Dear Colleague
On 3rd September, 2007, The Society of Homeopaths attended a special meeting of The Council of Organisations Registering Homeopaths (CORH) Council.
The agenda for this meeting stated:
“At a meeting held on 25 July 2007, at which all but one of the professional associations registering homeopaths was represented, it was proposed that the Council of Organisations Registering Homeopaths be dissolved.
This Special General Meeting of the Council is to agree whether this formal dissolution of the Council should be taken forward. A vote will be taken.
Once the vote has been taken, and if it is in favour of dissolving the Council, there are a number of steps that need to be taken. These are set out below:
The outstanding debts of the Council need to be discharged. A statement setting out the current financial position, as at 13 August 2007, of the Council is attached. The current creditors fall into two broad groups:
• Those professional associations who acted in good faith on the budget agreements relating to 2007, and voted and agreed by all members of the Council at its meeting in November 2006, and who have paid in full or in part their agreed allocation of income to the Council
• Individuals and service suppliers who have not been recompensed for their services to the Council, either in full or in part.
There are two professional associations that have not yet paid the amounts agreed which are needed to close the Council and discharge its debts. They are:
• The Alliance of Registered Homeopaths
• The Complementary Therapists Association (which also has debts from previous years relating to the number of practitioners on its website being greater in number to the amount per capita paid to the CORH).”
Regrettably, the meeting turned away from the agenda to focus on proposals not only to overturn the budget and business plan agreed in November 2006 but to retrospectively change payments which 8 associations had already made to settle any outstanding debts to CORH.
The meeting also focussed on the sum of £44,000, written in to the CORH Business Plan. This sum represents the 2007 net cost of The Society’s course recognition process, which CORH Council, following a proposal from its Accreditation Working Group, had unanimously agreed in November 2006 as a reduction to The Society’s fees. In return, CORH asked The Society to continue to run its course recognition processes, acknowledging that there was need for secure transition between The Society’s course recognition and CORH’s accreditation process. CORH Accreditation Working Group had reported that it would be unrealistic for CORH’s accreditation group to manage accreditation for 20 – 30 courses immediately and that the new process needed piloting as a first stage. It would, therefore, be far cheaper and more effective to ask The Society to continue to run its own processes for the benefit of the whole profession until the new process was fully operational.
In January 2007, CORH’s Implementation Group requested that The Society draw up a service level agreement to formalise these arrangements, which The Society subsequently worked on with CORH’s Interim Chief Executive, Trish Brady.
During this time, The Society continued to act in good faith by providing quality assurance via its Education department’s course recognition process to ensure a secure transition between The Society’s recognition process and the accreditation process devised by CORH.
The Society also finalised a fee schedule for payments to CORH, with effect from January 2007.
However, by the end of April 2007, the ARH and the HMA had not paid any fees at all to CORH, which placed it under an impossible financial pressure. The Society then attended three further meetings, including an externally mediated meeting, in an attempt to find a way forward to achieve a single register and regulatory body for homeopaths.
The meeting on the 3rd September once again raised these differing viewpoints, with a final agreement being reached that the differences were irreconcilable.
The Society therefore left the meeting having fulfilled all of its obligations to CORH: ie it had agreed to the dissolution of CORH and had paid in full (3rd July) the proportion of the final debt, as invoiced by the CORH Executive.
Nevertheless, The Society remains committed to an independent register and regulatory body for homeopathy in the UK, with standards commensurate with our own. This will not now be formed by CORH. However, The Society will continue to work towards its establishment,
Lastly, The Society wishes to thank all of its members for their support during this process and in particular, their ongoing commitment to The Society - the only register that currently operates as a register and full regulatory body in the UK.
10th September 2007
MEETING HELD ON 25 JULY 2007
At a meeting of the organisations and their appointed representatives listed below held on Wednesday 25 July 2007, the following three statements were agreed by BRCP, ANM and The Society of Homeopaths for publication:
• The meeting regretted that the ARH, representing some 600 practitioner members, was not present at the meeting.
• It was agreed by all the organisations represented at the meeting that they are committed to a Single Register and Regulatory Body, which includes a responsibility for Accreditation. The importance of organising effective Transitional Arrangements was also recognised.
• It was agreed by all organisations represented at the meeting that they are committed to open the Single Register and Regulatory Body for Applications and Registration in 2008.
Following further discussions, the organisations present at the meeting on 25 July 2007 decided, by a majority, to propose that a meeting of CORH Council be held on Monday 3 September 2007 at 11.00, where the formal dissolution of CORH would be proposed.
Also, a majority of organisations present at the meeting on 25 July 2007 proposed that a meeting be held after the CORH Council meeting, on the same day, of those organisations committed to a single register and regulatory body, as described in the above joint statements, providing that any of those organisations who wished to be present at that meeting had paid in full their debts, if any, to CORH by 31 August 2007.
The Mediator, Linda Laurence, urged the organisations present to draw a line under past differences, which had been openly explored at the meeting held on 25 July 2007.
Organisations and their appointed representatives present at the meeting
Chris Adamson, NAHG; Zofia Dymitr, SoH; Penny Horsburgh, BRCP; Tessa Jordan, ANM plus briefs from FelHom and SAPH; Sue Josling, HCPF; Diana Shirley, ISHom(UK); Maggie Moss, IRCH; Paula Ross, SoH; Andrée Sanford, BRCP and Hans G Schrauder, CThA and HMA.
Apologies were noted from FelHom and SAPH, both of whom were represented by the ANM representative.
