Box-Ticking or Deepening? Rethinking Continuing Professional Development for UKCP Reaccreditation

Each year, like many psychotherapists, I find myself carving out time not just to deepen my understanding or nourish my practice—but to prove that I’ve done so. Logging CPD hours, gathering certificates, listing webinars, copying receipts for books I have purchased, providing reasons for buying the books, and summarising the books. The process is supposed to ensure ongoing professional development. But more and more, it feels like I’m spending less time genuinely educating myself and more time just documenting that I’ve tried.

Recently, I found myself summarising several books I’d read for reaccreditation—books I chose out of genuine professional interest and deep personal curiosity. Yet instead of reflecting on how they’d changed my perspective, challenged my assumptions, or informed my practice, I was caught up in turning rich insights into neat, countable units. Not for my clients. Not for myself. But for an external system that seems to prioritise evidence of learning over the learning itself.

As therapists, we understand that the most meaningful growth doesn’t always fit into neat categories. It develops gradually through reflection, embodiment, and dialogue. Sometimes it occurs when we revisit a familiar text with fresh eyes, or when a passing comment in supervision sparks something profound. However, under the current reaccreditation model, these subtle, transformative experiences often don’t “count.”

What does count? A ticked box. A dated signature. A record of attendance. All useful in their place, but not reflective of the depth and nuance of therapeutic learning.

I wonder how many of us spend hours trying to articulate in a few lines what we’ve “learned” from a book—not for the sake of integration, but to have something to upload. And how often the time spent proving we’ve read something might have been better used to pause, reflect, discuss with peers, or even rest—because rest, too, is part of how we learn.

This is not a call to abandon accountability or standards. It’s a call to reimagine professional development as a living, breathing process rather than an administrative hurdle. Could we trust therapists more to shape their learning paths? Could reaccreditation invite dialogue instead of documentation?

I don’t want to become a better form-filler. I want to become a better therapist.

And I suspect I’m not alone.

I will be formulating an alternative re-accreditation proposal to put forward to the UKCP, and meanwhile, I would be happy to hear my colleagues' feedback on this article.