By Liz Hall

For the first time, coaches and coaching buyers in the UK can compare easily the different professional coaching bodies’ accreditation schemes.

The bodies have taken a huge step forward towards greater clarity around accreditation in response to calls from coaching buyers, body members and readers of Coaching at Work.

The Association for Coaching (AC); Association for Professional Executive Coaching and Supervision (APECS); the British Psychological Society (BPS) Special Group in Coaching Psychology (SGCP); the European Mentoring & Coaching Council (EMCC) UK; the International Coach Federation (ICF), and the Society for Coaching Psychology (SCP) have offered information on their schemes to Coaching at Work to draw together an initial comparison. Coaching at Work has compiled five tables which can be downloaded from the Coaching at Work website at www.coaching-at-work.com/accreditation-hub

• COMPARISON 1 Professional bodies’ ethos, rationales and philosophies
• COMPARISON 2 Professional bodies on objectives of qualification and accreditation
• COMPARISON 3 Professional bodies on source of evidence and underpinning standards
• COMPARISON 4 Professional bodies on accreditation levels, who they’re aimed at; qualifying, practice & renewal criteria and CPD & supervision
• COMPARISON 5 Professional bodies on their assessment and examination processes

Members of the bodies and readers of Coaching at Work have made it clear that they want to see the bodies collaborate around accreditation, for example. This was one of the key messages from the Poor Practice 2010 Survey, led by Coaching at Work as a joint initiative with the AC; BPS SGCP; the EMCC; the ICF, and the SCP.

At a Roundtable meeting at the end of last year, the member bodies agreed to share the information they had collated with stakeholders. “We have been conscious that our member stakeholders remain keen to see the coaching bodies work well together and provide support in their decision making. We are therefore providing the material for Coaching at Work to draw together the initial comparison,” said Mike Hurley, past president of the European Mentoring & Coaching Council (EMCC) UK.

Gladeana McMahon, chair of the AC UK said: “The AC has been delighted to be part of the accreditation comparison project with our colleagues in other professional bodies.  We hope that this project will assist purchasers of coaching in understanding the various accreditation schemes and what they offer far more readily than is currently possible.”

Deborah Price, president of the UK ICF, said: “Recognised coach accreditation or certification is, according to our independent research, widely accepted globally as being important in contributing to higher satisfaction with coaching.  One of the ICF’s core values is collaboration so we are delighted to be working with our fellow professional bodies to ensure that our respective research and endeavours in setting the highest professional standards in coaching can be easily understood and evaluated by the people we represent – the coach buying public and coaches around the globe.”

Dr Angela Hetherington, chair of the British Psychological Society’s Special Group in Coaching Psychology said that the public will have different expectations from coaching psychologists than from business or life coaches. “It could be argued that this will necessitate a more stringent and rigorous set of accrediting criteria… Whilst many coaching associations seek to determine the key qualifying criteria of recognized coaches, it is likely that coaching psychologists – as a distinct group – will eventually have a set of requirements identified and defined by the Health Professions Council (HPC).”

A major concern for accrediting organisations is the protection of the public from malpractice or poor practice, she said. “Appropriate post graduate qualifications based on rigorous, stringent training requirements will provide the public with a major means of selection and delineation of competent practitioners who can evidence their training and experience. …It will be necessary to create routes which recognise different experience and ensure that, overall certain core areas are always covered, thus accommodating diversity of professional background whilst creating measurable, coherent and validated training requirements.”

The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD) also attend the Roundtable but the CIPD does not offer its own accreditation scheme and the BACP’s is still in development.

The bodies are still looking to undertake further research on how their schemes compare. One option is to work with Masters Level students who may be able to incorporate this into a research project towards their studies. If there are any students or Masters Level programme providers who would like to discuss the opportunity further please email: Mike.Hurley@coachingandmentoring.co.uk

See Poor Practice Survey 2010 http://www.coaching-at-work.com/2010/07/08/coaches-call-for-collaboration-to-address-poor-practice/