HICS, HPCSA, SACSSP and ASCHP: What's the Difference?

Four sets of letters come up constantly in South African counselling, and they do not do the same job. The HPCSA and the SACSSP are statutory councils: Parliament created them, and registering with the right one is a legal condition of practising. The ASCHP is a professional body recognised by SAQA, which is a different thing entirely. HICS is a voluntary standards body, newer still, and the most open of the four about what it does not do.

If you are a student choosing a route, or a practitioner trying to work out which body you actually fall under, the confusion is understandable. The bodies sound alike, the websites all speak of registration and designations and CPD, and the word counsellor gets used by everyone. But the legal weight behind each one is very different, and that difference decides what you may call yourself, what you may do in a session, and whether a medical scheme will ever pay you.

This article sets out what each body is, who it registers, and what that registration does and does not give you.

Start here: statutory councils are not the same as professional bodies

Everything else makes sense once this distinction is clear, so it is worth slowing down on it.

A statutory council is created by an Act of Parliament. The Act gives it a register, and makes entry on that register a precondition of lawful practice. Section 17 of the Health Professions Act 56 of 1974 says no person may practise a health profession registrable under the Act unless registered under it. Section 15(1) of the Social Service Professions Act 110 of 1978 says the same for social work. Breaching either is a criminal offence, not a membership irregularity.

A professional body recognised by SAQA works differently. Recognition happens under the National Qualifications Framework Act 67 of 2008, and what SAQA assesses is the body itself: does it set standards, run CPD, keep records, and hold its members to a code. If it does, SAQA recognises it and registers its professional designations on the NQF. That is real quality assurance, and it is worth something. It is not a licence. SAQA recognition reserves no act, protects no title in criminal law, and binds nobody who is not a member.

So the honest summary is this. Statutory registration tells you what you are legally permitted to do. Professional body membership tells you what standard you have agreed to be held to. Both matter. Only one of them is enforced by the state.

There is one more layer worth naming. A body can be entirely voluntary, with no SAQA recognition at all, and still run a serious standard. HICS is that. It is not a lesser version of the others so much as a different kind of thing, and we come to it below.

HICS: a voluntary standards body

Disclosure first. The Humanitas Independent Counselling Society was founded by Anri van den Berg, who also owns Humanitas Training. The two are separate legal entities with separate boards and finances, HICS uses the name under written licence, and Humanitas Training was its first recognised provider. HICS publishes a full disclosure page on the relationship. We are describing it here on our own website, so you should read this section knowing that.

HICS is a Registered Non-Profit Company (Registration number 2026/694642/08), founded in 2026, describing itself as a voluntary professional body for degree-qualified counsellors working outside the regulated domains of psychology and psychotherapy. It is not SAQA-recognised and makes no claim to be. What it does is narrow and deliberately so: publish a standard, verify and admit members against it, list them publicly, and, once HICS opens its route for concerns, hold them to it through a complaints process.

It is unusually direct about what it does not do. From its own pages: it does not train counsellors, does not award qualifications, does not license or authorise anyone, and holds no statutory power. It states that it claims no equivalence with, or authority derived from, any statutory council, and that its members are not HPCSA-registered professionals.

Entry is set high. An applicant needs an NQF 7 or above qualification in psychology, social work or a counselling-related field, HICS-recognised counselling training, 200 supervised hours, a fitness-to-practise declaration, and a pass in a written board examination that HICS sets and marks itself. Members hold one of three designations, HAC, HASC or HAS, and carry 22 CPD points a year with at least three hours of supervision each quarter. Membership is R2,950 a year, with a R1,000 examination fee.

One caveat matters more than any of the above. HICS is pre-launch. Its own referrers page states that no member has yet been admitted, nobody is listed, and any claim to HICS membership made today is false. Treat it as a 2026 startup body with a published standard, not as an established register.

HPCSA: the statutory council for psychology

The Health Professions Council of South Africa is established by section 2 of the Health Professions Act 56 of 1974 and answers to the Minister of Health. It operates twelve professional boards, and the one that concerns us is the Professional Board for Psychology.

The categories under that board are psychologist, psychometrist, registered counsellor and psycho-technician. Psychologists register in one of several categories: clinical, counselling, educational, industrial or organisational, and research.

The two routes most people are weighing up:

• Registered Counsellor. A four-year BPsych degree, or a Board-accredited postgraduate programme (formerly a BPsych-equivalent honours, now being replaced by a Postgraduate Diploma in Psychological Counselling), incorporating an approved six-month full-time practicum of 720 face-to-face hours under the supervision of a registered psychologist. You then write and pass the National Board Examination before you may register.
• Psychologist. A minimum of five years of formal education in psychology, ending in a directed Master's in your chosen category, followed by a twelve-month full-time internship at a Board-approved site with weekly supervision. Clinical psychologists then complete a further year of community service. The Board Examination applies here too.

CPD is annual, not cyclical. Psychologists, registered counsellors and psychometrists each need 30 CEUs a year, of which 25 are clinical and 5 must be in ethics, human rights or health law. Points expire twelve months after the activity and cannot be awarded retrospectively. Where a practitioner does not comply, the Board can move them to supervised practice, require a Board Examination, or suspend them from the register.

Registration is compulsory and renewed annually, with fees due by 31 March. The penalties in the Act are worth knowing precisely: performing an act reserved to a registered profession while unregistered carries a fine or up to twelve months' imprisonment under section 39, while falsely claiming to be registered, or using a title that implies registration you do not hold, carries a fine or up to five years under section 40. Claiming the title is treated more seriously than doing the work.

You can check anyone's registration yourself. The HPCSA's iRegister, linked from the council's homepage, lets you search by surname or registration number, and shows whether a registration is active, suspended or erased. Psychologists, psychometrists and registered counsellors sit on separate registers, so check all three if you are not sure which applies.

SACSSP: the statutory council for the social service professions

The South African Council for Social Service Professions is established by the Social Service Professions Act 110 of 1978 and reports to the Minister of Social Development. It describes itself, rather nicely, as a creature of Statute. Two professional boards are currently constituted: the Professional Board for Social Work and the Professional Board for Child and Youth Care Work.

The registration categories are social worker (a BSW degree), social auxiliary worker, student social worker, child and youth care worker, auxiliary child and youth care worker, and the two student equivalents.

The point most relevant to this article is that counselling and therapy already sit inside the social worker's statutory scope. The scope of practice regulations cover counselling, psycho-educational, supportive, treatment, evaluation and therapeutic services to individuals, couples, families and groups. A registered social worker does not need a second registration somewhere else in order to counsel. Social auxiliary workers are a different matter: they work under supervision and may not provide therapeutic services at all.

CPD has been in force for social work since 1 November 2021. Social workers need 20 points a year, or 40 over a two-year cycle; social auxiliary workers need 10 a year or 20 over the cycle. Points must be drawn from a mix of group and individual activities rather than all from one category, and up to 10 may be carried forward for a year.

Registration is compulsory, with annual fees due on or before 1 January. Under section 16, practising for gain without registration is an offence carrying a fine or up to six months' imprisonment. The titles social worker, social auxiliary worker and child and youth care worker are protected. You can verify a registration free of charge through the SACSSP member directory or the public register search.

One thing to watch, because it generates a lot of misinformation: community development practitioners cannot yet register with the SACSSP. The professional board has not been established, and the Council's own FAQ of May 2024 confirms registration has not commenced. The current database exercise is building a voter roll so that a first board can be elected.

ASCHP: a SAQA-recognised professional body

The Association for Supportive Counsellors and Holistic Practitioners is a professional body, not a council. SAQA lists it as non-statutory, professional body ID 984, with recognition renewed from 2 June 2026 to 1 June 2031 under decision 0340/26.

Four professional designations are registered on the NQF. The requirements are drawn from the SAQA designation records and from ASCHP's own pages:

There is also a Candidate for Membership category for applicants still gathering practical hours. Recognition of prior learning is available across all four. Note that the 100-hour requirement does not scale with level, which surprises people.

The CPD cycle runs January to December, one point equals one hour of study, and every category must include 3 ethics points and 3 wellness points. Members submit their own certificates to the ASCHP office and are audited at renewal. Non-compliance risks suspension of membership.

On scope, ASCHP is clear that its designations exclude psychotherapy, social work, medical health work and occupational therapy. Members do not diagnose, and the Holistic Counsellor entry specifically requires referral where pathology is suspected. Psychometric testing sits outside the scope too, though that restriction comes from the Health Professions Act rather than from ASCHP.

The most useful thing ASCHP says is on its own FAQ page: members receive a membership number rather than a practice number, and only statutory bodies award official practice numbers. That is a professional body describing its own limits accurately, and it saves a great many practitioners from a costly misunderstanding.

The four side by side

Read down the "registration compulsory" row first. That single line explains most of the confusion these four bodies generate.

So which one applies to you?

The body does not choose you. Your qualification and the work you intend to do choose the body.

The routes are not mutually exclusive. A social worker can hold an ASCHP designation. What you cannot do is let the voluntary membership stand in for the statutory registration your work actually requires.

The lines nobody may cross

Whichever body you belong to, some acts are reserved by law, and they are reserved by the act performed, not by the title you use.

The Regulations Defining the Scope of the Profession of Psychology, published as GN R993 in Government Gazette 31433 of 16 September 2008, reserve certain work to persons registered in the psychology profession: psychological testing, psychotherapy and hypnotherapy, among others. Doing any of these while unregistered is an offence under section 39 of the Health Professions Act.

A note on the regulations themselves: a further set of category-specific scopes was gazetted in 2011, and those were set aside by the Western Cape High Court in November 2016. Much online commentary still quotes the 2011 wording. R993 of 2008 is the framework to work from, and the HPCSA's own framework documents for registered counsellors sit alongside it.

The practical dividing lines are three:

• Diagnosis. Reserved. The Mental Health Care Act 17 of 2002 defines mental illness as a positive diagnosis made by a mental health care practitioner authorised to make it, and lists those practitioners: psychiatrist, medical practitioner, nurse, occupational therapist, psychologist or social worker trained to provide the prescribed services. Counsellors of any description are not on that list.
• Psychometric assessment. Reserved to registered psychology practitioners. Registered counsellors may do basic assessment and screening but not projective, neuropsychological or diagnostic testing.
• Psychotherapy. Reserved. It is performed by psychologists, psychiatrists, and by social workers and psychiatric nurses within their own statutory scopes. There is no standalone psychotherapist register in South Africa.

What sits outside those lines is still substantial, and it is where most counselling actually happens: screening, supportive and psycho-educational intervention, grief and trauma support, relationship and bereavement work, and the skilled, timely referral that holds the whole system together. Knowing when to refer is not a limitation on your practice. It is part of it.

One more point of law worth carrying with you. The word counsellor standing alone is not a protected title, but registered counsellor is, because it is an HPCSA category. Describing yourself as a registered counsellor when you are not one is the offence that carries up to five years.

Final thoughts

There is a version of this conversation that gets defensive, where practitioners rank the bodies against each other and measure their own worth by which letters they hold. That is not useful, and it is not accurate either. A wellness counsellor working well inside scope, referring appropriately and keeping their CPD current, is doing real and needed work. A psychologist practising outside their competence is not protected by their registration.

What the four bodies really give you is clarity about where you stand. Two of them are the law. One is a recognised standard. One is a standard in the making. Knowing which is which protects your clients first and your practice second, and it makes you much harder to mislead when somebody sells you a registration that is not one.

Before you rely on anything here, check it at the source. Registrations change, fees change, and regulations are amended. Verify an HPCSA registration on iRegister, a SACSSP registration through the member directory or public register search, and an ASCHP designation on the association's member records. If a body cannot show you a public register, ask why.

HICS sets a standard for counsellors who will spend their careers inside these boundaries, so we would rather practitioners understood them early than discovered them the hard way.

HICS does not promote, endorse or discredit any particular registration route. Its relationship with Humanitas Training is disclosed above and on itsdisclosure page. Registration requirements, fees and regulations change. Verify current detail directly with the relevant body before acting on it.