ABSTRACT
The most obvious development of the past decade has been the establishment of a number of different schemes for the accreditation and registration of counsellors and psychotherapists-and initially this chapter will describe and analyse these schemes. Some counsellors believe that the shortcomings that this analysis will identify, and some of the divisions evident in the current systems, will be resolved by the development of National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) and qualifications based on them. However, I will argue that NVQs (and similar ‘competence’-based systems) are fundamentally flawed. Finally, I will explore the possibility of a unified and unifying accreditation system for the counselling/ psychotherapy profession as a whole.
