A person here reads the documents before a listing ever appears. Not an algorithm, and not the therapist ticking a box to say they are qualified. This is the whole method, including the parts it cannot tell you.
It says what was checked, and only what was checked. There is no bare “verified” anywhere on this site, because a word like that means whatever the reader hopes it means.
What is actually done
Not everyone is asked for all five. What is required depends on what somebody does, which is the point of the next section. Where a document has an expiry date, we record the date as well as the document.
Your current membership certificate from BACP, UKCP, NCPS, HCPC or your own body, showing your name and membership number.
We look the membership number up on that body’s own public register, and check the name on the register is the name on the certificate. A certificate on its own proves somebody printed a certificate. The register is the thing that can remove them.
Your current certificate of insurance. The schedule page is enough, and we do not need the policy wording.
We read the cover and the expiry date, and record the date so the software can watch it. Insurance is the part that matters if something goes wrong, and it is also the check most likely to lapse quietly, which is why it is monitored rather than filed.
A short signed note from your supervisor confirming you are in regular supervision, or your supervision contract.
We confirm the arrangement exists and is current. Supervision is where a therapist takes their work to be questioned by somebody else, and it is a condition of registration for a reason. We do not see what is discussed in it, and we would not ask.
Passport or driving licence. We check the name matches your registration and then we do not look at it again.
One comparison, once. It is the check that stops somebody else’s registration being used, which is the failure mode the other four cannot catch on their own. It has no expiry date and it is never opened again after acceptance.
A supervision qualification if you want to be listed as a supervisor. Evidence of course accreditation if you are a training provider.
We check it separately from everything else. Supervising is a distinct competence from counselling, so listing somebody as a supervisor on the strength of their counselling accreditation alone would be a claim we could not support.
There is not one badge
These are the five badges the software prints, word for word. A single badge across regulated and unregulated work would quietly lend the credibility of one to the other, which is the most useful thing a directory can do for itself and the least useful thing it can do for you.
This is not a regulated profession in the UK, so there is no register to check. Anybody may use the title tomorrow morning with no training whatsoever. Every word of that appears on the profile itself, not only here.
An organisation rather than a person, so there is no individual register. The meaningful check is that the body accrediting the courses is named and real.
The part most sites leave out
Everything above is a check on paper. Paper has limits, and a directory that does not name them is asking you to read more into a badge than it can carry.
Registration is a floor, not a ranking. It means somebody met a training standard and answers to a body that can remove them. It does not mean they are better than the therapist below them on the page, and nothing on this site ranks anybody by skill, because we have no honest way to.
Fit is not a document. The evidence on what makes therapy work keeps pointing at the relationship rather than the method, and you are the only person who can judge that. It is the reason most therapists offer a first conversation, and the reason we say to talk to more than one.
We are not there. We do not sit in on sessions, we do not audit notes, and we do not see outcomes. A verified listing tells you who somebody is and what they are accountable to. It cannot tell you how a Tuesday afternoon went.
Checked people can still get things wrong. That is what the register, the insurance and the supervision are for: not to promise it will not happen, but to make sure there is somebody to tell and something behind it if it does.
If any of that changes what you thought the badge meant, it has done its job. The full picture of what this site is and is not is on the about page.
For anyone thinking of applying
This is the question every therapist asks, and it is worth a clear answer for the person reading a profile too. A directory holding passport scans badly is a worse problem than a directory that never checked anything.
A verification document is personal data under UK GDPR, and it is treated as evidence rather than as content. It exists so a person here can read it once and decide, and for no other reason.
They are stored privately, outside the pool of images and files the site uses. They do not appear in the library, in search, or in the site’s own data feeds.
Thirty-two random characters, so a file’s address cannot be guessed from a name, a date or a member number.
Nothing you send is ever displayed publicly. The profile carries the badge, which is a sentence about what was checked, not the evidence itself.
They are reachable only through the screen built for reading them, only by somebody allowed to, and every opening is recorded.
A document is handed over by the site itself, with instructions to the browser not to run anything inside the file. There is no permanent link to pass on or leak.
PDF, JPEG, PNG or WebP. A photograph of a certificate taken on a phone is fine, and is what most people send.
And then again
Insurance lapses. Registrations come up for renewal in the middle of a busy month and get forgotten. Most directories check at the door and never again, so a badge on an old listing can mean nothing at all. The software watches the dates instead.
Every document with an expiry date is monitored. Before it passes, the therapist is written to four times, and each message is sent once and never repeated:
Send the new certificate and the reminders stop. A renewal that arrives before the old one runs out is read while the current badge stays in place, so nothing changes on the profile at all.
The badge comes off the listing. The listing itself stays up, with the parts of it that are still true, and the badge returns when a new certificate has been accepted by a person here.
Nothing is restored automatically. A document arriving does not put the badge back; somebody has to read it and decide. That is deliberate, and it is the difference between a check and a filing system.
If any of this is wrong
If you think a listing here is inaccurate, or that somebody should not be on this site, tell us. We would rather look and find nothing than not look.
The profile and what looks wrong is enough to start. You do not need evidence, and you do not need to explain why you were looking. How to raise it.
The same way as the first time, against the register rather than against the certificate we already hold. If a check no longer passes, the badge comes off while we look.
For anything about conduct or care, the professional body that registered them can investigate and can remove them. We can take a listing down; only they can do that.
Search by what is on your mind and where you are. Every listing you see has been through the five checks above, and every badge says which of them applied.
Finding a therapist takes days or weeks. All of these are free, open now, and none of them will think you are wasting their time.