Regulatory Body or Professional Association — What's the Difference?
By Jaime G. Miralles — BABCP Accredited CBT Therapist & CBT Accredited Clinical Supervisor and Meta Supervisor
TL;DR Professional bodies and associations like the BABCP, BACP, UKCP and NCPS have memberships and accreditation, but you can belong without being accredited. Training providers like the Beck Institute are different again — they deliver training and research, but don’t accredit external universities.
Key takeaways
- You can be part of an association like the BABCP without being accredited.
- Different bodies have different requirements for you to become accredited.
- Training providers, like the Beck Institute, are a separate category from accrediting associations.
- Understanding which category an organisation falls into helps you know what its logo or membership actually signals.
Why this distinction trips people up
This comes up a lot, especially with people I supervise who trained or practise overseas. We need to be thinking about the difference between a regulatory body and an association — the BABCP, BACP, NCPS, UKCP, the Irish Association, and so on. They’re professional bodies and associations. They have memberships, and they have accreditation. You can be part of them without being accredited.
Something like the Beck Institute is different again — they’re a training and research provider. They produce clinical education, but they’re a direct provider of training, and they don’t accredit external universities. In other words, completing training there is a different kind of credential to holding accreditation with a body like the BABCP.
When a body like the BABCP or the BACP has already accredited a course, it’s easy to get accredited yourself through it, because the course has already been checked against the body’s minimum training standards. That’s a meaningfully different position to training with a provider that isn’t itself an accrediting body.
It’s worth checking, for any organisation you’re training with or considering, whether it’s an accrediting association, a regulatory body, or a training provider. Each of them varies in training levels, whether they’re level four, level seven, or something else, and how many hours or components they require. None of this makes one better or worse than another — it’s just genuinely different, and worth understanding clearly before you invest time and money.
Can I be a member of the BABCP without being accredited?
Yes — membership and accreditation are separate. You can belong to the association without holding accreditation.
Is the Beck Institute the same as an accrediting body like the BABCP?
No. The Beck Institute is a direct training and research provider — it doesn’t accredit external universities the way an accrediting association does.
Why does it matter whether an organisation is a regulatory body or a training provider?
Because it affects what the credential actually signals — accreditation from a recognised body is different from having completed training with a provider.
If you’re trying to work out where a particular course or organisation actually sits, I’m happy to help you make sense of it in supervision. Find out more about my BABCP clinical supervision here.
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