Membership guidance

Registration Body Membership

Registration body membership of Addiction Professionals identifies to the public and organisations that you adhere to Standards of Conduct and Ethics, evidencing commitment to good quality practice. All members are allowed to use the Addiction Professionals logo on business cards, letterheads and online profiles.

Practitioner Members

Practitioner Members are individuals working in the addiction sector who agree to adhere to our Standards of Conduct and Ethics. When describing your relationship with AP make your status clear by describing yourself as a Practitioner Member of Addiction Professionals or Practitioner Member of AP.

Advanced Practitioner Members

All members confirm a commitment to ongoing continuing professional development (CPD) by agreeing to our Standards of Conduct and Ethics. Advanced Practitioner Members make a further commitment to the type and amount of CPD they take part in, together with an agreement to be audited if requested. When describing your relationship with AP make your status clear by describing yourself as an Advanced Practitioner Member of Addiction Professionals, or Advanced Practitioner Member of AP.

Registered and Accredited Members

Registered and Accreditation is a quality status for experienced practitioners, evidencing the highest level of achievement.

Registered members have evidenced high standards of competency in their practice. To become a registered member they have completed the Drug and Alcohol Professional Certificate, or the Drug and Alcohol Family Worker Professional Certificate. Registration involves a detailed application and the building of a portfolio of evidence.

For those who have successfully achieved registration in the Drug and Alcohol Professional Certificate when describing your relationship with AP make your status clear by describing yourself as an Registered Member of Addiction Professionals, DAPC, or Registered Member of AP, DAPC

For those who have successfully achieved registration Drug and Alcohol Family Worker Professional Certificate, when describing your relationship with AP make your status clear by describing yourself as a Registered Member of Addiction Professionals, DAFP, or Registered Member of AP, DAFP

Accredited Members have achieved the highest level of competency by completing either the Drug and Alcohol Professional Certificate or the National Counsellors Accreditation Certificate. Accreditation involves a detailed application, the building a portfolio of evidence, and completion of externally validated qualifications.

For those who have successfully achieved accreditation in the Drug and Alcohol Professional Certificate when describing your relationship with AP make your status clear by describing yourself as an Accredited Member of Addiction Professionals, DAPC, or Accredited Member of AP, DAPC.

For those who have successfully achieved accreditation in the National Counsellors Accreditation Certificate when describing your relationship with AP make your status clear by describing yourself as Accredited Member of Addiction Professionals, NCAC, or Accredited Member of AP, NCAC.

Organisational membership

There are two forms of organisational membership : Provider Affiliate Membership and Academic Affiliate Membership. Organisational membership evidences a commitment to quality, standards and the protection of the public.

General advertising

We advise members to advertise services for which they are qualified to deliver.

Using the terms ‘counsellor’ ‘therapist’ ‘counselling’ or ‘therapy’

For practitioners who wish to describe themselves as ‘counsellors’ or ‘therapists’ or describe their services as ‘counselling’ or ‘therapy’ we will ask that the following criteria have been met:

You will be required to have completed and graduated from a counselling or psychotherapy practitioner training course at educational level 4. Your course must have involved at least 450 hours classroom-based tutor contact. You must also have completed a supervised placement of at least 100 client contact hours as an integral part of your course. Your placement hours must have been:

a. carried out with genuine clients, rather than peers from your course, for example

b. in an appropriate setting with appropriate clients. Counselling services are an ideal setting as they are likely to assess whether clients are suitable for your level of competence. Your training provider should not allow placement hours through private practice or with client groups that have not been pre-assessed as suitable - such as children and young people or those with complex mental health needs.

c. assessed (or marked) as an integral part of your training

d. supervised. Supervision is important at all stages of seeing clients.

We will consider applications from individuals who feel that they have met the above requirements via a combination of courses.

Professions with primary registration bodies

Practitioners wishing to advertise as psychologists must be registered with the HCPC.

Practitioners wishing to advertise as nurses must be registered with the NMC

Practitioners wishing to advertise as doctors must be registered with the GMC.

Practitioners wishing to advertise as psychiatrists must be registered on the GMC specialist register in General Psychiatry.

Practitioners wishing to advertise as social workers must be registered with Social Work England, the Scottish Social Services Council, Social Care Wales, or the Northern Ireland Social Care Council.

Practitioners wishing to advertise as pharmacists must be registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council.

For any questions please email admin@addictionprofessionals.org.uk

CPD is any learning experience that can be used for maintaining and improving competence, knowledge and skills to ensure that practitioners have the ability to practise safely, effectively and legally within their scope of practice.

CPD is an ongoing process of assessment, planning, action and evaluation. Although assessment is often the starting-point, learning can occur at other points in the process, and can also be recorded as CPD.

How do I identify my learning needs?

Are there areas in your work that you feel less confident about? Can you think of knowledge or skills that might help you improve? Supervision can be a good place to discuss your learning needs, and also appraisals if you have them. Once you have identified a few learning needs it can help to ask the following questions:

How relevant is the learning need to my practice?
What sorts of learning activities might meet my learning need?
How will I know if I have successfully met my learning need?
What are appropriate timescales to meet my learning need?

These questions can help you to prioritise your CPD activities.

How many hours of CPD should I complete?

The focus should be on what you have learnt and how it has affected your practice. Your profession and workplace may also dictate how much CPD you should complete. However, we would expect Advanced Members to be involved in at least 5 different CPD activities of which at least half should be related to the addictions field. This can include psychosocial interventions relevant to the addictions field including motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioural therapy approaches, as well as knowledge-based activities.

What sort of activities can I record as CPD?

A wide range of activities can count towards CPD including:

formal education, lectures, seminars and courses
conferences - attending or giving presentations
e-learning and webinars
in-service training
mentoring
reading books, journals, internet articles, and relevant TV/ radio/ podcasts
supervising research
workshops
work shadowing
writing articles or papers

Please note, attendance at peer support groups such as Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous, is not included as CPD unless it is to observe the process for learning purposes. Routine clinical supervision is also not included as CPD.

How do I record CPD?

If you are part of another professional body or work for an organisation, they may have requirements for how you record your CPD. AP also provide a CPD Audit template. Here is an example of 4 month's of recorded CPD.

Someone who is fit to practise is healthy enough to provide safe, competent and ethical care in their work. A practitioner’s fitness to practise may be affected by their physical or mental health, or other circumstances that prevent them from offering a safe, ethical or effective service to their clients. Fitness to practise is not just about professional performance, but also actions which may damage public confidence in the profession.

This may include conduct that takes place outside of the workplace, such as acts resulting in criminal investigations.

Maintaining fitness to practise

There are a number of ways for practitioners to maintain their fitness to practise including:

Looking after their health and wellbeing so that they can practice safely, competently, and ethically
Regularly assessing their own health in the context of their professional responsibilities
Discussing physical and mental health issues, and other circumstances which may affect fitness to practise in supervision
Seeking medical help, and making adjustments to and/or withdraw from their regular work duties if they are having health difficulties that affect their ability to provide safe, ethical and competent care.

Fitness to practise and health conditions and / or disabilities

In the vast majority of cases, members who have an ongoing health condition can practice safely and effectively. Some people may have health conditions/ disabilities which mean that at times their fitness to practise is affected.

Concerns about fitness to practise

If a member is concerned that their health may be affecting their fitness to practise, and they are actively practicing, we recommend that they take the following actions:

Seek help with mental/ physical health issues, and any other issues affecting their fitness to practise
Work with their employer / supervisor to make any necessary adjustments to their duties so that they can continue to provide safe, ethical and competent care, or withdraw from practice to address their recovery, if safe practice is not possible at this time.

Fitness to practise and addictions

The addictions workforce is enriched by the involvement of practitioners who have experienced and overcome addiction problems. Past problems with addictions can however lead to vulnerability to relapse, particularly in the early stages of recovery. For this reason AP suggest that members who have had addiction problems should spend a period of 2 years free from problematic addictive behaviours before working in the addictions field. For many this will involve abstinence from any substance / complete cessation of addictive behaviours, and for all it will involve being entirely free of substance-related/ addictive behaviour problems including impairment of any kind whilst at work.

It is important for all practitioners in the sector (whether they have had a prior addiction issue or not) to assess their vulnerability to addictive behaviours, and if necessary, put in place strategies to limit the risk of returning to/ developing these behaviours. These strategies may include:

Peer-led recovery support
Use of supervision for support to discuss issues that make them vulnerable to addiction problems
Counselling/ treatment to reduce risk of relapse

Where addiction problems risk becoming/ become problematic, it may be necessary to take additional measures including:

Reducing / stopping work with clients
Access to treatment and support including counselling/ keywork, medical interventions, and residential rehabilitation

Fitness to practise and AP membership requirements

In general, your fitness to practise will be assumed, unless AP receives information to the contrary. If during your membership your fitness to practise becomes impaired and/or you feel you become unsafe to work with clients, you should consult your supervisor in relation to whether you should continue to practise. You should also refer to our Standards of Conduct and Ethics. Members should be aware that under AP’s Complaints and Disciplinary Procedures it is possible for members of the public/ other professionals to raise issues regarding their Fitness to Practice.

The Care Act (2014) gives a legal framework for safeguarding adults. Other important legislation on safeguarding includes:

Equality Act 2010
Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act SVGA (2006)
The Human Rights Act 1998
The Mental Capacity Act 2005

Organisations involved in the caring sector should have policies and procedures on safeguarding adults.

Definition of ‘an adult at risk’

In safeguarding terms an adult at risk is defined as a person 18 and over who:

has needs for care and support (whether or not the local authority is meeting any of those needs) and;
is experiencing, or at risk of, abuse or neglect; and
as a result of those care and support needs is unable to protect themselves from either the risk of, or the experience of abuse or neglect.

An adult does not need to be in receipt of a care or support delivered by the local authority.

What is abuse?

The Care and support statutory guidance identifies ten types of abuse, these are:

Abuse can happen anywhere and can consist of single or repeated acts. An abuser can be anyone that comes into contact with an adult at risk person and is often someone well known to them.

Safeguarding Adults Boards

The Care Act (2014) requires that Safeguarding Adults Boards (SABs) are overseen by each local authority, consisting of experts from various fields such as health professionals, police, social care services, housing, and voluntary agencies.

SABs have three core duties. They must:

develop and publish a strategic plan setting out how they will meet their objectives and how their member and partner agencies will contribute
publish an annual report detailing how effective their work has been
commission safeguarding adults reviews (SARs) for any cases which meet the criteria for these.

Each Local Authority will have mechanisms in place to respond to adult safeguarding concerns. These should be communicated to all local statutory, voluntary and community agencies and include clear policies and procedures for agencies to refer to.

Confidentiality and sharing information

All organisations should follow clear principles of confidentiality in relation to their service users. However there will be occasions when it is appropriate to share information about clients in order to protect their best interests and, therefore, you should never give assurance of confidentiality. It is a legal requirement that agencies and professionals work together regarding safeguarding issues.

Make sure your organisation has clear policies on information sharing and that you have procedures in place around working with other organisations
Only share information on a ‘need to know’ basis and when it is in the best interests of your service users.
Always try to obtain informed consent from your clients before sharing information, however if this is not possible it may be necessary to override this requirement – especially if other adults are at risk. Staff should seek management support wherever possible to decide whether to share information without consent

The Data Protection Act (2018) allows organisations to share information about clients without their consent in some limited circumstances. They include:

To protect the vital interests of an individual – the vital interests condition also extends to any other individual who might be impacted.
Where the individual lacks capacity to give meaningful consent

Safeguarding alerts

As well as following Local Authority procedures, your organisation should have its own internal policies and procedures relating to adult safeguarding. While safeguarding procedures may vary slightly between agencies and local authorities, they should all follow the same fundamental process:

Make sure the adult at risk is not in immediate danger. If necessary, seek urgent medical
Contact the police if you think a crime has been committed or if someone is in immediate
Raise a ‘safeguarding alert’ by informing your line manager or the designated safeguarding lead within your organisation.
Make a written report recording your concerns and detailing anything you have seen including dates, times, and people involved. Make the report factual and avoid giving opinions.

Once a safeguarding alert has been raised, the designated safeguarding lead in your organisation will decide how to proceed with the concern. Action must be taken as soon as possible to minimise any risk of harm or exploitation to individuals concerned. In the absence of management support, raise an alert to the local authority. In the first instance this will often be via the local social services helpline or emergency duty team. Make sure you are aware of your your organisation’s whistleblowing policies and procedures, to be followed when reporting any safeguarding concern involving a colleague.

All safeguarding concerns should be fully investigated by social services. Social services may decide that they need to take no further action, or they may decide that an adult safeguarding plan is required, to stop the abuse and/or to manage the risks that have been identified. This will involve all agencies involved with the client, and will be reviewed every 6 months.

Training and continuing professional development

All practitioners and volunteers must be trained in safeguarding. Safeguarding training should be updated and refreshed regularly for all practitioners. Organisations should consider including safeguarding training as part of continual professional development (CPD) of staff and managers. CPD may include training but could also include many other development activities, for example: keeping a reflective journal or facilitating a discussion group or activity. A useful starting point for CPD activity is an organisation’s supervision and/ or appraisal process.