Since 1989, the Prisoners Education Trust has been providing access to broader learning opportunities for prisoners, to enhance their chances of building a better life after release.

They do this through a grants programme which assists over 2,000 prisoners each year to study distance learning courses in subjects and levels not available in prison, along with advice and support.

The Trust is the featured BBC Radio 4 appeal this Easter Sunday, 24th April,  Made by Lord David Ramsbotham, former Chief Inspector of Prisons and patron of the Trust, The OCM would like to encourage people to listen to the appeal (at 7.55am and again at 9.26pm on Easter Sunday). For more information or to support the Prisoner's Education Trust, please go to www.prisonerseducation.org.uk.  

The OCM have selected a number of Kogan Page titles that will add value to your coaching and mentoring practice. The OCM have also negotiated a 10% discount off any book purchased through this site.

This will help you keep up to date with the latest trends and developments within the profession as well as maintaining your CPD obligations and with such a range of titles, there is sure to be something that will be of use to you.  

Please click here to visit the bookstore.

I've been pressured to start a blog on The Coachvine (or web-log as it has been defined) so here are some initial thoughts.

One of my main activities currently has been acting as Chair of the UK EMCC standards Committee helping to develop a European Individual Accreditation (EIA) programme. In the UK 25 individuals have applied for accreditation on a pilot scheme and the assessment, verification and approval processes I'm involved in are both rigorous and time consuming. Also of course a very rich learning experience that will contribute a lot to the final programme when it is launched across Europe in June this year. We'll be giving a progress report at the UK EMCC conference at Ashridge on April 7th / 8th and I'll be happy to go into more detail of this significant development there. So please contact me.

I'm also a regular reader and occasional contributor to the UK's leading coaching and mentoring publication from the CIPD, 'Coaching at work'. I thoroughly recommend it to all of you. And not just because last month it carried an article from me making the point that the volume of psychological inputs into current debates had almost drowned out inputs from other disciplines and given an unbalanced, and potentially dangerous, perspective of the importance of psychology in understanding coaching and mentoring which is a truly multidisciplinary profession. Please see "Out of mind" (Coaching at Work, vol 4, issue1,p19).

In this month's issue the Chair of the British Psychological Society (BPS) Special Interest Group has responded to my article and I hope you'll read it. You may think that she is simply quoting my own views just as a straight crib from my latest book as she presents a very reasonable and balanced view of how psychologists should position themselves in the ongoing debate. And I know many psychologists follow her advice. But a vocal minority do not I'm afraid. Her own claim in the article that coaching psychology is an 'allied' profession to coaching and her concern for the 'appropriate' use of psychology in coaching is a clue to the 'separate and superior' mindset that some of the psycho-politicians in the BPS have in relation to the non-psycho qualified members of the human race.

These Special Interest Groups of course have a valid and important role to play in the developing profession and I know from personal experience of working with practicing psychologists that most are heartedly fed up with the divisive politics that some individuals and organisations choose to play. Some of the organisations that I am a member of are particularly guilty on this count. But perhaps that is a topic for another day.