Hello there, I hope you get to read this!

Can you enlighten us as to just how many claims you get from therapists in the UK, about clients asking for damages for malpractice? I would be really interested to know, as I'm sure there are very few!

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Hi Helen,

That is a very good question!

Realistically we do not see massive numbers of claims against therapists for malpractice, however in other areas such as counselling, psychology, massage etc this is certainly not the case as there are many!

You tend to find that any therapy dealing with 'hands on' or where the individual is vulnerable can see a lot of claims, many coming from an allegation of improper conduct or breach of confidentiality.

The vast majority of our claims come from areas such as copyright breaches and injury to the client (public liability). Many people simply do not realise that by copying text or an image from the internet it is a breach of copyright if you have not obtained permission to do so, so we strongly suggest that you think about who owns the rights to that image or information before deciding to use it!

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Thank you for your reply, TPR. So you don't have folks who assert that (and feel they can prove) a therapist has in fact made them 'worse' instead of better?

I understand breaches of copyright. I once found a site that had copied huge lumps of text from mine - and I knew the owner of the site! However, I merely had to contact her & threaten 'further action' if she didn't take it down, and that was sufficient. I knew it was copied as I carefully wrote all the text for my site myself - and a long time it took me, too! But I'm surprised people make claims without speaking to the plagiarist first - it usually does the trick.

What sort of claims are made against counsellors? That they have given the wrong advice??

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Hi Helen,

We do actually have people who try to claim that a treatment has made them worse, however with a lot of therapies (especially energy healing) this is very hard to prove as it is still to be recognised as 'actually being there'. Therefore this will always be very hard to prove!

On the other hand, when you are involved in phsyical contact with a client (such as massage) there is a much higher chance that injury can occur, so we do see claims coming from these areas, as do we see increasing numbers of claims from Homeopathy, Nutritional therapy etc where someone is advising on the ingestion of a product.

With counselling, a lot of claims will come from allegations of inappropriate contact, breach of confidentiality and very often if a client feels mentally worse than when they started they will make a claim against a counsellor for errors or omissions in their work, or negligence - This can stem from a counsellor not feeling able to help and referring a client onto someone more specialised, as this can make the client feel as though they are not cared about by the therapist, as well as a whole host of other feelings. - Ultimately a qualified counsellor is seen as an expert or professional in their field, and many clients will just expect that they can be helped to get over whatever obstacles they have come aross, and sadly this is not always the case. When a client feels as though they have been let down by a counsellor (or any other therapist for that matter) they will sometimes feel hurt and their natural reaction is to attack - often in the form of a claim against them.

Although a high number of claims never go past the initial notification of the claim, the legal costs involved in putting together a response, gathering background info on the claim etc can often run into thousands of pounds, and that is well before anything ever goes to court!

Last edited: 27-02-2008 01:48:28 PM

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Thank you for taking time to answer that, TPR, very interesting!

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yes very thought provoking -and revealing too. I was surprised to hear about claims arising from referring on to others - is that after treatment has commenced not just after an initial consultation...surely?

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Hi Jayne,

The claims as you mention do not arise when it is a straight forward referral after consultation, it comes after a certain amount of treatment has already taken place - This is often due the client feeling a bond or connection between themselves and the therapist/counsellor.
When that person decides they cannot help and a referral is made, the client can sometimes feel hurt or betrayed, especially if they have told the therapist personal or confidential information about themselves - As a result of this, it is at this time that claims are sometimes made - Obviously this is very rare, however it does and has happened in the past.
While there is normally no basis for the complaint, it still has to be investigated (by the professional body the therapist is related to if the complaint is made to the association) or often solicitors still need to be instructed to begin putting together a case in the event that the claim is taken further.

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