The UK Council for Psychotherapists (UKCP) commissioned Chrysalis Research for two projects in recent years.

The first was designed to explore the response to UKCP’s proposition to become the leading professional body for psychotherapists and psychoanalytical counsellors. A qualitative approach was designed to reflect the exploratory nature of the aims, and the need to provide in-depth and detailed feedback to UKCP. Online methods were used to achieve a broad representation of respondents geographically and to gain feedback over time. The research enabled UKCP to learn more about how it is perceived amongst psychotherapists and professionals working with psychotherapists. It also provided UKCP with a set of recommendations on how it could best position itself in the market as a ‘premium’ professional registration organisation.

In 2015 we carried out further work with UKCP members, this time to support a UKCP online consultation about the three primary functions of UKCP, their relative importance and how successfully UKCP was performing each function. Our research looked at regulation and standards-setting, and we developed a set of priorities for action that applied across the three functions.