I did an interview today for a Uni newsletter about my experience at La Trobe, teaching in the program, and my observations about counselling in Australia vs. the US. Since being here I have spent a good bit of time exploring the counselling profession in Australia. I've met with the CEO of the Australian Counseling Association (ACA) and the Psychotherapy And Counseling Federation of Australia (PACFA). Next week I'm off to the University of the Sunshine Coast to learn about their program and spend time with the Vice President of ACA. I've talked at length to students, practitioners and faculty about counselling in Australia. My simple conclusion is that it is chaos.
Where our profession in the US is increasingly regulated - to our detriment I suspect - there is little regulation here. There is no form of certification or licensure and no consistent, agreed upon, minimum standards for training. There are an array of forms and types of training programs from undergraduate level certificate programs offered by private agencies, to bachelors degree programs to masters degrees. These programs vary in length, focus, intensity and any other dimension you could imagine. To work as a Counsellor you only need a bachelors degree or certificate and some accompanying experience. While there are many skilled and highly trained practitioners, there are an equal number of people with little or poor training providing a wide array of services.
The professional associations do set some standards and ACA has levels of membership which require differing levels of training & experience, and are supposed to qualify the member for differing sorts of work. ACA itself negotiates contracts with 3rd party payers which gives members at certain levels of membership access to reimbursements. Yet ACA is not the only professional association. PACFA is a different, prominent organization representing counsellors. PACFA is a federation of a wide range of smaller organizations gathered under one umbrella in an attempt to bring unity to the field. Except it appears that PACFA and ACA don't see eye to eye on most things and are at odds (although the CEO of PACFA was quick to let me know that they are engaged with some joint projects with ACA). ACA takes issue with PACFA being strongly influenced by professional groups besides counsellors - notably psychologists. I have been told by some involved for a long time with PACFA that they are skeptical of ACA, believing it is mostly a business interest promoting continuing education courses.
While the American Counseling Association is expending great energy to develop a unified definition of counseling - which could be seen more as a form of excluding others than unifying the profession - PACFA appears to take great pains to cast it's net as widely as possible and not exclude anyone. It is fascinating to look at their definitions - a separate definition is provided for psychotherapy, counselling and in addition one is provided for psychoanalysis (even though this is not in the title or description of the organization). My conversation with the PACFA CEO revealed the politics - it was clear that if they didn't include a separate description for psychoanalysis they would lose the psychoanalytic groups from the organization which they couldn't afford to do. When you look at the definitions on the PACFA website it is implied that counselling deals with simpler issues (although they acknowledge that at higher levels of training there is little difference) than psychotherapy. This notion maintains a view of counselling as a lesser profession - with a diminished role.
This distinction between counselling & psychotherapy (that it doesn't exist in any official way in the US is surprising to people here) appears to be maintained as a result of the proliferation of Bachelors trained practitioners in Australia. The large number of minimally trained people providing services appears to lead to a reliance on making distinctions in language, between what appears to be lesser and more highly trained practitioners. Yet this distinction is one that is difficult to show in some tangible way. It is more class warfare than any clear distinction. The CEO of PACFA suggested that they would love to set up some stronger standards for practitioners but acknowledged that if they did they would lose the majority of their members who couldn't meet those standards and as a result the organization would fold.
When interviewed today I suggested that while I thought the lack of regulation and standards in Australia was a risk to the public, the extensive and increasingly stringent regulation in the US has become a burden and limiting on training, as well as restricting creativity in the field of counseling. I was asked then if I could go back 20 - 30 years and put counseling on a different path what would I do. My first reaction was that it was an inevitable path and would all happen again - the reactive approach we take to accreditation & regulation. But I did have one thought. Professional leadership in the US appears to be dominated by academics (such as myself) and practitioners who may want to be in a leadership position have a difficult time navigating the political climate. Perhaps it is as much that practitioners are busy working for a living and don't have the luxury of putting the time toward that level of leadership the way academics do. In the end it seems the governance becomes quite disconnected from the practitioners. The professional associations in Australia seem to have a much stronger involvement of practitioners... although, I'm not sure I could say they are doing a better job.
The PACFA office is in the Fitzroy North neighborhood - which has it's on unique character as do all Melbourne neighborhoods:
I will miss my fish & chips when I go back to the US
