London-based Ayanay Psychological Accreditation (APA) marked its first year of offering world-class psychological accreditation on Saturday 4th July 2020 through an online event.

The inaugural event was attended by counsellors, therapists, and coaches from different countries, along with invited speakers.

As an international advisory group, APA is a phenomenal network of counsellors, therapists, and coaches – whose overarching aim is to create an organisation that its members can be proud to be a part of.

All APA members are professionally qualified individuals with extensive experience. The members, alongside its founders Dave Sleet and Siobhain Crosbie, help run the organisation ethically, morally, and in line with best practice.

APA’s collective aim is to create a directory of phenomenal professionals, combined with providing a membership beneficial in multiple ways to each individual member, and a directory that any client can be confident in their choice of therapist or coach.

Professor Windy Dryden was one of the speakers during the event. Professor Dryden highlighted the importance of networking within the therapeutic community in order to share and inform each other’s practices.

Professor Dryden is one of the leading practitioners and trainers in the UK in the cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) tradition of psychotherapy. He is best known for his work in Rational-Emotive Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (RECBT). He has been working in the field of counselling and psychotherapy since 1975 and was one of the first people in the UK to be trained in CBT.

Siobhain Crosbie, co-founder of APA, shares: ‘The list of the people we are grateful to is endless. So this is not a first or last. We are exceptionally grateful to all who attended and celebrated with us. From the bottom of our hearts, we are immensely grateful to all those that have shared our passion for change, a desire to create a new future.

‘A special thanks from myself to Dave Sleet. He works so very hard and truly does deserve recognition as I could not do this alone and we could not do this without our team. Togetherness creates anything.’

Other speakers included:

Dr Asa Don Brown, Psychologist (US)
Dan Scott, Accreditation Officer, Professional Standards Authority
Dennis Relojo-Howell, Founder of Psychreg
Geoff Newton, Psychotherapist (Brazil)
Glenda Roberts, Life Coach, JustTalk2019
Margaret Van Steenlandt, Life Coach, Polychromatic Life Design (France)
The event was also a fundraising activity for the APA Benevolent Fund. Also, during the course of the event, APA released several CPD videos, along with a series of In Conversation With videos.

The In Conversation With series featured Paul White, Glenda D Roberts, Caroline Zakyasreh Flynn, and Dennis Relojo-Howell.

Owing to its commitment to foster a responsive and inclusive community for therapists, coaches, and counsellors APA was the recipient of the Corporate LiveWire Prestige Awards 2019–20.