Untapped Resources – Accredited Registers Collaborative

A report jointly published by the Professional Standards Authority and the Royal Society for Public Health revealed the extent to which practitioners on Accredited Registers – an 80,000 strong workforce including counsellors, acupuncturists, and sports therapists – are able to contribute to addressing the growing public health challenges in the UK.

Untapped Resources: Accredited Registers in the Wider Workforce, which was based on a survey of more than 4,500 practitioners in the Accredited Registers workforce, found both a willingness and ability to promote the public’s health through healthy lifestyle conversations and effective signposting. However, despite the vast majority of the workforce (89%) considering their job role to include “promoting the public’s health”, three quarters of them (74%) feel under-utilised in doing so.

The Accredited Registers’ Collaborative uniquely brings together all the registers accredited by the Professional Standards Authority, working together where possible in furtherance of our common commitment to public protection. We consider that registrants of the Accredited Registers have a valuable contribution to make to public health. They can and do take part in programmes of work such as social prescribing, Making Every Contact Count (MECC) and, in Scotland, Health Promoting Health Service (HPHS).

The Collaborative fully intends to develop tools that will help registrants to get more involved in public health practice where this is what they want to do. We have developed the first two tools, briefings on MECC and social prescribing, for registrants’ use. As a Collaborative, we will also approach other health organisations with a view to persuading them to involve the registrants of Accredited Registers in their public health and prevention work.