Up until 2024 to renew your PACFA registration each year you have been required to meet a minimum number of supervision and CPD hours annually, but there has been no requirement for a minimum number of practice hours.

The Recency of Practice Standard sets a minimum number of hours of practice that is required annually and describes what constitutes practice.

The Recency of Practice Standard is a requirement to meet the full membership standards of the National Alliance of Self Regulating Health Professions (NASRHP).

The purpose of the Recency of Practice Standard is to ensure that PACFA registrants maintain a sufficient level of engagement in their profession to practice safely and competently. In meeting this Standard, registrants maintain their professional expertise by keeping their skills and knowledge current.

The Recency of Practice requirements do not come into effect until the PACFA membership year starting in July 2025 and ending in June 2026. The first two years of implementing these new requirements will be a transition period involving some flexibility, with the requirements being fully operative for the 2027-2028 membership year.

Each year you will need to have completed 150 hours of practice, or 450 hours spread across the previous 3 years.

• 150 hours is equivalent to working full time for a month (37.5 hours X 4 weeks).

Yes, there is an important difference:

• Client contact hours
• are defined in the PACFA Client Contact Standard.
• They are direct and specific.
• The number you conducted needs to be entered into the PACFA Portal annually at renewal.
• Practice hours
• are defined in the Recency of Practice Standard.
• They are broad and inclusive.
• Each year at renewal, you will be asked yes or no if you practiced as a counsellor, psychotherapist, or indigenous healing practitioner for 150 hours in that year or 450 hours over the previous three years.

If you are in private practice, 1 hour of client contact as described in the Client Contact Standard is converted for the purposes of the Recency of Practice Standard to 2 hours of practice and includes session preparation, session noting, and any follow-up.

• 1 Client Contact Hour = 2 Practice Hours
• The 2 Practice Hours include session preparation, session noting, and any follow-up.
• Plus, add the supervision hours undertaken.

If you work for an organisation as a psychotherapist, counsellor, or indigenous healing practitioner, then your practice hours are the hours of employment as specified in your employment contract.

When you renew your membership in June 2026 you will be asked a simple question:

• From July 2025 to June 2026 did you practice as a counsellor, psychotherapist, or indigenous healing practitioner for 150 hours? Yes/No

If your answer is No, you might like to answer another question:

• From July 2023 to June 2026 did you practice as a counsellor, psychotherapist, or indigenous healing practitioner for 450 hours? Yes/No

You may be asked to record the actual number of practice hours for these questions.

If you are in private practice, 1 hour of client contact as described in the Client Contact Standard is converted for the purposes of the Recency of Practice Standard to 2 hours of practice and includes session preparation, session noting, and any follow-up.

• 1 Client Contact Hour = 2 Practice Hours
• The 2 Practice Hours include session preparation, session noting, and any follow-up.

If you see 2 clients weekly, each for one hour, over 48 weeks of the year, you will have accumulated 96 client contact hours which is equal to 192 practice hours plus your 10 hours of supervision that you are required to undertake each year totalling 202 practice hours – and this more than meets the Recency of Practice requirement of 150 hours. One client per week over 48 weeks would not, however, meet the practice requirements.

The types of roles that constitute practice include, but are not restricted to:

• Client work including individual, couple, and group
• Receiving and/or providing clinical supervision
• Management
• Teaching
• Research
• Consultancy work
• Policy development

It is important to note that acceptable roles must use skills and knowledge related to your PACFA registration and within its Scope of Practice.

A role is a formal contracted position either with an organisation, a company, or a university (or similar), and in private practice directly with a client, a supervisor, or a supervisee.

Volunteering with PACFA may only count towards practice hours if it involves roles that utilise professional skills and knowledge, such as:

• Contributing to policy development
• Participating in a research committee for the purposes of structured research

Any such activity needs to be directly related to your scope of practice to count towards practice hours.

Reading counselling and psychotherapy texts or journal articles when not read as part of a formally contracted research project falls under PACFA’s Category B CPD and does not constitute practice.

While it is valuable for professional development, it does not meet the criteria for practice hours.

Writing for PACJA can be considered practice if you are fulfilling the role of an editor.

The editorial role involves applying professional knowledge and skills to oversee the publication process, ensure content quality, and make critical decisions on manuscript selection.

This aligns with the definition of practice adopted by PACFA from NASRHP as it involves active professional engagement and impacts the delivery of services.

General writing without the editorial responsibilities does not meet these criteria and therefore does not qualify as practice.

While exploring various counselling and psychotherapy topics and educating the public is valuable, in accordance with the definitions set out in the NASRHP standards, it does not fall under the category of research nor indirect client work as defined for practice hours.

Blogging involves disseminating information but does not involve the structured, professional application of skills in a regulated setting that impacts service delivery.

Participating in discussions about research papers or texts is beneficial for professional development and falls under CPD Category B.

This activity does not however, constitute active practice as defined by the National Alliance of Self Regulating Health Professions(NASRHP) because it does not involve direct application of professional skills in a formally contracted research setting.

The following are some examples of research roles that align with the requirements of the National Alliance of Self Regulating Health Professions’ (NASRHP). Being research roles, they would be formally contracted as outlined in the answer to the previous question. These research roles include but are not limited to:

• Conducting clinical research: Designing and implementing clinical trials or studies, collecting and analysing data related to client outcomes, treatment efficacy, or health interventions.
• Academic research: Writing and publishing peer-reviewed articles, review papers, or book chapters in relevant health fields, and presenting research findings at conferences or professional meetings.
• Applied research: Developing new treatment protocols or healthcare interventions based on evidence-based practice and evaluating the effectiveness of existing programs or services through systematic investigation.
• Health services research: Studying healthcare delivery models to improve efficiency, accessibility, and quality of care, and analysing policy impacts on healthcare practices and patient outcomes.
• Translational research: Bridging the gap between research findings and clinical application, implementing research findings into practice to enhance patient care.
• Grant writing and management: Writing grant proposals to secure funding for research projects and managing and overseeing the progress of funded research initiatives.
• Collaborative research projects: Participating in multidisciplinary or multi-institutional research collaborations, contributing expertise to joint research projects that impact the profession.
• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses: Conducting comprehensive reviews of existing literature to summarise evidence on specific topics and performing meta-analyses to statistically combine results from multiple studies.
• Program evaluation: Assessing the effectiveness of health programs or interventions through systematic research methodologies, using qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate program outcomes and processes.
• Policy research: Investigating the impact of health policies on clinical practice and patient care, providing evidence-based recommendations for policy development and implementation.

A scope of practice is the area of the profession in which a registrant has the knowledge, skills, and experience to practise competently, safely, and lawfully, in a way that meets standards and does not pose any danger to the public or to themselves.

The PACFA College of Counselling has a written Scope of Practice, and the Colleges of Psychotherapy and Indigenous Healing Practitioners are in the process of writing their documents.

The Scope of Practice of the College of Counselling recognises that a counsellor’s scope of practice will change over time and that the practice of experienced counsellors often becomes more focused and specialised than that of newly qualified counsellors. This might be because of specialisation in a certain area or with a particular client group, or movement into roles in management, education, or research. (Adapted from the Health and Care Professions Council UK, 2014).

The PACFA Code of Ethics requires all registrants to recognise and work within the limits of their competence and scope of practice.