The sociology of regulation: the case of psychotherapy and counselling and the experience of the arts therapies

Discusses the processes undertaken by the Health Professions Council to meet the Labour Government's White Paper recommendations for the statutory regulation of psychotherapists and counsellors and compares these with those of the arts therapies in the late 1990s. Uses an adapted model of professions, drawing on Bucher and Strauss' 1961 work informed by process sociology and suggests that a new model of professions is required to meet current thinking about the regulation of health professions that is now based on risk as opposed to concepts like 'maturity'