Verifiable thresholds, then a peer's judgement
Neither all numbers nor all interview. The grid alone lets through anyone who knows how to rack up hours. The interview alone is neither reproducible nor enforceable against a third party. We hold to two successive barriers, which do not measure the same thing.
Membership rests on a simple idea: recognising a practitioner means verifying what can be counted and assessing what cannot. Taken on their own, these two operations miss their mark. Together, they correct one another. That is why nothing is admitted on the numbers alone, and nothing is admitted on the interview alone.
Barrier 1 · The thresholds
Numerical, public, verifiable against documents. They do not say a practitioner is good: they say the practitioner has done the work. They are gates, not judgements. Their purpose is to be enforceable, against a candidate who is turned away, against a buyer who asks what the affiliation is worth, against a regulator who asks what it rests on.
Barrier 2 · Peer assessment
A proof file to provide and, from the Junior level onwards, a peer interview. Here we examine what no number reveals: the way one accounts for one's practice, the clear-sightedness about one's limits, the way the boundary of care is held, the quality of reflection on a failure.
How to read what follows
These two barriers translate into applicable rules. The rest of this section sets them out in three stages, from the most general to the most specific, and each stage has its own page.
The first question a practitioner asks is that of their place. What level can they claim, and against which numerical thresholds? Here you will find the entry status, the three levels that follow it, the full grid of requirements, then the conditions specific to those who supervise, train or run a school. The levels and the threshold grid →
Next comes what sets this membership apart from the accreditations already in circulation: a foundation of recognition and referral required of all circles, and a volume of initial training tuned to the depth of each practice. This is the most normative part of the section, the one that sets out what a candidate must have worked on before even applying. The recognition block and training by circle →
There remain the paths that do not run through a school. Four exemption routes open membership to experienced practitioners without a recognised qualification, to holders of a cross-recognised accreditation, to those returning after a break, and to career changers. Without them, the grid would recognise only those a course has already validated, and would reproduce the very flaw it claims to correct. The four exemption routes →
An entry status, then three levels
Recognition is not a state acquired once and for all. It advances with practice, is read in a grid of thresholds that anyone can verify, and extends, for those who supervise or teach, into requirements of their own. Here is how the levels are laid out and what they demand.
A practitioner does not enter CARPEA at the same point whether just starting out or ten years into practice. We have therefore distinguished an entry status, reserved for the training period and the first steps, then three levels that mark the progress of a career. Each rung answers to the two barriers set out in the overview: thresholds to clear, then a proof file, and from the Junior level an interview. The grid that follows gathers these thresholds into a single table, so that they remain legible side by side.
The entry status and the three levels
Foundation is the entry status: for those still in training or at the very start of practice. Supervision and insurance from the first session onwards, but not yet any recognition of level, one remains here for the time it takes to reach the Junior level.
Beyond Foundation, the Junior, Practitioner and Senior levels reflect accumulating experience and a tightening commitment. The seniority required lengthens, the accompaniment hours and the number of people followed increase, the peer interview appears and then grows firmer. The table reads column by column: each level takes up and exceeds the requirements of the one before.
| Criterion | Foundation | Junior | Practitioner | Senior |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum seniority | In training | 2 years | 4 years | 6 years |
| Accompaniment hours | – | 50 h | 200 h | 500 h |
| People accompanied | – | 5 | 15 | 30 |
| Initial training | Ongoing | Certifying course begun | Certifying course completed | Completed + documented development |
| Recognition & referral block | Begun | ≥ 50 h | ≥ 50 h | ≥ 50 h + refresher |
| Supervision | From the 1st session | 1 h per 20 h of practice, min. quarterly | ≥ 8 h/year, of which 4 individual | ≥ 8 h/year, of which 4 individual |
| Continuing development | – | ≥ 10 h/year | ≥ 20 h/year, of which 3 h of ethics | ≥ 30 h/year, of which 3 h of ethics |
| Professional liability insurance | Mandatory if paid | Mandatory, from the 1st engagement | Mandatory, without interruption | Mandatory, without interruption |
| Proof file | To provide | Reviewed in interview | Reviewed in interview | Reviewed in interview |
| Peer interview | No | 1 h, panel of 2 | 1 h, panel of 2 | 1 h, panel of 3, one from outside the candidate's family of practice |
| Validity | Temporary, 3 years max | 3 years, not renewable beyond 6 | 3 years | 5 years |
Two rows of this table deserve to be spelled out, because they decide what is actually counted and what is genuinely examined.
What counts as an accompaniment hour
An hour of real relationship with a person or a group. Group accompaniment counts as one hour whatever the number of participants. What does not count: supervision received, preparation, administration, training delivered.
Paid or unpaid, without distinction. We deliberately set aside the criterion of paid hours used by other organisations: it would exclude voluntary mentoring and accompaniment in associations or institutions.
The proof documents to provide
We do not ask for a written report or narrated cases, but for evidence of practice: contracts or engagement letters, logs of accompaniment hours, proof of supervision, insurance up to date. It is these documents, not a narrative, that the interview tests.
The Senior panel includes a member from outside the candidate's family of practice: it is the best safeguard against the closed circle of a single school.
Supervisors & trainers, schools
Supervising a practice and teaching it are two close functions, which presuppose the same foundation: a Senior level and specific experience or training, with no imposed duration.
These functions do not simply extend a practitioner's own path: they bear on the practice of others. A supervisor weighs on accompaniments they do not conduct themselves; a school trains practitioners who will work under its name. The requirement therefore falls as much on the person who transmits as on the arrangement around them, and the two grids below answer to this double expectation.
Supervisors & trainers
- Senior level as a prerequisite (Practitioner admitted for training in the lower strata of the Framework)
- No imposed duration: significant experience and/or specific training in supervision, in leading peer practice-analysis groups, or in pedagogy
- Accompaniment practice maintained, one does not supervise or teach what one no longer practises
- Supervision of one's own practice maintained
- Panel of 3, one member from outside the candidate's family of practice
- Validity 5 years
The supervisor cannot be the trainer, the therapist, the business partner or the employer of the person supervised. A peer exchange group does not count as supervision.
Schools and bodies
- 1 year of standing
- Trainers all at Senior level in the CARPEA framework and supervised
- Correspondence with the Framework published
- Recognition and referral block taught
- Three cross-cutting dimensions taught explicitly
- Certification panel of 3 members including one from outside the school
- Ethics arrangement and complaints procedure
- Accreditation 5 years
Procedure: file, review of marketing materials, hearing of the directors, in-depth interview by two experts, two-thirds vote.
The competence of the boundary, and the volume by circle
Two training requirements carry the membership. The first is common to all and is not up for negotiation: to recognise what exceeds accompaniment and to refer on. The second varies with the depth of the practice. One says what everyone must have worked on, the other how much.
Before any accompaniment hours are counted or any proof file is assessed, membership verifies what a practitioner has learned. On this ground, CARPEA does not merely take up the sector's customs: it adds a requirement that most coaching frameworks ignore, and it tunes the rest to the circle in which the practice sits. The two sections that follow set out one and the other.
The "recognition and referral" block
Fifty hours minimum, required of all circles, non-waivable, even under cross-recognition with another organisation.
This is the piece that most clearly sets this membership apart from existing accreditations, and it is anything but incidental. Sooner or later, a practitioner meets a situation that exceeds their field: a distress that falls to care, a signal that must be read, a referral that must be handled. This block prepares for exactly that moment.
It covers: an approach to psychopathology geared towards recognition, spotting the signs that may point to a psychic disorder and call for specialist advice; distinguishing situational assessment, which is the accompanist's, from clinical diagnosis, which is not; knowing how to refer, and knowing how one refers; being familiar with the legal frameworks, protected titles, unlawful practice of medicine, abandonment of care.
Psychopathology to recognise, not to diagnose. It does not stand in for any diagnosis, which the accompanist does not make, but it is rich and fitting enough to recognise, when a psychic disorder is suspected, what should raise the alarm, to hold the boundary of care and to refer in time to the competent professional.
Why this block
Psychopathology is entirely absent from the frameworks of the three major coaching organisations compared. The main French psychotherapy federation requires a hundred hours of it, on the explicit grounds of being able to spot what exceeds the field and refer on.
A coach can therefore be accredited today without ever having worked on the question: how do I recognise a situation that is no longer mine to handle? Even though they will meet it.
Minimum initial training, by circle
The volume expected depends on the depth of the practice, not only on the level reached. These thresholds are set out; it will be for the founding collective to settle them.
Work through dialogue and work that engages the body, the emotions or the psyche do not draw on the same part of the person. It would therefore be misleading to ask the same training everywhere. The table below varies the minimum volume across the four circles of the scope, with the recognition foundation added each time to the volume specific to the method.
| Circle | Minimum initial training |
|---|---|
| Foundation, all circles | "Recognition & referral" block ≥ 50 h, non-waivable |
| Circle 1, coaching, mentoring | Certifying course ≥ 200 h |
| Circle 2, affect, body, altered states | ≥ 300 h in the method |
| Circle 3, relational psychotherapy | ≥ 300 h in the method, personal therapy and supervised practice, over ≥ 3 years |
| Circle 4, accompaniment of practitioners | Senior level attained, then specific experience and/or training in supervision, leading peer practice-analysis groups or pedagogy, see the supervisors & trainers grid |
The recognition and referral block is added to the volume specific to the method. These minimums are expressed in verifiable hours, not in qualifications, so as not to shut out practitioners trained outside a recognised course (see the exemption routes).
Recognising those who did not come through a school
A grid of thresholds, however fair, has a blind spot: it validates school-based paths first. Four exemption routes open membership to trajectories the grid would leave aside, without ever giving up the one requirement that is not up for negotiation.
The sector has solid practitioners who never followed the expected course: trained on the ground, coming from another profession, or returning after a break. A membership that could not welcome them would miss the very thing it claims to defend. The four routes described here correct this bias. They do not waive the thresholds as a favour: they offer other ways of demonstrating their substance, keeping the recognition and referral block as a fixed point.
Four exemption routes
Without them, the grid reproduces exactly the flaw it claims to correct: it recognises only those who came through a school.
Each answers to a specific situation. The first concerns experience gained without a qualification, the second accreditations already earned elsewhere, the last two paths interrupted or coming from a neighbouring field. All keep the same lock: the recognition foundation remains due, whichever door is taken.
A · Experienced practitioners without a recognised qualification
In-depth proof file, interview before a panel of three. Direct access possible to the Practitioner or Senior level depending on the path. The only non-waivable element: making up the recognition and referral block. This route is a political matter, not a technical exception: it is the one that gives the whole project its meaning.
B · Cross-recognition
A valid accreditation from an organisation that has concluded an agreement with CARPEA counts as satisfying the corresponding thresholds. The recognition and referral block remains required in all cases, that is what makes cross-recognition add something rather than merely register.
C · Return after a break
After more than three years without practice: supervised resumption of at least 20 hours before reactivation, and a refresher of the recognition and referral block.
D · Career change
A professional from a neighbouring field, teacher, social worker, care worker, manager, may put forward their prior accompaniment practice, up to half the hours required.