Depending upon your earnings, you may be required to make a payment for your National Insurance Contributions.

If you are self employed you pay two types of NIC - one is a weekly stamp (Class 2) and the other is based on the level of your profits (Class 4). You can also pay voluntary NIC (Class 3).

So your client has cancelled the day before her appointment; you've already arranged your day around that one booking - will you lose out? This may depend upon whether you have agreed a clear pricing structure.  Making things transparent from the outset can help to avoid uncomfortable situations when cancellations, for example, occur.

“What guff – she clearly has a narcissistic personality disorder!”  This outcry came recently from a renounced Therapist friend whilst we sat watching a well known criminal investigation programme.  'I thought you were done with Therapy' I asked.  “I am, but try telling that to the human psyche instruction booklet imprinted in my brain'.

As an employee, all the 'tax stuff' is dealt with by your employer - not so, for the self-employed individual - and this is what puts many people off in the first instance.  However, the Inland Revenue have made their best efforts to make it all quite easy for you  And as with all things, if you're organised from the outset, it needn't be a worry!

Professional Membership for Therapists helps to protect you and your client by ensuring that a code of practice is observed and practised by its members.  Clients increasingly ask about professional membership to ensure that they are seeing a suitably qualified and experienced Therapist.  Here is a list of recognised Professional Bodies.

Ever considered working from home? When weighing up the pros and cons of taking clients into your own house, the following points are worth considering...

1. Money

FOR : It's not just the cost of the room hire you're saving if you work from home. You will most likely also have to spend on travel, parking, and if you're not conscientious about your timing, parking fines. These costs are diminished if your workplace is in the home.

Before you go down the route of filling in forms and looking out logos, it's important to consider the time it can take to build a clientbase and the impact that may have on your financial security.  However, there are ways to gradually 'wean' yourself from full-time employment to self employment as a Therapist...

Professional Membership for Therapists helps to protect you and your client by ensuring that a code of practice is observed and practised by its members.  Clients increasingly ask about professional membership to ensure that they are seeing a suitably qualified and experienced Therapist.  Here is a list of recognised Professional Bodies.

So you're all set up - self employed (you Maverick, you), Diploma hanging nicely on the wall, all your paperwork, insurance etc in the right place- but where will you be seeing your clients?  Whilst being a good therapist will maintain your relationship with clients, providing the right environment will ensure that they are happy to come back and see you...

When working for yourself, it's often hard to dance the fine line between our hearts and business heads.  As a Therapist, you will regularly find yourself asking the question 'Should I charge or not?'  When a client has suffered a change in his/her financial circumstances, there are a number of options to explore...

In an effort to save money, we have teaching assistants taking on full teaching responsibilities, student doctors taking charge in our A&E wards and now - the possibility of Nurses taking on psychotherapy duties.

Preliminary studies suggest that Mental Health Nurses may, after a five day course in behavioural intervention, be taking on the responsibility of treating clients diagnosed with depression in a bid to reduce the waiting lists for treatment.

Having had a number of requests for a shared place where Therapists could put their own worksheets, we have created the Centre for Therapy  Community Cabinet.

It's a cheerful little sharey place for worksheets, documents, pdfs - anything which you own and want to share. Many therapists have a whole treasure chest of documents from years of trial and error which they are happy to share - so why not do the same?

Following calls to the Government to enable the referral of patients for hypnotherapy, the possibility of training up medical staff in the treatment are now being considered.

Supervisors often find that new Therapists can have a bit of a bumpy start when setting up on their own.  Despite years of training, do's and don'ts, awareness of transference/projection etc, Therapists are still just human beings embarking into unknown territory.  Self awareness is key - here are the top 5 things to be aware of when starting out.

Being a qualified psychotherapist will require that you belong to a regulatory body (eg. BABCP, COSCA etc) and membership of these bodies will required that you have insurance in place to cover you for malpractice and injury at the very least...

If you choose to find employment with your new Psychotherapy qualification, there are many places to consider.  You may wish to work privately or for the NHS within specialist areas.  There are roles and client groups within which a qualified Therapists may choose to work.