Speech by Kim Lavely at the reception marking the formation of the CNHC
Chief Executive Kim Lavely spoke on 31 March 2008 to mark the formation of the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council.
Within the next few months, the CNHC will open its register. It will be a voluntary body, but with real teeth.
Minister, ladies and gentlemen, good evening. My name is Kim Lavely and I am the Chief Executive of The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health.
Well, they said it couldn’t be done…but here we are tonight, celebrating the birth of the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council, marking an historic milestone in healthcare regulation. I know I speak for everyone at the Foundation for Integrated Health when I say how delighted and proud we are that this day has arrived.
When I reported to HRH The Prince of Wales in January on the creation of this new body for the voluntary regulation of complementary therapists, he said 'When history is written, this will prove to be one of the crucial moments in the development of integrated healthcare.' I’m sure we all agree with his assessment.
The reason that this is such an important milestone is that, here in the UK, at least one person in five uses complementary therapies, and with the arrival of the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council, those people will now have the protection they deserve. People will be able to tell that practitioners registered with the CNHC are properly trained and qualified and have met robust standards. They’ll also know where to turn in the event that they have a complaint to make about their care. The practitioners themselves will be able to demonstrate their own professionalism by announcing their registration with this body, and other healthcare professionals will have confidence in those registered with the CNHC.
As many of you know, it’s been a long time coming: back in 2000, the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee recommended a framework for the regulation of complementary medicine, and since then the Foundation has been working with determination to deliver that, first with a grant from the King’s Fund and then with significant support from the Department of Health.
In September 2006, we announced the outcome of a consultation which set the course for the creation of a single federal regulator, rather than a number of separate bodies for each of the therapies. We saw this as a key moment in the process, because, with so many different therapies involved and with practitioners often practicing more than one therapy, it was important for the public to have a ‘one stop shop’. The Foundation established a working group in January 2007, made up of people from a dozen different therapy groups as well as lay and expert members – and it was at this point that many people said 'it can’t be done', not least because we set the group a very ambitious timetable.
But they delivered! Within the year, the Working Group concluded their work and the CNHC became a reality. I would like to pay tribute to all those who gave so generously of their time, expertise and energy to make this possible, and particularly to Professor Dame Joan Higgins, who took on the challenge of chairing the Federal Working Group and guided it to a successful conclusion.
I’d also like to say a very special thank you to the regulation team at the Department of Health, who had the foresight to recognise the importance of this work and to support the process with the resources needed to make it possible. The UK now leads the world in the area of complementary healthcare regulation. Thank you to all who contributed.
It is perhaps worth pausing here to acknowledge that there are also those who say that this shouldn’t be done, who contend that by regulating complementary therapists we are giving credibility to something with little or no evidence to support it. Let’s be in no doubt, building the evidence base is important, because people have the right to know what works and what doesn’t – but we won’t help the millions of people who already use complementary therapies if we leave them to fend for themselves. People have the right to be protected, to know that the practitioners they see meet appropriate standards. They can take that for granted with most other healthcare professionals, and soon, they will have that protection if they see a therapist registered with the CNHC.
Within the next few months, the CNHC will open its register. It will be a voluntary body, but with real teeth. It will be independent, both of the Foundation and of the professions it seeks to regulate, while still, of course, being informed by those professions. Many of the key features of the CNHC’s design are based on the principles set out in the Government’s 2007 White Paper, and if you want to scrutinise the details of the CNHC’s design structure, I would refer you to our report: A federal approch to complementary therapy regulation.
So after a five-year gestation period, we are now ready to hand over our progeny, placing it in the safe hands of the Federal Regulatory Board members who are now steering it through its rapid growth from a theoretical model to a viable professional regulatory body, ready to welcome its first registrants later this year.
We’ll be hearing more about the next steps for the CNHC in a moment, but first I’m delighted to welcome the Minister of State for Health Services, Ben Bradshaw.