I’m
going to have a little rant…
Last
night my piss boiled as I wrote
up some CPD. I'd had a message from my professional regulator saying they wanted
to put their fees up, and were staging a consultation on the matter.
I
expect that most people are unaware of the HCPC…
The
Health and Care Professions Council is a statutory regulator of over two hundred
and eighty thousand professionals from fifteen health and care professions
throughout the United Kingdom. Dieticians and paramedics, chiropodists and
radiographers... and me.
Its
main purpose is to protect the public which it does this by setting and
maintaining standards of proficiency and conduct for the professions it
regulates. Among all sorts of other things it organises education and training
programmes which health and care professionals must complete before they can be
set loose on the public, it maintains a
register of health and care providers who meet their professional requirements
and standards of practice. And they hold tribunals when these professional
standards aren’t met.
You
can read
more on Wikipedia, but basically it is a vital body instrumental in
maintaining the standards of healthcare in the UK.
But…
They get no funding whatsoever from the UK government. That’s not “not much”,
that’s “none at all”. All that it does (and it does a lot) is
funded from my payments and the payments of all the other registrants. The HCPC
claims that being a financially independent institution, is crucial for
maintaining fair standards for the professions they regulate. I can’t say I
agree with this; especially as this costs me nearly a hundred quid a year in
the payments I have to make to the HCPC.
Who
else pays to be able to work? Do you? And now they want to put it up by another
twenty quid a year
I
don’t deny the HCPC needs the funding. But is funding the vital work the HCPC
does in this way in any way defensible? Surely it should be funded from the
public purse in the same way the NHS is funded?
Look
at schools - do teachers pay for the Teaching
Regulation Agency? No they do not. Neither do prison officers pay for HM
Inspectorate of Prisons.
Perhaps
I might start a national campaign to get my professional body properly funded…
Or perhaps I will just content myself by having this rant and just pay the
extra twenty quid. Whichever I do, I still have either to pay up or find myself
a new job.
Going
to lie down now…
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