UKAPC Member Organisation Details

Our primary aim, enshrined in the constitution of the Scarborough Psychotherapy Training Institute (registered number 4137238) is to benefit the public welfare, and further the advancement of public education, by developing a range of activities in counselling and psychotherapy on the basis of excellence in practice. We promote a rigorous professionalism grounded in concern and humanity, both in the provision of skilled practitioner services and professional training.

"SCPTI has an active equal opportunities policy and is working towards compliance with the human rights act"

To this end SCPTI has for several years been developing links with the community through the provision of clinical support to the employees of the borough council, commercial organisations and the local mental health services. In the next few years we intend to expand and extend the range of specialist clinical services in the region.

SCPTI is a full member of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) and therefore provides accredited training that enables our graduates to enter the UKCP national register of professional psychotherapists.

The Scarborough Psychotherapy Training Institute keeps abreast of developments within the wider community of Psychotherapy through it's membership of the:

United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy
United Kingdom Association for Therapeutic Counselling
United Kingdom Association for Psychotherapy Integration
European Association for Integrative Psychotherapy
European Association for Gestalt Therapy
European Association for Psychotherapy

Active membership of these organisations, together with a serious commitment to continued growth and development means that professional training at SCPTI remains at the leading edge of psychotherapy education in the UK and Europe.

I bring to my role as Director of Training at SCPTI, experience of being a former Training Standards Officer of UKCP (1998-2000), a Past President of the European Association of Psychotherapy(1994), founding President of the European Association for Integrative Psychotherapy (1996-1999) and I am the current President of European Association for Gestalt Therapy.

The SCPTI Board of Directors has three Executive Directors: George Bassett, Peter Lavender and Joanna Hewitt Taylor and three Associate Directors: Ken Evans, Karen Davies-Hough and Linda Finlay.

Our teaching teams are well qualified academically and professionally and we are able to draw on the expertise of visiting trainers of international repute.

The Diploma in Integrative Psychotherapy, Diploma in Gestalt Psychotherapy and the Diploma in Supervision at SCPTI are periodically revised in the light of developments in training standards within UKCP and the European Association for Psychotherapy. In addition we have added a Diploma in Relational Centred Counselling ( first intake 2004) to our portfolio of professional trainings.

As a result of this revision of our courses and given the experience and expertise we have brought to this task, we believe that professional training at SCPTI is at the forefront of professional training in the UK and Europe.

While utilising our previous experience of delivering university validated psychotherapy education we prefer not to link SCPTI course with a university but rather with professional accreditation such as the UKCP and EAP, i.e. UKCP registration and the European Certificate of Psychotherapy. In this way we can avoid the increasing bureaucratic requirements of university validation which, in the recent experience of the trainers, leans too much toward academic criteria at the expense of clinical criteria. Furthermore SCPTI seeks to avoid the necessity to be driven by the need for annual recruitment in order to 'fill the years'.

Legal and professional basis of SCPTI

SCPTI is a company limited by guarantee and is not profit making. This enables SCPTI to maintain it's preference of recruiting to one training group at a time, in Gestalt Psychotherapy and Integrative Psychotherapy, and to see these groups through to graduation rather than requiring a large new intake every year.

SCPTI is a member of the UKCP and UKATC and several European associations outlined above. We are guided in our professional development by these organisations.