ABSTRACT
In March 1993 the British Association for Counselling (BAC) Management Committee, after wide consultation, decided to support counselling as a profession actively and that all activities of the Association should be professional in approach. This was done in the knowledge that some of the members of the Association do not wish to describe themselves as professional counsellors and that the Association needed to address these members’ needs too. It was acknowledged that such a move could significantly alter the structure of the Association and the face of counselling to the outside world over the coming decade and beyond. There was also a desire to try to influence the structure of this emergent profession in a way that is congruent with BAC’s codes of ethics and practice for counselling and related activities, taking account of new forms of a profession that are apparent in the twentieth century, and avoiding as many as possible of the problems that more established professions have had to face in an age of increased technology and widely available access to knowledge (Watkins et al. 1992).
