UNISON the public service union

Future professional registration

There are a number of professions who are in the process of becoming registered with different registration bodies. This article gives a summary of where negotiations with some of those professions and the registration bodies have reached.

Clinical technologists to be regulated in 2005
The first important development for this group is that, at its meeting held in October 2004, the HPC agreed that the clinical technologist profession should be recommended for regulation, without condition.

The next stage of this process is for the Department of Health (DH) regulation branch to undertake public consultation. Then the DH will formulate the necessary legislation, which will be laid before the Scottish and UK parliaments in 2005.

This will mean that the profession will be regulated by the HPC in late 2005 or early 2006. At this point the voluntary register will close. In addition a three-year transitional period, expected to end in 2008/2009, is anticipated.

However, before that point is reached, there are a number of key issues that require being resolved. Including the impact of this decision on future entrants to the profession, those currently in training, employers, commissioners, and education providers.

It has been agreed that the minimum entry qualification for the profession will, in the future, be an honours degree in clinical technology. This will become compulsory from 2008.

Applied psychologist
In March 2005 the Department of Health published its consultation paper on the registration of applied psychologists. This consultation will end on the 9 June 05 and comments should be sent before that date to the DH. The proposal is to amend section 60 of the Health Act 1999 to allow for the regulation of applied psychologists with the Health Professions Council (HPC).

The HPC has recommended there be the inclusion of seven types of applied psychologists within the profession it regulates. The number of applied psychologists that will be brought into registration will be about 14,000 of whom about 10,000 are voluntary registered with the British Psychological Society.

The identified groups for registration are:

Clinical psychologists

Counselling psychologists

Educational psychologists

Forensic psychologists

Health psychologists

Occupational psychologists

Sport and exercise psychologists

Educational standards will be set at a graduate qualification plus a post graduate training on a British Psychological Society training route.

Operating departmental practitioners
Operating department practitioners (ODP) are the 13th profession to be registered with the Health Professions Council. The inclusion of three AODP members on the HPC council since October 2004 raises the number of council members to 26.

Pharmacy technicians
Pharmacy technicians are in the process of establishing, in the first instance, a voluntary register from January 2005 with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, which will become a statutory register from 2008.

Legislation will be required to formulise this register but a timetable for its introduction has been set in motion.

Counsellors
The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy are in the early stages of discussions with the HPC and the DH on the process of registering Counsellors. Work is taking place on establishing standards of conduct and education that would allow a voluntary register to be converted into a statutory register.

Care assistants and assistant practitioners
The DH held a consultation in 2004 on the registration of care assistants and assistant practitioners. UNISON is keen to see such a register established to give status and standards to these groups. Our preferred option is for a voluntary register, which would then be converted into a statutory register with the HPC as the registration body.

Future HPC registrants
October 2003: Clinical physiologists presented by the Clinical Physiologists Registration Council made a representation to the HPC. This has been processed and is now with the Department of Health for consideration.

March 2004: Dance movement therapists presented by the Association for Dance Movement made their presentation which has now been forwarded to the Department of Health.

Professional services unit

Future professional registration

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