Date August 16th 2026
Dear Members of the Board and Standards Committee,
Re: Formal Complaint and Objection Concerning Proposed Practice Standards on Challenging Client Beliefs and Attitudes
I am writing as an experienced member and accredited practitioner to lodge a formal complaint regarding the draft Practice Standards, specifically concerning the contradictory, clinically untenable, and legally hazardous provisions set out across Items 1:3, 1:4, 1:5, and 7:1 in your proposed guidance.
The proposed guidance attempts to maintain plausible deniability by stating that practitioners should not seek to change attitudes (Item 1:5) and must remain lawful (Item 7:1). However, Item 1:4 explicitly undermines these statements by providing a detailed operational mandate for therapists to police, challenge, and re-educate clients whose personal, social, or philosophical views are deemed inconsistent with aspired organisational policy.
I submit this formal objection on the following specific clinical, ethical, and legal grounds:
1. Severe Internal Contradiction and Clinical Doublespeak
Item 1:4 explicitly directs practitioners to respond to client attitudes by deciding “when to challenge, when to offer education rather than challenge”, to “ask for a change of behaviour”, and to “provide resources to educate and explain why it is harmful”. Framing this pedagogical intervention in “respectful and collaborative language” does not alter its fundamental nature. You cannot credibly claim in Item 1:5 that therapists must not attempt to change attitudes while simultaneously prescribing detailed protocols in Item 1:4 for re-educating clients on their perceived misconceptions as decided by yourselves.
2. Gross Misapplication of Safeguarding, Whistleblowing, and HR Mechanisms
Item 1:4 improperly conflates “systems, colleagues or clients” as equivalent targets for “speaking up policies”, “safeguarding guidance”, “human resources”, and “formal reporting”. Conflating a vulnerable client who expresses contentious or unpopular views in the privacy of a consulting room with an abusive colleague or an unsafe institutional system represents a gross violation of clinical confidentiality and professional boundaries. Using whistleblowing or HR procedures to monitor or report on client thought subverts the foundational principles of clinical practice.
3. Exploitation and Inversion of the Therapeutic Power Dynamic
While Item 1:4 acknowledges the power imbalance inherent in the client therapist relationship, it perverts this understanding. In sound clinical practice, the power dynamic requires the clinician to exercise strict neutrality and scrupulously avoid imposing moral, institutional, or political values on the client. Under Item 1:4, the power dynamic is reduced to a tactical timing consideration—merely assessing when to intervene to avoid therapeutic rupture – while legitimising ideological interference in the client’s internal world.
4. Conflict with UK Equality Law (Item 7:1)
Item 7:1 mandates that members must act lawfully, yet the guidance fails to recognise that lawful personal, political, and philosophical beliefs—including gender critical views, religious convictions, and opinions on immigration or public policy – are protected under the Equality Act 2010 and the European Convention on Human Rights. Requiring clinicians to treat protected philosophical beliefs as misconceptions or stereotyping requiring correction exposes individual therapists and the BABCP to significant legal liability.
Declaration of Ethical Non-Compliance
Therapeutic intervention in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy exists solely to address distress, psychological disorder, and client agreed clinical goals. It is not the function of psychotherapy to act as an instrument of civic policing or institutional orthodoxy.
I will not comply with any guidance that requires me to act as a moral arbiter or ideological gatekeeper and I will disseminate the information in this message to my colleagues, and all the people that I teach. I formally require the Board and the Standards Committee to withdraw Item 1:4, resolve these blatant contradictions, and reaffirm the essential distinction between a clinician’s professional duty of non- discrimination and the improper policing of client thought.
Yours sincerely,
Deanne Jade
Director, National Centre for Eating Disorders