Rooted Practice, Recognised: What SCoPEd Column C Actually Means

I’ve been sitting with how to write this.

Not because it isn’t meaningful, it is, but because I know how complex and emotionally loaded conversations about SCoPEd have been across our profession. This isn’t a neutral topic. It lands on lived histories, professional identities, exhaustion, and old fault lines about who belongs and who gets recognised.

So I want to speak from the forest edge. Carefully. Honestly.

This week, I was recognised as a Senior Accredited Member of BACP, aligned to SCoPEd Column C. I feel genuinely pleased about that, and I’m also holding the wider context with care.

Both can be true.

Why SCoPEd has been mixed

SCoPEd didn’t arrive in a calm system. It arrived in a profession already carrying a lot.

For many therapists, professional identity has been built slowly and relationally, often alongside sacrifice, financial strain, and years of unseen emotional labour. Any framework that appears to place people into columns was always going to stir something tender: questions of worth, legitimacy, and belonging.

There’s also history here. Counselling and psychotherapy in the UK has long wrestled with gatekeeping, classed access to training, and power held by institutions that don’t always feel close to the realities of practice. When change is introduced top-down, with unclear or shifting communication, it can feel less like clarity and more like being done to.

Add in the timing, post-COVID, rising clinical complexity, burnout, shrinking margins, and it makes sense that SCoPEd has been met with a mix of hope, grief, anger, relief, and resistance.

None of that is irrational. It’s human.

So what does Column C actually mean?

Within the SCoPEd framework, Column C describes senior-level practice.

Not “better than”.Not more valuable.But different in responsibility.

Column C speaks to the depth that comes with time: working with complexity, holding risk, making nuanced clinical decisions, staying ethically accountable, and continuing to reflect rather than becoming rigid or certain.

Importantly, this recognition isn’t automatic or assumed. It’s something practitioners apply for and evidence, not because experience needs proving for its own sake, but because senior practice carries real responsibility.

And it isn’t a finish line. If anything, senior practice asks for more humility, not less.

What this recognition means to me

I’ve never been motivated by titles for their own sake. This recognition matters to me because it acknowledges work already grown, without asking me to contort myself into new shapes or re-perform what already exists.

It matters because it supports parity across different, valid training routes. And because clarity matters for clients trying to understand who they’re sitting opposite in a system that hasn’t always been transparent.

Mostly, though, it feels like a quiet moment of reflection rather than celebration fireworks. A pause. A breath. A sense of “yes.... this fits”.

Gratitude for the people who shaped this work

No practice grows in isolation.

I’m deeply grateful to my supervisors (past and present), who’ve challenged me, steadied me, and walked alongside me when the work felt heavy. To my own therapists, who’ve helped me stay human and accountable. To my trainers and educators, who shaped my thinking and encouraged depth rather than certainty. And to colleagues who’ve shared the road with honesty and humour.

And always, to the clients who trusted me with their stories. This work is shaped in a relationship. It always has been.

Holding this lightly

I hold deep respect for thoughtful, ethical therapists at every stage of their journey. Some of the best work I’ve witnessed comes from people across all columns and pathways. Frameworks can offer scaffolding, but they should never replace curiosity, compassion, or relational depth.

So I’ll mark this moment quietly. I’ll let myself feel pleased. And then I’ll return to the work....grounded, relational, and human.

That’s always been the point.

— Sarah