Pathways for  Complaints, Concerns and Conflicts

IAPOP is an International Association of Process-Oriented Psychology Practitioners, who associate through shared values, vision, and goals, as well as support for diversity, creativity, relationships, innovative research, learning, and practice within our professional community.

Processwork schools affiliated with IAPOP are self-governing and self-regulating. They operate within shared standards that have been developed in the Training Council with the collaboration of all Diploma-level schools and adapted according to region and context. The IAPOP board serves the international community and its members, focusing on learning, research, and community building. 

IAPOP members are professional practitioners committed to the research, learning, and practice of Deep Democracy, Process Work, and Worldwork and have completed rigorous training programs through IAPOP-affiliated organizations (link to the Training Council schools). 

 As Processwork practitioners, our goal is to facilitate awareness, which includes ethical issues at personal, relational, and collective levels. All Training Programs affiliated with IAPOP have their own ethics framework for faculty, students, and graduates.

Over the years, several people have brought concerns or complaints to the IAPOP Board. The  IAPOP Board is a group of volunteers who have dealt with each situation on a case-by-case basis. As volunteers, the Board does not have the capacity nor, at times, the relevant experience to handle these complaints in the manner they require and deserve. This history has led the Board (in consultation with the Training Council) to update our approach. We analyzed past experiences and, with recommendations from the Training Council, we created this overview to clarify different pathways to facilitation and resolution. We share them below, in the hope they will serve you to find the right direction.

What you can do:

In cases of concerns, complaints, and conflicts where attempts to facilitate a resolution to resolve (the conflict or complaint) have not yet worked, and further action is wanted, the IAPOP Board recommends one of these options:

1)    Individual complaint: 

You can use the process to address and resolve complaints and conflicts in the IAPOP-affiliated program where the practitioner is involved as a faculty member, graduate, or student. Every IAPOP-affiliated program has an ethics, complaints, and conflict resolution process. We suggest you contact that school and ask for the contact information of the committee or person handling those issues.

2)    Conflict between IAPOP-affiliated training programs: 

If your efforts to resolve this do not work, we suggest reaching out to the mentors of each of the schools in conflict or agreeing upon an external facilitator.

3)    Conflict between IAPOP members:

Using Processwork’s facilitation principle, IAPOP recommends approaching a mutually acceptable facilitator/s to assist towards resolution.

4)    Complaint about structural discrimination (including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, religion, etc.):

There may be a complaint toward a faculty member or school that involves an accusation of racism or other forms of structural discrimination. The person making the complaint (who might be a student or faculty member) can make sure they have sufficient internal and external support to pursue the complaint. They can then attempt to resolve the issue within the school itself.

If this is impossible (because there is a concern that the conflict will cycle or the complainant meets the same harm they were trying to address), IAPOP has a panel of facilitators with specialist knowledge of facilitating structural discrimination who can be invited to support the facilitation of the complaint. The IAPOP Training Council supports the panel of facilitators who are responding to the need and offering their services for complaints of this nature within schools. The panel members are Anup Karia, Arlene Audergon, Errol Amerasekera, and Lane Arye. They may reach out to other facilitators as needed as related to specific issues and regions.

Complainants can email the IAPOP Board Complaint Pathways contact. The procedure for engaging with the complaint is taken case by case and is discussed with the parties involved, including financial obligations.

Facilitators who are not on the panel can also be engaged if they are agreeable to all parties involved. 

IAPOP Board Complaint Pathways contact: complaints@iapop.com