Working Group
The Working Group on the Professional Competencies Project was a sub-committee of the European Training Standards Committee (ETSC) of the EAP. It had five members:
- Traudl Szyszkowitz: Austria: (then) Chairperson of ETSC: EAP Individual Member; Contact here
- Renèe Oudijk: The Netherlands: Co-Chairperson ETSC: Contact here
- Courtenay Young: Scotland, UK: Member ETSC: EAP Individual Member: Contact here
- Peter Schulthess: Switzerland: Member ETSC: President EAGT & Swiss Charter for Psychotherapy: Contact here.
- Ansis Stabingis: Latvia, also SFU: EAP Individual Member: Contact here.
Literature Review
For a summary of the 'Literature Review', please click here.To have a look at the extensive 'Literature Review' that we have been consulting (Oct 2010 - July 2011), please click here (to download as a PDF file), or here (to see as an .htm file).
If you wish to help us to extend this Literature Review further into other areas and other languages, please contact us. We hope that our Participants from non-English speaking countries can really help here, by advising us what has been written on this topic elsewhere and suggesting relevant content from such literature in their country and language.
Draft Core Competencies
From these inputs, we devised a draft set of Core Competencies. These draft Core Competencies were what was originally on the website, in the various Domains. In order to get proper feedback on all these (draft) Core Competencies, we devised a set of Practice Analysis Survey (PAS) forms that 'Particpants' could use to feedback their opinions on the importance, relevancy and the frequency that they used these Core Competencies. This gave us 43 complete sets: in all, over 500 forms. Responses were received from 20 different countries; 6 different EWOs; 4 different NAOs; 13 different institutes and 19 different individuals.
PAS Forms Analysis
We then found two graduates of a Masters (M.Sc.)programme in Psychotherapy Studies at Glasgow University: Zsofia Anna Utry (Hungary) & Robin Finnie (Scotland) who were willing to analyse all these forms. In Nov-Dec 2012, they completed a Quantitative (Statistical) Analysis [see here] and a Qualitative (Thematic) Analysis [see here] of these PAS forms.
Expert Panel
We then (Dec 2012) appointed an Expert Panel, consisting of: Distinguish Research Professor Emeritus Leslie Geenberg (University of York, Toronto, Canada); Dr. Jaap van Lakerfeld (Head of PLATO, Social Sciences Research Dept. of University of Leiden, Netherlands; and Dr. Ken Evans, (Past-President of EAP & Visiting Professor Psychotherapy University South East Europe); to look at these results and report back to the Working Group and the EAP Board. They assessed them and made recommendations towards a final set of "Core Competencies" that could be recommended to the EAP Board. Their reports are available here.
Revised Core Competencies
To see the 'Revised' Core Competencies (Feb. 2013) - prior to adoption at the EAP's AGM in Moscow in July 2013 - together (in a PDF document) please click here.
The Working Group's last report (Feb 2013) to the EAP Governing Board is here.
The final set of "Core Competencies" - the revised set plus a relatively few minor chnages - was accepted at the EAP's AGM in Moscow in July, 2013. You can access it here as a PDF download.
Professional Competencies Working Group Meetings
What was done:
- Feb. 2009: Vienna: Project identified. ETSC established the Working Group.
- May. 2009: Amsterdam: Initial one-day working group meeting: Prepared the first paper for the EAP.
- Oct. 2009: Graz, Austria: One-day working group: Planning the project: we amended the Amsterdam paper and took out the budget. The project was introduced to the EAP Board.
- Nov. 2009: The first questionnaire was sent out through the EAP Head Office. There were 22 returns + 1 very late one (Jan 2011).
- Jan. 2010: A summary of the initial 22 returns was sent out. All were favourable: most very favourable.
- Feb. 2010: Vienna: EAP Board Meeting: The project was voted by the EAP Board 'with proper funding'. First contact with Prof. Bernhard Strauss at the EAP conference.
- Apr. 2010: Zurich: One-day working group: First meeting with Prof. Bernhard Strauss; looking at the answers of our questionnaire.
- Jun. 2010: Bucharest: The budget for the Project was voted in by the EAP Board & AGM.
- Oct. 2010: Paris: One-day working-group meeting: Skype conference with Prof. Bernhard Strauss. Finished the feedback of the questionnaires. Decided to open a website: www.psychotherapy-competency.eu
- Oct-Dec 2010: Building website: Working Group checking pages.
- Jan. 2011: Vienna: One-day working-group meeting, with Prof Strauss.
- Jan/Feb 2011: Project launched and website announced: Participants invited: initial response good.
- Feb. 2011: Vienna: One-day meeting before the EAP, ETSC & Board meeting: Presentation to the EAP Board.
- Mar-Jun 2011: Series of monthly Skype conferences working on the Core Competencies in the various Domains. Also additional reminders and invites for people to join 'Participants List'.
- July 2011: Zurich: 2-day meeting of Working Group.
- August 2011: Powerpoint presentation at WCP Congress, Sydney.
- Sept 2011: Draft Core Competencies are completed!
- Oct. 2011: Rome: A 2-day meeting before EAP, ETSC & Board meetings. Presented the work to-date on the Project to the EAP Board.
- Nov & Dec 2011: Skype conference calls
- Dec-Jan 2012: Chasing up NAOs, EWOs, and EAPTIs to become Participants and chasing Psrticipants to fill in PAS forms.
- Jan. 2012: Skype conference call instead of one & half-day meeting in Zürich
- Feb 2012: Vienna: One-day meeting before EAP, ETSC & Board meetings.
- Mar, Apr, May& June, 2012: Skype conference calls.
- June 2012: Zürich: One & half-day meeting of Working Group.Report to ETSC, Board & AGM.
- July 2012: Valencia, Spain: Presentation at FEAP/EAP Conference. Launched process of developing Specific Competencies. Reported to Board & AGM. Half-day meeting after Congress.
- Aug & Sept 2012: Skype conference calls. Statistical Analysis of PAS forms started.
- Oct 2012: Edinburgh, Scotland: One-day meeting after EAP, ESC T& Board meetings.
- Dec. 2012: Finished the Qualitative Analysis & Quantitative Thematic Analysis of the PAS forms: these can be viewed here and here.
- Jan 2013: Amsterdam: One-day meeting of Working Group
- Feb 2013: Skype meeting to finalise reports
- Feb 2013: Vienna, Austria: The regular EAP meetings - reporting to the EAP Executive Committee, ETSC and the Governing Board
- March 2013: Skype meeting to develop final formats and amendments.
- April & May 2013: Skype meetings to finalise Phase 1
- July 2013: Moscow, Russia:One half-day meeting before EAP meetings: Presenting the final Core Competencies to the Board and AGM.
Project Process Report:
(Feb. 2013) We were in the end stages of Phase 1: the process of developing and defining the (draft) Core Competencies. We produced PAS forms for all the 13 Domains (in July 2011). They are available on this website. We are also always interested in any inputs or corrections to any of the website pages. We have developed a List of Particpants - currently about 100 people, about 50% individuals and 50% representatives of psychotherapy associations and institutes!
We developed a 'Practice Analysis Survey' (PAS) as the best way to 'test out' participants' opinions of these draft Core Competencies (for more information about this, click here) and you therefore should be able to 'participate' meaningfully in these surveys, now! A percentage of the Participants have started filling in the PAS forms and have thus got some Gold Stars! We also really liked your comments and suggestions and we put most of these up on a special page here. About 1/3 of the Participants have started the PAS forms and more than 25% of the Participants have finished the PAS forms for all 13 Domains (about 43): Well Done! You all got 3 Gold Stars. We are grateful that a reasonable number of PAS have been completed by the end of August 2012. This (PAS) stage of the Project ended on 1st September 2012.
We then found two graduates (of an M.Sc. Psychotheraputic Studies in Glasgow [see above]) and (in Dec. 2012) we finished the Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of these PAS forms.
We then appointed an Expert Panel (see above) to use these analyses, and with all your comments and their own expertise, they suggested some amendments and necessary changes to the Core Competencies. They sent in their reports (here) in Jan 2013 and the Working Group has now reported to EAP Board for February 2013 in Vienna (here).
We then adopted the Core Competencies in their final form (see here), in Moscow, in July 2013.
This was the end of Phase 1. (See here).
Phase 2:
After July 2013, your help will become essential (you are the 'experts' for this 2nd phase) and we can start to work on identifying the additional 'Specific' Competencies for the various methods and modalities within psychotherapy, and also any competencies 'specific' to (or required by) any particular country:
This is Phase 2 of the Project (for more information about Phase 2, see here). (NB: Some of these dates in this section have been changed as certain delays have affected the Project.)
- We started off by defining the ‘process’ for Phase 2 of the Project: Establishing the ‘Specific’ Competencies: i.e. those competencies that are additional to the Core Competencies and that are (a) specific to each modality (EWO) and/or (b) specific to a particular country (NUO)
- We therefore need small groups of people, mainly from within the EWOs and NUOs, to come together and start to work on these Specific Competencies from July 2013 onwards.
- There should be just one Specific Competency group for any particular modality (working for/with an EWO) and one for a particular country (working for/with an NAO). The groups (formed by/with the EWOs and/or NAOs) should / must include all relevant EAPTIs.
- The main condition in forming a group is that: (1) There must be (at least) one person in each Specific Competency group that has already been involved - in some way - in completing the PAS forms or has a significant familiarity with the Project.
- There are some other conditions: (2) These small groups must be (or include) representatives of a particular EWO (for the modality) or a particular NUO (for a country); If there is no relevant EWO, we will accept a group formed from more than one EAPTI in that modality.
- A final condition: (3) The Specific Competencies group(s) should / must list their Specific Competencies in a manner and style similar to the Core Competencies, and as precisely and as simply as possible, on the forms provided, and submit them to the Working Group on Professional Competencies: committee@psychotherapy-competency.eu
- In this 2nd phase, you are the experts now: we in the Working Group probably do not know very much about the Specific Competencies of your particular modality or country. You are the people who should and will b identifying these. We will simply receive these Specific Competencies that you write, as long as they are submitted in the correct format. We (the Working Group) will not, repeat not, be writing any Specific Competencies. If you don't write them, they won't get written.
- We anticipate that this phase should be nearly completed by February 2014, finalised by July 2014, and (possibly) fully accepted by Oct. 2014.
- Part of this work is also a “sorting out’ process. As a result of the PAS process, some of the original Core Competencies have been identified as being more like Specific Competencies or Specialist Competences. So there will be some “sorting out” this way, and some Specific Competencies may eventually be agreed to be 'migrated' to become more like Core Competencies. This 'migration of competencies' is a part of the process and should complete both Phase 1 and Phase 2.
At a similar time, from Oct 2013 to about mid-2014 (hopefully), we will inviting small specialist groups to work on the more 'Specialist' Competencies: this will be Phase 3. (see more information here).