BABCP Reflective Statement: what to write, with an example

The yearly CPD requirement, what a Reflective Statement needs to show, and a worked example.

What BABCP asks for each year

To maintain accreditation you must engage in a range of CBT learning and development activities and complete a Reflective Statement for five activities.

Within those five, at least six hours must be CBT skills development each year. The skills training may be drawn from one workshop, or several shorter ones that add up to six hours, and must be facilitated by qualified and experienced CBT trainers, though the workshops do not have to be provided by BABCP.

One of your five activities each year can be non-CBT specific. It cannot count as the skills workshop.

What a Reflective Statement needs to show

Two things: that you genuinely engaged with the activity, and what it has contributed to your CBT practice. An attendance certificate shows the first and says nothing about the second.

For some activities, such as webinars and reading, the Reflective Statement can stand as the evidence on its own. That makes what you write in it the whole of your record, so it is worth ten honest minutes.

A worked Reflective Statement

The activity: a full day skills workshop on working with intolerance of uncertainty in generalised anxiety, six hours, facilitated by an accredited CBT trainer.

How it was relevant to my practice: about a third of my current caseload presents with worry that has not shifted with standard worry postponement, and I had been repeating a technique rather than formulating why it was not landing.

What I learnt: the distinction between a worry that seeks certainty and a worry that avoids an image. The role plays made it clear that I move to problem solving too early, which gives the client the reassurance the model says to withhold.

How it will change my CBT practice: I have added a behavioural experiment on tolerating an unresolved question within the first four sessions, and I now flag in supervision any case where I notice myself providing reassurance rather than testing a prediction.

Evidence: certificate of attendance, and my workshop notes.

Keeping it audit ready

• Write the statement shortly after the activity. Written twelve months later, it becomes a summary of the course rather than a reflection on your practice.
• Keep the evidence with the statement: certificate, programme, booking confirmation or your notes.
• Record the date and the hours, and mark which activity was your skills development.
• At audit you provide a Reflective Statement and evidence for each activity, covering the previous twelve months in practice.

Keep clients out of it

Write about the change in your practice, not the client who prompted it. Where an example is needed, strip identifying detail and keep it to what is needed to make the clinical point.

Speak it instead of writing it

ReflectReady has a BABCP template built around what the activity was and how it was relevant to your CBT practice, what you learnt and how it will affect your future practice, and your evidence. You talk, and your own sentences are sorted under those headings ready to read, edit and keep. The AI only sorts your words, it never writes them. Free to try.

Sources: BABCP: reaccreditation CPD, BABCP: CPD guidance.

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