Get your course accredited

The Association for Family and Systemic Psychotherapy (AFSP) accredits over 100 systemic psychotherapy courses in the UK, ensuring they meet the highest professional standards.

For prospective family psychotherapists and systemic practitioners, accredited courses guarantee a standard of training accepted for AFSP membership and registration to the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP).

Employers see AFSP accreditation as the hallmark of high-quality, professional training.

How do we assess courses?

Our course accreditation and development (CRED) committee accredits family therapy and systemic practice and psychotherapy training on behalf of AFSP.

It is made up of AFSP members with experience of developing and delivering family therapy training. They make sure accredited training is of the highest standard.

We use the Blue Book 4th edition (PDF, 235KB) as a framework to assess foundation, intermediate and qualifying level training.

We use the Red Book 3rd edition (PDF, 219KB) as a framework to assess supervision level training.

Courses need to run 1 cohort of trainees before applying for accreditation. If the course is then accredited, trainees from the first year will be considered to have completed an accredited course.

What’s the accreditation process?

1. If you are setting up a systemic psychotherapy course or changing one to meet accreditation requirements, use the Blue Book (PDF, 235KB) or Red Book (PDF, 219KB) to guide you.
2. You can contact AFSP for guidance when you’re setting up your course. It costs £500 to apply for accreditation and this includes an hour of support.
3. Fill in the relevant accreditation application form and email it to our accreditations administrative officer at hello@theafsp.org. See the application forms below which include satellite courses. These are courses that are run in the same way as the main accredited course but usually take place at a different site.

• Application form for course accreditation (Word, 123KB)
• Satellite course application form (Word, 83KB)

4. Once you have submitted your application, you’ll need to present the course to our CRED committee. They will usually visit training providers to make a decision about whether your course receives AFSP accreditation.

What’s the reaccreditation process?

AFSP accredits courses for different periods of time, depending on what level they are. We mostly accredit courses for 5 years at a time. The first reaccreditation after this time tends to involve answering questions and sending us relevant documents. The second reaccreditation, after a further 5 years, will involve a site visit by someone from AFSP.

We also review courses every January. This involves asking you to share up to date information, like how many students have enrolled and dropped out, new staff members and changes in the course structure.

Below are our reaccreditation forms:

• For reaccreditation, we ask you to fill out the application form for course accreditation (PDF, 123KB) again
• Form for annual course reviews in January (Word, 149MB)