friendly – no doubt automated – reply, which addressed none of my concerns. Attempts to submit motions and resolutions to conference somehow never make the cut. Contacting the Professional Standards Authority (PSA), for whom the BACP holds a register, is equally ineffective.

Contrary to equality legislation, the BACP is evidently willing to champion one protected characteristic above all others, even as it seemingly fails to understand that it is ‘gender reassignment’ only, and not ‘gender identity’, which is protected in law. This was evident in the statement issued by the Association after the UK Supreme Court ruling on the immutability of sex, in support of the ‘TNBGQ’ community (strangely, for once, shorn of the LGB, without which it would have made no headway). Even as men dressed like porn stars rampaged through central London, apparently wanting to hang women and urinate where they liked, there was no acknowledgement whatsoever from the BACP of the damage done to gay people, women and children by the fantasy ideology in which they so fervently believe.

That, for me, was the final straw. Not in my name. Without doubt, such action demonstrates the moral bankruptcy of an organisation which relishes its power, and basks in the glory afforded it by the misplaced faith of public and practitioners alike, while in fact being rotten to the core. I cancelled my direct debit that day.

The BACP has most of its members over a barrel, and knows this. Too many charities, organisations and employers require or expect BACP membership, believing it maintains a gold standard in ethics and professional practice. Worst of all – in relation to an organisation whose mission is psychological wellbeing – is the fear among therapists of speaking out, or having their cover blown, and failing to fall into line. This is entirely understandable. Their jobs and career progression depend upon being a member. To return to Rob Henderson’s commentary on Decline in Firms, Organizations and States , “when exit is not available (tyrannical state), voice doesn’t matter” [his italics and brackets] [5]. The BACP appears shamelessly to be exploiting this.

Where do we go from here?

Ongoing efforts to draw the BACP’s attention to reality, responsibility and ethics, makes me think of watching small a child with their fingers in their ears and shouting, “No, no, no!” when told that Father Christmas doesn’t exist. We desperately need the adults to re-enter the room, if our profession is to be saved, and not brought further into disrepute. This is unlikely to happen, however, as long as even ‘common sense’ is questioned as a possibly colonial concept (yes, really).

As a long-standing member said to me recently, the “BACP is completely unaccountable to its members and to legitimately concerned members of the public. It is no longer a credible professional association. It is simply a political activist organisation”. And it is not one that, in all conscience, I can be part of any more. We need to rebuild again, on the outside.

To paraphrase The Clash, “If I go, there may be trouble, but if I stay there will be double”. I have jumped.

To those of you who can – come on in, the water’s lovely.

[1] Henderson R, The Burdens of Devotion, Substack, 30 July 2023.

[2] Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy in the UK - Version 2, July 2024.

[3] Clark S and Connor J, Language Matters, BACP CYPF Journal, June 2025.

[4] Neves, S, Are you GSRD competent?, BACP Therapy Today, June 2023.

[5] Henderson R, The Burdens of Devotion, Substack, 30 July 2023.