Benefits of individual membership

Individual membership gives you access to up to date, expert guidance and practical support to help you develop your skills and your practice.

Requirements

From September 2021, we’ve updated our requirements for membership and accreditation to align with changes to how training and placements are delivered remotely.

Find out more about placement and training requirements

To be eligible for individual membership you must have successfully completed and graduated from a counselling or psychotherapy core practitioner training course.

Your course must have involved at least one year full time or two years’ part time classroom based tuition. You must also have completed a supervised placement of at least 100 client contact hours as an integral part of your course.

Your placement hours must have been:

  • delivered face to face for the majority of the hours. The remaining hours can be delivered online or via a combination of online and phone.
  • carried out with genuine clients, rather than peers from your course, for example
  • in an appropriate setting with appropriate clients, such as counselling services, where clients were pre-assessed as suitable for your level of competence
  • assessed (or marked) as an integral part of your training
  • supervised. Supervision is important at all stages of seeing clients. For trainees, we recommend a ratio of one hour's supervision to eight hours counselling and that they see their supervisor fortnightly.

We cannot accept the following qualifications:

  • in disciplines such as psychology, hypnotherapy, social work or coaching
  • in counselling combined with another discipline
  • in specialised disciplines such as drama therapy, music therapy or dance therapy
  • those gained from courses delivered solely through online or distance learning

Commitments

As an individual member of BACP you'll be bound by our Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions and our Professional Conduct Procedure. You must read and agree to these as part of your application process.

You should also read our Membership policies and protocols

All individual members must work towards becoming a registered member. You need to join the BACP Register within 24 months of becoming an individual member.

Costs

Membership subscriptions run for a year and are reviewed annually.

If you’re receiving certain state benefits or have no personal income, you may be entitled to pay a reduced fee. See our Reduced fee policy.

If you're a UK tax payer, you may be eligible to claim tax relief on your membership fees.

How to apply

Supporting evidence

To support your application, you'll need to provide:

  • a copy of your graduation certificate
  • proof of address
  • proof of any eligibility for reduced fees
  • information and documents to support any disclosures – see our Membership disclosure policy 
  • evidence of entitlement to use any academic or honorific titles, such as Dr

If you completed a training course outside the UK, you must enclose a course handbook or transcript with your application so we can assess the level of training undertaken. Any evidence you provide should be translated into English by a certified translator.

Full details are given in the application process.

Online

Our online individual member application should only take you 10 to 15 minutes to complete. Please make sure you have all your supporting evidence ready to upload.

Application form

If you can’t use the online process, you can download the application guide and complete the form:

Membership application form (pdf 2MB)

Return your completed form by email to membership@bacp.co.uk. We're no longer able to accept payment by cheque - please contact us if you need to discuss alternative payment methods.

It may take up to 28 days to process your application as we'll need to complete verification checks.

Find out more...