Retaining membership

The standard does not stop at admission.

The qualifying criteria describe a single moment. These are the conditions a member must satisfy every year, for as long as they hold the designation, and it lasts only as long as they are met.

The conditions

Met every year, or the membership lapses.

Continuing supervision
Supervision is not a training phase that ends at admission. It is a continuing condition of membership for as long as a member sees clients, verified at every renewal. A member whose supervision has lapsed is not entitled to see clients under a HICS designation until it is restored, and there is no grace period in which lapsed supervision and continued practice coexist. Members counselling clients under 18 must have that work supervised by a supervisor authorised by HICS in child and adolescent work.
Continuing professional development
Every member carries the same annual requirement, twenty-two points. Ten of them are included in the membership fee: a six-point HICS core that no external course can stand in for (the Code, the scope and its limitations, the duty to refer, and the year’s regulatory updates) and at least four points of ethics, both provided by HICS. The remaining twelve are earned from courses HICS has accredited, or from recognised activities. A member pays the provider for the course, and pays HICS nothing to have it counted. CPD that remains unmet blocks renewal.
The Code of Professional Conduct
The Code of Conduct is binding on every member and re-declared, in writing, at every renewal. It is the instrument against which complaints are decided, and is published in full on this site.
The fitness-to-practise declaration
This declaration is made on admission and must remain true for as long as the designation is held: no undisclosed finding of professional misconduct by any body, and no undisclosed criminal conviction relevant to fitness to practise. It is re-confirmed at every renewal.
No unresolved disciplinary matter
Renewal is blocked until any open matter is concluded.
The annual fee, and active renewal
Membership runs for twelve months and must be actively renewed. There is no pause option and no partial renewal.

One duty sits outside this list, because it is not met once a year: it holds at every moment and cannot be delegated. Professional and ethical responsibility for a client rests with the member at all times, whatever a supervisor advised; the full statement of where responsibility sits is on the scope of practice page.

The full supervision requirement by designation is on the supervision page, and the full development model is on the CPD page.

Good standing

If they are not in good standing, they are not a member.

Good standing means two things at once: that a member met HICS’s published criteria on admission, and that they are still meeting every annual condition. A designation stops the moment standing does. On lapse, suspension, downgrade or revocation, use of the designation must cease immediately, with no notice period and no grace period.

Standing ends in one of two ways. Lapse is administrative: the conditions are simply not met at renewal, and the membership ends. Discipline is the other: where a breach of the Code is established through the complaints process, the outcome may range from a formal warning to termination of membership, with a right of appeal. In either case, the Code’s client-continuity obligations apply: notifying affected clients, arranging referral, and handing over responsibly. HICS retains jurisdiction over conduct that occurred while a person was a member, whether or not they remain one.

Read alongside

The standard, and the rest of it.

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.

Humanitas Independent Counselling Society membership designation. Not a statutory registration.