The National Counselling & Psychotherapy Society (NCPS)
CASE STUDY-
Becoming a more inclusive organisation
The National Counselling & Psychotherapy Society is a non-profit, professional organisation with the purpose of ensuring that all of its members are safe, competent, and ethical practitioners. As a professional home for talking therapists, NCPS represents and supports counsellors, psychotherapists, the public and its profession, protecting and promoting the heart of counselling and psychotherapy.
Improving Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
As a part of the overall development of its EDI policy, NCPS specifically identified disability as an area it would like to improve on. In order to do so, it sought the expertise of an external training provider, and discovered the services of Bascule Disability Training. In the first stages of selection, Head of Operations, Camilla Hyland participated in Bascule’s online disability awareness training with a colleague, to trial the session and feedback whether the training would be valuable for the whole team.
“After participating in the training- we knew immediately that the remaining members of our team would benefit greatly from the programme.” said Camilla. “Chris had a lot of expertise in many areas, and as he is a wheelchair user himself, he was able to talk about different aspects of disability from his own experiences, which worked really well.”
“NCPS supports over 16.5k members with a dedicated head office team,” adds Camilla. “As we are in the process of improving our EDI, we were interested in enabling the whole team to gain a stronger understanding of disability. We are also aiming to be a more inclusive employer and were looking at new ways of becoming more accessible by attracting and supporting the needs of new staff with disabilities.”
Enhancing and improving the EDI policy has always been of great importance to the NCPS team. NCPS was one of the first organisations to gain accreditation status with the Professional Standards Authority (PSA). As accreditors, PSA also encourages its membership bodies to develop their EDI policies and demonstrate their progress.
“The training has been useful in allowing us to show the PSA that we are making strides in improving our EDI.” said Camilla. “In fact, this topic is generally a big focus for our profession right now.”
Training the NCPS Team
The content of the online training tackled perceptions of disability whilst helping NCPS to further promote inclusivity in the workplace. It also offered insight into business environments, accessibility, communication techniques, language and etiquette, legislation, customer service and models of disability.
“The training provided us with lots of useful information, from practical aspects to perceptions of disability, and understanding best methods of communication.” said Camilla. “It felt more real, more authentic than standard run of the mill training. Chris makes you see things differently, especially as someone with experience of disability. He uses his life experiences to talk about specific issues and examples, giving you a clear understanding of good and bad practice.
“After the training, we had excellent feedback from the team. Everyone found it useful, eye-opening, and insightful. I think our staff came away with a much stronger understanding and empathetic view of disability. It was also useful for our team to participate in the training online, as half of us are in Worthing and the other half are in Exeter, so getting together is quite tricky.
“I can recommend Bascule Disability Training to anyone who is looking to develop their knowledge and become more inclusive. Chris is a charismatic speaker; his content is informative, and he makes the topic interesting. The training certainly put us in a great position for our ongoing drive to become more disability aware.”
