1.  Prior to the formation of The Counselling and Psychotherapy Forum for Primary Healthcare (known hereafter as The Forum) some of the major parties with an interesting in counselling in primary care met with a view to developing understanding and common causes and to prevent fragmentation of this profession. This group ran a consultation day on training standards in April 1999 and a conference in November 1999 on Quality, Standards and Excellence in Primary Care. Training organizations were particularly invited and represented.
2. The Forum, established at the end of 1999, grew out of and in response to these meetings and events. It currently comprises all the key players for counselling in primary care in England and Wales. (See the listed of Forum members at the end of this paper)

Achievements and Publications

The result of 5 years consultation, mapping exercises and hard work is the production of 2 key protocols that set out:

Minimum Training Standards for Primary Care Counsellors

Person Specifcation Criteria

Conference Papers

On 2nd October The Forum held a major conference Psychological Therapies in Primary Care - A safe future in trained hands - What does the NHS need to know to employ competent counsellors and psychotherapists? You can download and read these papers here.

Primary care counselling is used as a short hand for all the psychological therapies used in primary care, including, counselling, psychotherapy and psychology. It is the setting that determines the term, not the professional training. These primary care counsellors are likely to have undertaken an additional top-up training to allow them to work effectively as primary care counsellors.