While counselling and psychotherapy have no specific frameworks, hypnotherapy usually falls under the ‘complementary healthcare’ banner. However, the fact is just about anyone can claim to offer hypnotherapy without having any qualifications or accreditation. This could pose a danger to the public in terms of knowledge and understanding of what hypnotherapy is, and where it is advised that it should not be used. It is also likely that anyone unqualified or accredited yet purporting to be a hypnotherapist will not carry any professional indemnity insurance. CNHC was set up by the government to protect the public by providing a UK register of complementary health practitioners in various professions. It is also the holder of an Accredited Register by the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care, an independent body, accountable to the UK Parliament. Protection of the public is CNHC’s sole purpose. The NACHP is fully compliant with – and supports – CNHC’s hypnotherapy register. This register acknowledges that NACHP clinical psychotherapists (the NACHP qualification designation that includes hypnotherapy) has met the standards that practitioners need to get onto – and then stay on – CNHC’s hypnotherapy register. The government has recommended that when people are looking for a health practitioner who is not regulated by law, they only consult a practitioner on an accredited register such as CNHC’s. In order to be eligible to be admitted to the CNHC Register, a hypnotherapist must:

• Have undertaken a programme of education and training which meets, as a minimum, the National Occupational Standards and the core curriculum for hypnotherapy. Courses delivered entirely by distance learning do not meet CNHC or NACHP requirements.

or

• Have achieved competency to the level of the National Occupational Standards for hypnotherapy by means of relevant experience of at least three years and relevant training and been assessed as having met those standards.

NACHP. A CNHC Verifying Organisation

NACHP is an accrediting body and checks the details of practitioners’ training, insurance and experience. It then confirms that the practioner is eligible for CNHC registration. As a CNHC Verifying Organisation, NACHP has met CNHC’s Quality Assurance criteria in respect of this function. However, other verifying registers have been developed since the CNHC began its own register, and therefore the NACHP feels that NACHP Members must be free to determine their preferred register. We will, however, continue to support CNHC and offer registration with them through our Accredited organisation. We believe it is vitally important to be registered on an appropriate verifying organisation register. By doing this the general public can be confident that the hypnotherapists we accredit are professionally trained and fully insured to practise. CNHC registered practitioners are entitled to display the CNHC Quality Mark on their websites and other publications.  You can find out more about CNHC by visiting their website: https://www.cnhc.org.uk