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Elia, I., Jenaway, A., 2009. Letter from the Editors. Reformulation, Summer, p.3.
The changes in government regulation of psychotherapists in the NHS will affect many of us as CAT therapists and we had a fascinating talk on this from Glenys Parry at the ACAT AGM in April. Glenys has kindly agreed to write up her talk for Reformulation and we hope to devote the next issue to both her thoughts, and your responses to the proposed changes. Starting the ball rolling is the article in this issue by Rachel Pollard on her views about statutory regulation. There is also a new possibility that ACAT may join the Cognitive section of UKCP, in addition to the HIPS section, and your thoughts on that subject would also be welcomed.
In her talk for the AGM, Glenys mentioned the pitfall of two unhelpful reciprocal roles in relation to authority – either compliant and passive, or rebellious and defiant. This rebellious response is neatly captured in an article here, by Clare Fisher and Cathy Harding, about the responses of people with learning disability to the excessive controls sometimes placed upon them. In discussions after Glenys’s talk, we pondered the best way out of these unhelpful reciprocal roles and we are pleased to include in this issue a very helpful description of defining aims and finding exits by Janet Toye. At the AGM, the best exit for most people seemed to be just to keep doing good work, quietly in the background, until it gets noticed (as described in the article here about the development of CAT in an eating disorder service in Italy) but also, to be up to date with the literature about CAT and be able to convince those in authority of how useful and effective it is. To this end Mansur Quraishi, ACAT’s previous development officer, has produced a summary of the research in CAT that people could use to lobby their own commissioners of services. We all agree that more research is needed, and may need to be funded by ACAT, and Jason Hepple has agreed to take on the task of co-ordinating a new Research and Communications group within ACAT.
Do let us have your thoughts on any of these subjects, or your responses to anything in this issue. Although we do try to beaver away, doing good work quietly in the background, Reformulation is only ever as good as its content, which comes from all of you.
We only intend to stay as joint editors for one more issue, so if you would like to take over, do get in touch so that we can hand over the baton without it being dropped! The baton is not really that heavy as Jon Sloper does so much of the work getting everything ready for final publication, thanks again to Jon for this issue.