Salford Poverty Truth Commission

If you live in the North West you could do a lot worse than visit the Salford Poverty Truth Commission. 

Church Action on Poverty have been active and ecumenical when it comes to dealing with the causes of poverty head on.

"We're launching the Salford Poverty Truth Commission on Friday 8 July at Eccles Old Town Hall: Book your place now!
Sponsored by the new City Mayor, Paul Dennett and the Bishop of Salford the Poverty Truth Commission is a unique and powerful way of developing new insights and initiatives to tackle poverty, building on successful initiatives developed in Glasgow and Leeds over the past six years."

Counsellors need to hear about poverty from the people affected by it, on their own terms rather than only ever from the perspective of the client/counsellor relationship. We make room for people to discover their agency: this is what it looks like when they take it.

Book your FREE space now.

Embodying Social Justice Conference.

It's taken me some time to process this exciting two day event at Roehampton University and I'm sure it will continue to work and settle in for me. Here are my immediate observations:

1. Everyone I spoke with said how very tired they were. 
So many of us are in the maelstrom of heightened client distress. It used to be that people escaping domestic violence, child abuse, slavery, burnout, bereavement and other day to day unhappiness had services that would support and help them. The majority of those services have been closed. Those that remain have to divert the majority of their energy into non-counselling related activities to remain in existence. Many therapists are working incredible hours for no pay.

2. There was a real sense of muted outrage.
Counsellors in schools are under increasing pressure to inform on one section of their client base.
Many therapists are working 60+ hours a week for no pay.
The average annual income for BACP members is £12,000 - which means that many of us are paid much less.
Black and other minority counsellors remain just that - a tiny minority.
The body is being commodified as never before, from plastic surgery to FGM, worldwide.
Cuts and closures have affected everyone, vulnerable or not.
There was a sense of helplessness, knowing that people were suffering, knowing that organisations like the UN require a change in government policy and knowing that there will be no change.

3. 'Resilience' is still a focus for most of us.
Carmen Joanne Ablack opened the Conference with personal examples of suffering and resilience from within her own family, extending those stories to the wider experience of minority and other peoples. It was inspiring. But throughout the conference I heard very little about the people who suffer and continue to suffer; who don't experience some kind of growth or change; who kill themselves; who live on in a kind of fugue state whether they're in positions of privilege and power or living in abject poverty; who die because they've been forcibly relocated; who die because they're old or unwell and can't afford to turn the heating on. Or eat.

I wondered if these narratives are just too painful for us to consider. Once or twice in the sessions where we all met together a delegate would express despair and there were no answers to that despair.

4. Boundaries are being pushed further and further out in ways that might have been unimaginable 10 years ago. 
We continue to work within systems that treat Muslim children as potential terrorists.
We continue to work with government departments that are responsible for starving, purposefully harming and, in not infrequent cases, killing very vulnerable people.
We accept that counselling training is limited to people who can afford to pay for training, pay to work, pay to service counselling agencies, and so on and so on.
We accept that £12k is a reasonable return for a highly trained and highly regulated professional.

For me, these levels of consent can be perceived as symptoms of cumulative abuse rather than cynical acceptance of the status quo (thought there is certainly a significant proportion of counsellors who believe that people are hermetically sealed against their environment.)  We see people in terrible and escalating distress and want very much to do something to help even though we know the numbers are overwhelming, the pain unbearable. We don't dare to really look at how shocking things have become because they've become very, very bad indeed. The water is boiling. The frog died some time ago.

The Conference brought intelligent people of very good will together. I found a lot of solace simply in that. The fact that the Conference took place at all suggests that some change may be afoot, not least because it brought together academics, practitioners, researchers and the new, exciting Psychotherapy and Counselling Union which Susie Orbach suggested we join and support in order to address some of our concerns.

During the plenary session at the end of the conference key figures were asked to summarise what had been particularly important for them. Mick Cooper spoke about Lucy Goodison's workshop "The Red Therapy Experiment - compassionate embodied activism." Lucy co-founded self help, grassroots therapy groups in 70's East London and when asked, "What would you pass on?" she replied "Don't expect too much too quickly."*

We all have to find our place on various axes of what we can bear and not bear, of what we can offer and not offer. Because of my experiences - most recently becoming increasingly aware of elderly and vulnerable people dying just months after being forced to move during the 'regeneration' of our neighbourhood - I place myself in positions that many therapists may, because of their experiences, consider extreme. Death is about as extreme as it gets. Starvation, hypothermia, suicide attempts and successes, profound anxiety and total bodily State compulsion are extreme.

I've learned not to expect anything much in terms of political awareness from the profession so the Conference was refreshing and reinvigorating. I'm hopeful that the respectability of Mick Cooper and Susie Orbach, of Roehampton and Edinburgh Universities will encourage resilience in more counsellors who, like me, may feel very isolated in a sea of troubles. We may not be able to end them but together we can oppose them.



* I'm paraphrasing from memory: if you remember differently please let me know.

Study Finds Racial and Class Discrimination in Psychotherapy

A new study suggests that psychotherapists are human beings in a society, subject to the same influences as other people in that society.

"Psychotherapists are not immune to the stereotypes that influence the decisions of other professionals," Heather Kugelmass, the author of the study, said. "Moreover, because therapists in solo private practice have high levels of professional autonomy, they have a lot of latitude to make decisions that are consistent with their biases." 

"Among those who were called back, however, Kugelmass found a disturbing trend. Once reached, white patients who sounded like they were middle-class were offered an appointment 30% of the time, while middle-class black women were offered an appointment 21% of the time and middle-class black men received such an invitation only 13% of the time. The offer for psychotherapy appointments also seemed to depend on gender and class divisions."

“For those [potential clients] who do persist in their search for care, every instance of blocked access means additional time and effort spent placing numerous phone calls to identify a psychotherapist willing to respond and accommodate their schedules. This is time and effort that those suffering from mental [health issues]—especially those of low socioeconomic status—do not have to spare.”

Social Class in the 21st Century

It's almost impossible to talk about class. We know what we're saying when we say the word, sort of, but it's increasingly difficult to define. 

(This is the only copy I can find online. If you find a better one please let me know.)


The Frost Report sketch still holds more or less true. Ronnie Corbett's character knows his place with somewhat less innocence now but most of the time he still looks up to his betters, though now sometimes with wonder and self-loathing. If only he worked as hard as his betters he'd be like them.

John Cleese's character, employed by what looks like the financial services, is now unlikely to 'have no money' unless he's very, very addicted or has financially overstretched himself. He would be in the 'Elite' and above him are the Super Rich, people we know nothing much about. Stateless, with no ties to anything other than their money, they do whatever they like and have no interest in the law. In turn, the law has no interest in them. They live so far beyond normal life that they are a specialist subject all to themselves. For those counsellors who are not working with them, suffice it to say that they have seen a huge increase in their wealth in the last year from £752,900 to £895,400 while the poorest 10th have seen their income fall again. Inequality is epidemic.

Social Class in the 21st Century is a fascinating book based on the Great British Class Survey 2013. 

The authors propose 7 classes

• Elite: This is the most privileged class in Great Britain who have high levels of all three capitals. Their high amount of economic capital sets them apart from everyone else.

• Established Middle Class: Members of this class have high levels of all three capitals although not as high as the Elite. They are a gregarious and culturally engaged class.

• Technical Middle Class: This is a new, small class with high economic capital but seem less culturally engaged. They have relatively few social contacts and so are less socially engaged.

• New Affluent Workers: This class has medium levels of economic capital and higher levels of cultural and social capital. They are a young and active group.

• Emergent Service Workers: This new class has low economic capital but has high levels of 'emerging' cultural capital and high social capital. This group are young and often found in urban areas.

• Traditional Working Class: This class scores low on all forms of the three capitals although they are not the poorest group. The average age of this class is older than the others.

• Precariat: This is the most deprived class of all with low levels of economic, cultural and social capital. The everyday lives of members of this class are precarious.

As counsellors we meet people where they are. For myself, I'm not au fait with the differences between, say, the Established Middle Class and the Technical Middle Class but we all know someone from the Precariat when we meet with them, and we will all meet with them as trainee counsellors. 

Anyway, get hold of the book, take the Class Survey, immerse yourself in the subject for a while and let me know what you think. Remember that this is just another tool for classifying and that it will have its limits. 

The main issue for counsellors is: What feelings come up for you when you read this information? What sense do you make of those feelings?