Diane has been an active member in the Wellington Branch and done a tremendous amount of work in and for the former Admissions Committee, later ACP Committee, for many years. Having already been on the ACP Committee in other roles she took up the Chair position and then was on Council for over 6 years. She has been a lead moderator of the ACP Written Assessment Marking process, which partly involves the time-consuming business of recruiting markers for each marking round, reading all the case studies and following up the markers’ letters with phone calls to candidates.
For much of the time she held the Chair role on the Admissions/ACP Committee she also helped steer the changes consequent to the registration of psychotherapists and the implications for the Admissions process. This involved a liaison position between NZAP and the newly appointed PBANZ and her careful stewardship helped gain the ongoing support of the ACP pathway by PBANZ as a route to registration. This is a crucial achievement for NZAP and a significant number of its members. It continues to be an important route to registration and employment for some members.
Part of her position as Chair of the ACP Committee involved representation on Council. Some of this work involved ensuring that Council was kept abreast of changes to the Admissions process and the change-over to the ACP qualification. This might seem of little import now but there were, at times, important decisions to be made around how the ACP might function, separately to an ‘Admissions’ process, and this meant that Council and the ACP Committee needed to be in agreement for different steps along the way. Diane’s clear thinking and integrity ensured that this was mostly a smooth and workable transition.
Also as Chair, Diane spent considerable time and effort in reaching out to some smaller branches, travelling and meeting with different Regional Supervisors’ Groups around the country, attempting to support Training Supervisors and RSG’s with their ACP Provisional Members.
With Sandra Winton and others she met with Waka Oranga around their development of the He Ara Maori ACP pathway.
In addition to managing multiple aspects of the ACP Committee, handling feedback, correspondence, maintaining lists of candidates and supervisors she also acted as hostess to both the ACP Committee and the NZAP Council, for all meetings apart from those at Conference. Her warm hospitality, dinners and comfortable home made being on the ACP Committee a convivial experience whenever we met. While this was a source of pleasurable enjoyment for Committee members it also enabled the group to function better and carry out its sometimes complex tasks with a high degree of cooperation and efficiency. (This was quite apart from the monetary savings for NZAP.) During the years she was on Council she also hosted a regular Saturday evening meal for Council members at her home whenever Council met in Wellington.
Diane is a tremendously good natured, thoughtful person who has worked for many years in leadership positions for NZAP, in a particularly effective manner. She has been required to contain difficult and potentially problematic issues arising from ACP Committee activities on many occasions. Such issues range from systemic challenges to the highly valued ACP qualification itself, through to a response to individuals with a sense of grievance about ACP standards and outcomes. Working with her, it is clear how she embodies many of the characteristics ideally found in a psychotherapist: integrity, transparency, rigorous thinking, warmth, caring and a holding ability.
We wholeheartedly wish to put her forward for a Life Membership of NZAP Award for the many years of service she has given to NZAP, work that is mostly unseen and in the background.