The Therapy and Social Change (TaSC) Network evolved from the 2022 Ukraine Fundraiser Emergency Summit: Contributing to Global Peace and Justice. At that online day conference, organised by Onlinevents and Mick Cooper at the Cluster for Research in Social and Psychological Transformation (CREST, University of Roehampton), we had over 400 people attending a range of talks and events to explore the interface between therapy and social justice. After the Emergency Summit, a small group of us met to find ways of continuing this dialogue: to look at how psychological therapies can be informed by social justice principles, and how therapeutic ideas and practices can be used to develop political actions.

The TaSC Network is open to everyone: service users; counsellors, psychotherapists, and other mental health workers; associated professionals; and the wider public. We are a loose affiliation and do not have any formal membership structure.

The TaSC Network strives to collaborate with other organisations at the interface of therapy and social justice, such as Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility and Psychologists for Social Change (see Links). We hope to be inclusive and build relationships and synergies between groups, networks, and communities.

The TaSC Network—as a social justice-oriented body—holds a broadly progressive stance, but it aims to be pluralistic in its openness to a wide array of perspectives on the relationship between therapy and social change. Our hope is that the Network will hold a strongly dialogic position, with an emphasis on respectful relating across a diversity of ideas, positions, and practices.

Currently, we organise monthly seminars to facilitate dialogues on therapy and social change. These seminars are followed by a 30 min ‘network meeting’ to explore, and develop, our community. Network meetings are chaired by different members of the TaSC community and are open to all.

We also have operational meetings which take place on a roughly monthly basis to discuss practical matters (like how we use social media and timing of seminars). Operational meetings are open to all, and we would be delighted to hear from those interested in getting involved, or leading on, initiatives.

We also have a Facebook group (hosted by Emily Blyth), a Twitter feed, and an email contact/discussion group that you can sign up to on ‘Sign-up’ page.

TaSC: An Evolving Network

The TaSC Network is a new and emerging network. The network is a collective and collaborative active group, in which all members and facilitators/moderators can engage in its emergent process of co-creating the ‘spaces’ that the network offers. This includes the Facebook group, operational meetings, seminars, podcasts, the website, and new possibilities that we have yet to consider.

In this process, and since the establishment of the network, we continue to work out what the spaces are, how best to manage the boundaries between them, and what their remit is—whilst simultaneously holding the spaces ‘live’ at the same time. Everyone is invited to take an active role in making this happen: trainees and experienced practitioners; therapists, service users, and those outside of the mental health field.

We do and will make mistakes as we collectively discover what the spaces are for, how members want to engage in the spaces, and what the needs of us all are from the network and its spaces.

At its core, TaSC is about understanding and engaging in therapy, social change, and social justice issues. We recognise, then, that across the membership we will each be arriving at the network from different places in our journey of discovering, learning, and understanding.

The network and its spaces are emerging as an opportunity for therapists to engage in social justice and change issues, whilst inviting a respect, welcome, and openness to all. Wherever each of us may be in our journey, We hope that these co-created spaces will provide opportunities for all of us to collectively and collaboratively grow.

Our Operational (ops) Group

If you would like to be part of the team holding the TaSC group and spaces and making decisions with us, please do come along to the Ops meetings. These are informal, open online meetings where you can contribute ideas and join in discussions, or just listen and bring your presence. Everyone in TaSC is welcome to come along. Dates are posted on our email and Facebook group or you can email us at tascnetworkuk@gmail.com