HCA
Moves Towards Formation
HypnosisAustralia,
May 2008
By
Dr Tracie O'Keefe DCH, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Psychotherapist &
Counsellor
Editorial Director of HypnosisAustralia Online.
The Hypnotherapists
Council of Australia (HCA) is working away at its initial setting up,
working at a group level towards registering itself as a corporation,
developing a code of ethics and securing its website. It hopes to be an
overview organisation that seeks to represent hypnotherapists in Australia,
with hypnotherapy organisations and schools as members. As yet not all
schools and hypnotherapist organisations have shown commitment to the
project and many are taking a watching and waiting approach. This of course
is all provisional as ratification of any official policies and guidelines
will need to be ratified by any participating bodies during the first
annual general meeting.
The attractiveness
of this project, however, remains to be seen. If its standards of training
are not set high enough then there will be many therapists who will not
touch it with a barge pole. Appropriately qualified professionals, who
spent years training, do not want to be associated with people calling
themselves hypnotherapists who have had little or no training or assessment,
even if they are older then the ark.
If the HCA
also does not place an embargo on the practice of or involvement with
stage hypnosis neither will many other professionals want to be involved
in any way. There are schools who teach stage hypnosis modules but there
comes a time if you define yourself a professional helping people with
health problems then you must abide by expected healthcare codes of conduct,
which includes do not harm and do not humiliate your client.
The anticipated
membership will be hypnosis associations and schools, with school not
having as much input because they are private enterprises although the
criteria for membership will be debated at a later stage and it is anticipated
at some stage that there will be national register of practitioners. Private
health Insurance companies and the government will not be rushing in to
recognise this organisation unless its members can demonstrate appropriate
levels of education and practice.
©HypnosisAustralia,
May 2008
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