About
We publish the standard for counselling practice in South Africa, admit members against it, and make every member’s standing publicly checkable.
Our roadmap
Registered as an NPC
In placeThe standard published
Under wayOpen for applications
Under wayCommittees seated
PlannedProviders recognised
In placeThe public directory
PlannedAn independent board
PlannedWhy HICS exists
In South Africa, anyone may practise counselling without joining a register, holding a protected title or completing any minimum training. Anyone may describe themselves as a counsellor, provided they do not claim a title reserved under the Health Professions Act.
The cost of that falls on the people least equipped to carry it. A client choosing a counsellor cannot tell whether the person across from them has three years of training or a weekend workshop. An employer writing a counselling post can verify an applicant who holds a statutory registration, but has no way to check the training or competence of one who does not. A psychologist deciding whether to refer a client onward has no reliable way to confirm the training or standing of an unregistered counsellor, so a confident referral is hard to make.
And the counsellors themselves carry a cost too. Many are carefully trained and working to a high standard, but outside the statutory registers there has been no trusted way to prove it, nothing to show a client, an employer or a referring professional that their competence is real and their practice sound. A counsellor who holds themselves to that standard deserves a body that recognises it, verifies it, and stands behind it.
HICS was founded to close that gap: to publish a standard precise enough to be useful, admit only the people who meet it, require supervision and continuing development for as long as they hold the designation, and put the result somewhere anyone can check in thirty seconds.
What HICS is
The Humanitas Independent Counselling Society is a voluntary professional body for degree-qualified counsellors working outside the regulated domains of psychology and psychotherapy.
That is a large and largely unmapped space. It holds, among many others, the counsellor in a school, the trauma counsellor taking referrals from an NGO, the bereavement counsellor in a hospice, the substance-use counsellor in a rehabilitation programme, the counsellor in private practice seeing clients through divorce, redundancy and loss. Their work is real, it is skilled, and a standard specific and public enough to demonstrate it against has been lacking.
HICS is that standard. Membership is voluntary, it is not a legal requirement to practise counselling in South Africa, and it is not a licence. It is, instead, a public, binding commitment: to a defined scope of practice, to continuing supervision, to annual continuing professional development, and to a code of conduct members can be held to, not one that exists only on paper.
What HICS does
01
The entry criteria, the scope of practice and the code of conduct are published in full on this site. Anyone may read them: members, clients, employers, referring professionals, and anyone deciding whether a HICS designation means anything. A standard that is not public is not a standard.
The scope of practiceCode of conduct
02
Every application is verified: the recognised provider confirms the training, an approved supervisor signs off the hours, and the qualification is confirmed from certified documents, which HICS may check with the awarding institution where a document is unclear. What an applicant tells us opens the enquiry. It does not close it.
03
Every member’s current standing is published: their designation, the qualification they hold, the fields of practice they are trained in, any advanced practice, whether their supervision is current, and whether they are in good standing. If a person is not listed as current, they are not a current member.
04
Any person may complain about the conduct of a HICS member. Complaints are heard through a published procedure: the member is given written notice, an impartial panel hears the case, its decision comes with written reasons, and there is a right of appeal. A membership that cannot be lost is a subscription, not a commitment.
What HICS does not do
01
HICS is not an education and training provider, is not accredited by any Quality Council, and does not award qualifications. Its role is to define the outcomes a training programme must evidence and to assess programmes against them, not to deliver the training.
02
Members buy their training from recognised providers. The only thing HICS sells is membership.
03
HICS confers no legal authority to practise. Our scope of practice binds our members as a condition of their membership: it is a contractual commitment to ethical practice and high counselling standards. Nobody needs our permission to counsel in South Africa, and we do not pretend otherwise.
04
HICS holds no statutory power and claims none. We are not the HPCSA, we carry no authority derived from it, and our members are not HPCSA-registered professionals.
Our regulatory position
The Humanitas Independent Counselling Society is a voluntary professional body and quality assurance organisation. Membership is not professional registration under any statute and does not create authority to practise any profession regulated by South African law.
HICS claims no equivalence with, or authority derived from, any statutory professional council, including the Health Professions Council of South Africa. HICS members are not HPCSA-registered professionals and carry no HPCSA authority. HICS’s membership standards and the HPCSA’s regulatory scope are distinct and non-overlapping.
HICS is a voluntary, non-statutory membership body. Membership is not a legal requirement to practise, confers no statutory authority, and is not equivalent to registration with the Health Professions Council of South Africa.
Legal status: Registered Non-Profit Company (Registration number 2026/694642/08)
Humanitas Independent Counselling Society membership designation. Not a statutory registration.
Our relationship with Humanitas Training
HICS was founded by Anri van den Berg, who also owns Humanitas Training, a counselling training provider.
HICS and Humanitas Training are separate legal entities with separate boards, separate finances and separate purposes. Humanitas Training sells counselling training; HICS sells no training, and recognises training against its own standards, not by who the provider is. Any provider may apply for recognition under those standards. Nobody connected to a provider takes part in deciding that provider’s application.
Humanitas Training was the first provider recognised by HICS, because it developed the model HICS was built on and because it was the first to apply.