Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ

We welcome blogs offering new perspectives on current thinking, information about practical or professional issues, shared experiences, insight into current therapeutic topics and examples of best practice that all help to further the understanding of therapy and counselling. 

The following guidelines apply to online blogs on the Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ website. If you're writing for Therapy Today and our divisional journals, please see their author guidelines. If you're writing for Counselling and Psychotherapy Research (CPR), please see the on the Wiley website.

If you’re interested in submitting your blog, please read the following author guidelines for all blogs for the Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ website. Please contact us at communications@bacp.co.uk if you have any queries about your blog and to send us your submissions.

Style and content

Word count and photograph

Blogs should be around 300-500 words and include a short biography of approximately 50 words and a photograph of the author. Please provide high resolution photographs with plenty of space around your face so we can crop them to portrait and landscape formats.

Have a clear idea of the concepts and topic you want to talk about. Members have blogged about topics raised during awareness weeks, e.g., Men’s Health Week, subjects that have affected them in their practice or that affect the counselling and psychotherapy sector.

Think about your audience - you need to capture their interest and be relevant to a range of practitioners. Read other blogs from the Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ website to get a feel for the tone and style. 

When you write:

• speak in your own voice about what you know in a narrative style, not in the style of an academic essay
• be truthful - don't exaggerate or over-state your case
• be plain - write in a way that readers will easily understand, using clear and non-technical language
• be concise - don't over-write or over-argue your case
• support your arguments with personal experience or research

Case studies

We don’t accept blogs which include case studies of clients due to data protection, client privacy and issues with ensuring permission to publish.

Figures

Please use tables, graphs and figures only if they’re essential to illustrate what you’re saying. You’re responsible for obtaining permission to use any visual material from a third party. See guidelines on copyright below.

References

We don’t use academic style references on our blog pages. If you’d like to refer readers to pieces of research from other authors and documents, we can acknowledge them at the end of the blog text. Number the references in your text in the order in which they appear, using superscript, then list them in numerical order at the end of the blog. We also add in-page links if you’re pointing across to another website or piece of information that has a web link. 

Author details

Please include a short biography of up to 50 words including; your current job title, relevant qualifications and experience or research interests. This will be published with your blog.

Please let us know if you’d like your website address published. We won’t publish this unless you ask us to do so. We don’t publish email addresses.

Submission requirements

Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ reserves the right not to publish a blog submission. We’ll review blog submissions against our brand guidelines and our ethos that counselling changes lives before accepting a submission. We don’t pay fees for blog content, commission freelance writers to write for us or publish blogs that are for commercial or personal gain. 

For example, we wouldn’t publish a blog that just promotes a book or product you're selling. However, if you want to talk about the themes from your book or what inspired you write it or develop your product, we may add a link at the end. We don't add a link to a third party survey on our blog pages. We also reserve the right to remove a blog web page already online if needed. 

We publish blogs by Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ members and Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ staff. If you'd like your blog to be available to members only, we'll put the blog page behind our member login. 

We also accept blog submissions from clients that give useful insights about therapy and counselling to our Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ members. Please contact us first as we’ll ask you to complete our blogs consent form.

Please send your blog as a Word document by email to us. We can only accept blogs in electronic format.

Please include your name and email address. You must also confirm that the article is all your own work and has not been submitted or published elsewhere. We’ll accept a blog that has only been published on your personal website but cannot accept blogs published elsewhere due to copyright. We'll accept one blog submission per month from the same person. 

If the blog is co-authored, please confirm that everyone who has made a significant contribution has agreed to be named as co-author and consents to publication.

If you've included information or discussion about any member or members of your family, please confirm that what you've included is made in good faith and is true and accurate to the best of your knowledge; that you’ve considered any potential impact on them and on other family members if they read the article; and that, having done so, you wish to go ahead with publishing. If you've written about any family member or members who are a minor (under the age of 18) at the time of publication, please provide written parental or guardian consent confirming they’ve read the article and consent to publication. Confirmation of written or verbal consent to publication by a family member or members may, additionally, be requested.

Specialist blogs go through extra levels of sign off and depending on the content could be reviewed by colleagues in professional standards, ethics, EDI and our external contacts on the Therapy Today editorial board, please see appendix A.

If your blog is accepted, we may make edits for clarity or web accessibility. We’ll always send you an electronic web link to check and approve the post before it goes fully live.

Copyright

If you want to include any written or visual material from a third party, such as extracts, pictures or diagrams, you must provide evidence that you have permission to use it.

Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ retains the copyright for all web pages unless otherwise agreed with the Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ web team

Plagiarism

If we receive a written complaint of plagiarism, we’ll raise the complaint with the author or authors.

If the author agrees that they’ve not acknowledged the original source, we’ll publish a clarification on the web page, or in some circumstances remove the web page, as soon as possible.

If the author disagrees, but we’re satisfied that the work has been published elsewhere, is in the public domain and the complainant can fully prove it’s their work, we’ll remove the web page as soon as possible. If the complainant can't provide this evidence, we’ll take no further action. The final decision will rest with Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ.

Social media 

Blogs accepted for publication on our website may also be published across all of Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ’s communication channels including social media. This means that other members may see and comment on your views.

Our member policy for social media provides information and support about situations that may arise on social media and what to do if you encounter any of these.

Our social media community guidelines explain how we, ask members to act when they’re interacting with Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ’s social channels and commenting on blogs. The guidelines also describe how we’ll act if comments fall short of these expectations.

Online posting by authors after publication

If you’d like to publish your blog on your own website, please request permission by contacting us. If the blog is publicly available on our website, we’ll ask you to post a link and include a reference that it’s been posted on Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ’s website.

Your data

Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ will keep any personal data you provide, such as emails, only for as long as necessary for our legitimate business purposes – that is for as long as we may justifiably need to contact you about your contribution to a blog or where we have a legal or regulatory obligation. We currently operate a retention period of five years for email correspondence relating to blogs, after which it will be permanently deleted. Blogs on our website will be reviewed after three years. If you’d like your blog to be removed at any time, please contact us.

Please see our privacy notice.

If you have any concerns about your data, you can contact the

Thanks very much for your interest in sending a blog to Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ.

Appendix A 

Blog review process and specialisms

1. General blogs

• Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ Communications team
• Counsellor’s perspective
• Public perspective
• Member services perspective

2. Specialist blogs

Related to topics such as neurodiversity, LGBTQIA+, disability and EDI.

• All general blog reviewers (see point 1)
• Professional conduct perspective
• Ethics perspective
• Therapy Today editorial board specialist perspective (in a voluntary capacity and if there’s a specific need)
• Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¾«×¼×ÊÁÏ EDI team perspective