Benefits of individual membership

Individual membership gives you access to up to date, expert guidance and practical support to help you develop your skills and your practice.

Requirements

If you started your course prior to 1 February 2026, to be eligible for individual membership you must have successfully completed a counselling or psychotherapy practitioner training course, involving at least one year鈥檚 full time or two year鈥檚 part time classroom-based tuition. Your course must also have included a supervised placement of at least 100 client contact hours.

From September 2021, we updated our requirements for membership and accreditation to align with changes to how some training and placements are now partially delivered remotely.听Find out more about听placement and training requirements.

Therefore, if you started your course after 1 September 2021, at least 70% of your tuition must have been face to face classroom-based, with a maximum of 30% being live synchronous online training. The training must have included an integral, supervised, placement of at least 100 client hours, of which the majority (>51%) delivered face to face. The remaining hours could have been delivered online or via a combination of online and phone. (Courses which started before 1 September 2021, must have been delivered solely face to face for both classroom tuition and supervised placements.)

For those who start their course from 1 February 2026, we have further updated our requirements for membership and accreditation to align with the requirements of the听SCoPEd framework.

For further information please see our Student Member requirements .

Courses delivered solely online or by distance learning continue to not qualify for membership.

Your placement hours must have been:

  • delivered face to face for the majority听of the hours. The remaining hours can be delivered online or via a combination of online and phone.
  • carried out with genuine clients, rather than peers from your course, for example
  • in an appropriate setting with appropriate clients, such as counselling services, where clients were pre-assessed as suitable for your level of competence
  • assessed (or marked) as an integral part of your training
  • supervised. Supervision is important at all stages of seeing clients. For trainees, we recommend a ratio of one hour's supervision to eight hours counselling and that they see their supervisor fortnightly

We cannot accept the following qualifications:

  • in disciplines such as psychology, hypnotherapy, social work or coaching
  • in counselling combined with another discipline
  • in specialised disciplines such as drama therapy, music therapy or dance therapy
  • those gained from courses delivered solely through online or distance learning

Commitments

As an individual member of 麻豆原创 you'll be bound by our Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions and our Professional Conduct Procedure. You must read and agree to these as part of your application process.

You should also read our 麻豆原创 policies and protocols

All individual members must work towards becoming a registered member. You need to join the 麻豆原创 Register within 24 months of becoming an individual member.

Costs

麻豆原创 subscriptions run for a year and are reviewed annually.

If you鈥檙e receiving certain state benefits or have no personal income, you may be entitled to pay a reduced fee. See our听Reduced fee policy.

If you're a UK tax payer, you may be eligible to听claim tax relief听on your membership fees.

How to apply

Supporting evidence

To support your application, you'll need to provide:

  • a copy of your graduation certificate
  • proof of address
  • proof of any eligibility for reduced fees
  • information and documents to support any disclosures 鈥� see our听麻豆原创 disclosure policy听
  • evidence of entitlement to use any academic or honorific titles, such as Dr

If you completed a training course outside the UK, you must enclose a course handbook or transcript with your application so we can assess the level of training undertaken. Any evidence you provide should be translated into English by a certified translator.

Full details are given in the application process.

Online

Our online individual member application should only take you 10 to 15 minutes to complete. Please make sure you have all your supporting evidence ready to upload.

Application form

If you can鈥檛 use the online process or encounter any problems with it, please contact membership@bacp.co.uk for further assistance.

It may take up to 28 days to process your application as we'll need to complete verification checks.

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