BACP drama...(7.8.25)
BACP drama...(7.8.25)
It has been a wild ride at the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) this week. The BACP is the leading professional body for counsellors and psychotherapists in the UK, representing over 50,000 members. I am one such member. It sets ethical and professional standards for therapeutic practice through its Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions, which all members must follow. Although there are other bodies (chief amongst them UKCP), the BACP is the largest and the most subscribed.
In a shocking development for us therapists, the BACP has ‘removed’ Natalie Bailey from her role as Chair, alongside her deputy Sekinat Admina. Here’s the text of the statement released yesterday:
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“We’re today announcing that Natalie Bailey has been removed as BACP’s Chair and as a member of the Board of Governors.
Sekinat Adima has been removed as Deputy Chair.
As a Board, we’ve taken these decisions collectively to secure a future for BACP defined by new ethical, accountable and responsible leadership.
We acknowledge there have been governance failures at Board level that have allowed leadership behaviours to fall short of our Trustee Code of Conduct.
We’re truly sorry this has happened and we’re making changes to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
While Natalie was due to stand down in November, we recognise our responsibility to take decisive action now in light of information presented to us as part of an independent forensic audit.
This audit revealed instances where remuneration and expenses claims by our Chair exceeded what was permitted, undermining expectations of ethical, accountable, and responsible leadership. There were also occasions where these findings related to our Deputy Chair.
Throughout the process of making this decision, we’ve been in contact with the Charity Commission and sought extensive external legal and governance advice.
We’ve also informed the Professional Standards Authority and Companies House of these actions.”
[The statement continues, outlining immediate governance changes and other procedural things….]
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Wow.
For a sitting Chairperson to be ‘removed’ is without precedent, and the language used in this statement is strong. Forensic audit? “…securing a future for the BACP defined by new ethical, accountable and responsible leadership”?
By immediately linking the removal of this pair to failings of ethics, accountability and responsibility, you'd imagine the BACP believe they have solid evidence of financial irregularities that are quite serious.
Bailey was due to stand down anyway in November, so to be summarily sacked with three months left of her term makes any reader think we are not talking about trivial things here – a tank of petrol and a cup of coffee claimed on expenses etc. Reading that statement makes me wonder if there is possible legal action to follow.
The BACP better hope this is the case, as here is Natalie Baileys punchy statement, released today (in full):
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“STATEMENT FROM Natalie Bailey
BACP Trustee(from 2016),Chair(2019-2025)
After 9 years on the Board of BACP, including two elected terms as Chair, I can confirm that I have been removed by the Board of Governors following a process I believe to have been procedurally flawed, legally contestable, and unduly influenced by internal dynamics and personal interests rather than the best interests of the organisation or its members.
Over the past two years, I have faced apparent efforts to undermine me, both internally and externally. These escalated after I raised protected concerns about apparent misgovernance, leadership misconduct, and breaches of institutional integrity. These efforts have had the effect of silencing me, damaging my credibility and obstructing my ability to carry out my legal duties as Chair, culminating in my removal.
Despite repeated warnings about organisational dysfunction and exclusion, no meaningful safeguards appear to have been put in place. In my view, the fact that this was allowed to unfold without intervention reflects deep institutional complacency, a lack of accountable governance and the erosion of independent oversight.
As Chair, I was remunerated under a Board-approved and contractually agreed arrangement. I reject any suggestion to the contrary, which I believe is inaccurate and misleading, and has harmed my professional reputation.
This situation appears to expose a serious breakdown in governance and accountability. These seem not to be isolated incidents. They reflect systems and structures that remain unaddressed across the sector, placing the wider membership, the public and the profession itself at risk.
I have faced apparent disproportionate scrutiny, reputational damage and exclusion. As a Black woman in leadership, I have always been open to and encouraging of scrutiny, but not to smear.
I am currently preparing for litigation in response to the harm and sustained detriment I appear to have experienced, including taking action to hold individual trustees to account.
It is concerning that a public statement was issued while formal complaints remain unresolved and legal matters are ongoing. This raises serious questions about fairness and accountability.
I continue to stand by the values of the profession and will challenge the ways they have been apparently undermined by the Board’s conduct. BACP is a membership organisation. It should serve the profession, not be subject to undue influence or individual interests at Board and executive level.
What has happened to me reflects a wider pattern across the psychotherapeutic sector, where accountability is avoided and leadership is allowed to operate without proper scrutiny. I will continue to call that out, to uphold the values we profess to embody: ethical leadership, relational accountability and to reflect the standards this profession expects from others.”
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I've no idea about the rights or wrongs in any of this, and I am not trying to offer an opinion. But I do have an interest, however, in that Bailey (not forgetting she was the Chair of the BACP until yesterday) is currently the Programme Lead of my old therapy training course at the University of East London - a course where over the years I have known many faculty and students well, and have occasionally flirted with involvement on the curriculum side of things as well as providing supervision for many trainees.
If what the BACP alleges is true – that there has been misconduct serious enough to warrant immediate removal – then it follows that it could have an impact on my old course, with Bailey at the helm. Indeed, can someone standing charged in this way even remain a member of the BACP at all? If not, how is he or she to run a BACP approved therapy training course? The normal BACP disciplinary procedures (where Bailey has been the most senior officer for years) would likely throw people out for far, far less. All these are important questions, and I don’t want to pre-judge.
What I can comment on is what I see in the statements made.
Bailey’s statement uses language that immediately puts me on my guard. Wielding the trusty sword and shield of the intersectional bingo card, she writes of organisational 'dysfunction' and ‘exclusion’, ‘deep institutional complacency’ and ‘systems and structures’ in which governance and accountability have broken down. She notes these things from her stance (which she chooses to invoke as a factor) as a "black woman in leadership".
I think, linguistically, this is an attempt to harvest support from the group - black women - to which she identifies herself with her words. In other words, it's an appeal for allies based on broader group identity. She does this again in the final paragraph, hoping to conflate her specific case, her individual choices and actions (and the consequences that have so far followed - her treatment as she sees it) with..." ... a wider pattern across the psychotherapeutic sector, where accountability is avoided and leadership is allowed to operate without proper scrutiny".
Again, this seems a device to sidestep personal responsibility by seeking to camouflage her situation amongst many very different situations, in which other people feel hard done by or mistreated (rightly and wrongly). The hope is that this disgruntled group too will be supportive.
I'd also note that, somewhat bizarrely, the point she seems to want to make - that leadership does whatever the hell it wants without scrutiny or scruple - is the very charge the BACP has levelled against her as grounds for her removal! That the BACP and Bailey both agree on this point is pretty breathtaking, and is a tad concerning for us mere members...
In reading her statement, were it not covered in the first sentences it would by easy to miss entirely the fact that Bailey has now been the Chair of the BACP for 6 years at this point (it literally cannot get more establishment and less marginalised than that)! If that's not a 'leadership' position, then what is? Throughout, Bailey seems to be inviting us to accept that as the most senior person in the organisation she was not able to put the slightest dent in the serious issues she now alleges are rife at the BACP, and which she is just raising now for the first time publicly. Surely it is tough for the Chair and Deputy Chair to claim, somehow, that their voices just couldn't be heard? That there is a cabal of sinister 'others' (who by definition are junior) running the system and targeting them?
Whenever people invoke commentary around ‘systems and structures’, I immediately wonder what personal shortcomings they seek to hide amongst the greater ‘plea’ that a tyrannical system is out to get them. It seems part of the divisive trend of the last 15 years – the outsourcing of any personal responsibility for the situation you find yourself in, blaming any setbacks on the ‘rules of the game’ being rigged against you because of (race/gender/sex/class/political leaning/skin colour/sexuality/religion etc – delete as appropriate).
I think the intention is that by chucking enough of this intersectional claptrap out, people will assume you to be the noble victim of the situation, unfairly treated by cruel and oppressive people and structures. Plus you'll gain the additional benefit of kudos for pursuing a virtuous crusade against ‘bad people’. I’ve noted over the years that all manner of bad behaviour is possible if you can reframe it in your own mind (and the minds of others) as being necessary to tackle a tyrant.
For too long now this has been a get-out-of-jail-free card. No. Baileys personal actions are her actions - whatever they prove to be in the end. Same for her deputy. And the same for all of us. I hope they are innocent and this is a mistake, and I'd be very prepared to believe the whole thing is just a bit of a disorganised mess, as that seems likely in therapy-land (this would be a reasonable bet). If they have done nothing wrong this will come out and the BACP will be open to litigation I would think, and rightly so. However, the forensic accountant clearly seems to think differently, at least as I type today.
I don’t doubt the BACP has many faults – I’ve found them to be little help on the rare occasions I have actually needed them - but a more inclusive and well meaning bunch you’ll rarely find, even if their thinking is sometimes addled with the same intersectional gobbledygook as deployed by Bailey in her statement. Sure, the top echelon at board level will have its politics. But the job of the chair is to manage those politics - to build bridges with prickly characters with big egos. This might involve seeking compromise and commonality and parking your own ego, rather than exacerbating points of difference...
As a whole, whatever else it is, I can assure you, dear reader, that the BACP is hardly a BNP rally! There is virtually no subject area on which the BACP doesn’t cleave to the most progressive line possible (I would say sometimes incorrectly and unhelpfully so). There's two sorts of people there - admin people and a lot of therapists.
Like everyone who specialises in certain things, you can't hope to be great at everything. And so both categories probably have their faults - I think (sorry guys) that not too many therapists have been involved at the top end of running private businesses or leading organisations, most that even come close are more likely to come from a H.R. or charity sector background. This means messages from even the most senior people in the association look and feel wooly - a bit amateurish and sometimes a little school-marmish.
But I've yet to meet a therapist (well, perhaps one a couple of years ago) who I don't think means well. As for the admin, I suspect the admin teams are pretty regulation people if I'm honest. All the admin processes I've seen have been very slow and suboptimal, maybe because it's mostly tedious data input work on inflexible systems and software. I think regular large projects, such as I.T. infrastructure upgrades (there was one recently) are likely to be a big stretch for budgets and the talent available at central office, but I've no inside knowledge. In any case, I can't imagine they have a strong political agenda, except for the desire for a pay rise.
Bailey will be having an awful time today, and I feel for her personally and I do wish her well. Professionally this all looks a little ruinous. She will be hoping not to be judged. But Bailey herself is not above a little judging…..
Writing her “From the Chair” column in the industry magazine “THERAPY TODAY – May 2025” on the topic of EDI (equity, diversity, inclusion) she states that: “…politics, identity and power are more than external factors affecting clients but are woven into psychological experiences”. She says that as Chair of the BACP, she is witnessing a pendulum swing with a backlash against social justice movements, with “issues such as racial equity, LGBTQIA+ rights and reproductive freedoms under fresh attacks”. Clients, says Bailey, are feeling the effects of this shift, with many experiencing anxiety, fear or grief as they navigate an increasingly hostile world.
Ok, fine... but Bailey, and others who might think statements like hers are a complete analysis, often miss that while, yes, we are social and therefore political animals (and so woven in our DNA), it is a catastrophic error to constantly over-emphasise 'power dynamics' between competing groups as the primary -sometimes sole- explanatory model for individual outcomes (oppressed vs oppressor). This is exactly what has happened over the last fifteen years across the English speaking world. And, as it is not a splendid fit with reality (it is in fact a theory from social sciences departments, not Einstein's cosmic truth), general frustration and fatigue with it all has now set in.
Many people are struggling - struggle is an equal opportunity condition that people may experience, and it is offensive to be told you've benefitted from some 'power structure' if you run out of money every month or live in a deprived area, have poor health and sit at the back of a long line for services etc. People are voting accordingly. This is what has led to the backlash Bailey describes (and she is right to note the phenomena). But many still tend to diagnose these symptoms incorrectly, misattributing the backlash to either the mostly mythical 'nazis' living amongst us, or, if they are treading carefully and wish to disguise their contempt, to those who hold a 'harmful worldview'.
Bailey immediately does exactly this in her article. Aside from the marginalised people who are struggling... others, she notes, “…particularly those who have benefitted from traditional power structures, may struggle with the rapid cultural shifts, feeling disoriented, defensive or even a sense of loss”. About this group Bailey poses the question: “For practitioners this can present many ethical challenges. How do we provide a safe space while holding firm when a client’s views are harmful to others? How do we help marginalised clients manage the exhaustion of systemic injustice without placing the burden solely on them? And how do we process our own emotions when we too witness or experience discrimination?”.
Where to even begin.
I mean, for a start, whatever happened to the core quality of non-judgement of our clients? Outside of material safeguarding issues (where our responsibilities are clear), who the hell are we to decide what worldview is, or is not, ‘actively harmful’? Under what rubric are we sorting that into categories of good and bad? I mean, we can make a case congruently if we feel someone’s worldview is not helping them or causing issues in their life, but we are not judge/jury or moral sherpas enough to evaluate ‘harm’ in the way Bailey suggests.
Anyway, on what basis is it a non-negotiable settled fact that systemic injustice is everywhere and all those ‘who have benefitted from traditional power structures’ have done so at the expense of others? Or - running with this simplistic set of definitions - that traditional power structures are uniformly 'bad' (and other forms of 'power structure' inherently 'better')? Or that people Bailey defines as part of this group seek to a) marginalise others, and b) hold harmful worldviews, and c) that only these two categories of 'good/bad' exist (in a binary where both are pitted against eachother). And so much more…
This, of course, is the problem with the intersectional way of seeing the world. Individual instances of discrimination (which obviously do happen and we can all agree are wrong) become next to impossible to spot. Instead, a tsunami of word salad is deployed that obfuscates personal responsibility, rewards a victim-mindset, sets entire populations against eachother creating division, reduces complex multi-variant problems to simple idiotic slogans, scapegoats any reasonable objections as being bigoted and wrong at the very starting point.
Let’s see what happens. But let's also have a BACP chair next time who does a little less of all this.
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