The National Counselling Society

The National Counselling Society (NCS) was first set up in 1999 by a group of counsellors, psychotherapists, hypnotherapists and psychologists. 

NCS plays an important role within the profession of counselling in the UK and in May 2013 the Society was one of the first organisations to gain Accredited Register status with the Professional Standards Authority Accredited Register programme. 

About the Society (taken from their website)

‘Our belief is that counselling (and related therapies) should be seen as a vocation (not just a job but a worthy occupation) and that the relationship between counsellor and client is important for the outcome of therapy.

Our ethos is that counselling is a unique vocation and that this should be reflected in all our policies. We act to protect counselling from inappropriate regulation if we feel it could harm our work and the diversity, creativity and range of training options that currently exist in our profession. We were a central part of making sure that the previous Government’s inappropriate plans were dropped (2010) and have welcomed the ‘Right Touch Regulation’ offered by the Accredited Register programme.                       

We make sure that all our members have a say and respect a wide variety of views, modalities (different types of counselling) and training routes. We acknowledge and support counsellors who work in the voluntary sector and those who work part-time as well as in full-time employment or in private practice. We also acknowledge and support the many different approaches in counselling. Unique among counselling associations in the UK we also recognise hypnotherapy as a method of counselling.’

The National Counselling Society will be talking at National Counsellors’ Day about The Future of Therapy.

You can find out more about them on their website here.