Choosing a therapist or training provider is a significant decision. This page brings together the awards, accreditations, media appearances, professional roles, and independent recognition that reflect the standards we aim to maintain across Openforwards.

Award-Winning Psychotherapy and Mental Health Innovation

Choosing a therapist can feel like a big decision. You may be wondering: Can I trust this person? Will they understand me? Are they properly trained? Will therapy actually help?

Awards and external recognition cannot answer all of those questions, but they can offer some reassurance. Openforwards has previously been recognised for the quality of its psychotherapy services and its contribution to mental health innovation.

For you, this means you are choosing a service that takes professional standards, compassionate care and evidence-informed practice seriously. We aim to offer therapy that is not only warm and supportive, but also structured enough to help you make meaningful changes in your life.

We do not expect you to choose us simply because of an award. But we hope this recognition helps you feel more confident that you are in safe, thoughtful and experienced hands.

Recognition highlights

Best Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Provider – West Midlands

Openforwards has been recognised as a leading provider of CBT in the West Midlands.

Why this matters to you
CBT is a structured, evidence-based therapy that can help people understand patterns in their thoughts, feelings and behaviour. Recognition in this area can reassure you that our service is committed to providing therapy that is both supportive and practical.

What this reflects
A commitment to professional standards, evidence-informed therapy, and helping clients develop skills they can use beyond the therapy room.

Awarding Body

Mental Health Care Innovation Recognition

Openforwards has also been recognised for its contribution to innovation in mental health care.

Why this matters to you
Good therapy should be personal and human, but it should also keep developing. Recognition for innovation reflects our interest in making psychological ideas clearer, more accessible and more useful for the people we work with.

What this reflects
A commitment to continuous improvement, thoughtful service design, and helping people build emotional strength and resourcefulness in everyday life.

Awarding Body

Professional Accreditations and Registers

Choosing a therapist is not just about finding someone warm and easy to talk to. It is also important to know that they are properly trained, accountable, and working to recognised professional standards.

Professional accreditations and registers help you check this. They show that a therapist has met specific requirements for training, experience, ethical practice, supervision, and ongoing professional development. They also give you somewhere independent to turn if you ever have concerns about professional conduct.

For you, this means extra reassurance. You are not simply relying on what a therapist says about themselves. You can see that they are connected to recognised professional bodies and expected to maintain appropriate standards of practice.

At Openforwards, our therapists come from different professional backgrounds and may belong to different registers depending on their training and therapy model. These may include organisations such as BABCP, BACP, UKCP, HCPC, EMDR Association UK and other relevant professional bodies.

These accreditations do not guarantee that a particular therapist will be the right fit for you. But they do help show that the people you are considering have been trained, reviewed, and held to standards designed to protect the public and support good quality care.

ACT Training Recognition and Professional Leadership

Openforwards provides training for therapists who want to use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy more confidently, skilfully and flexibly in their clinical work. This training is informed not only by clinical experience, but also by ongoing involvement in the wider ACT and CBT professional communities.

Jim Lucas has been recognised as a Peer-Reviewed ACT Trainer by the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science since 2018. This means his ACT training work has been reviewed by peers within the international ACT community and recognised as meeting standards for quality, fidelity and contribution to contextual behavioural science.

For therapists choosing ACT training, this matters because ACT can be easy to learn in theory but harder to apply well in real clinical conversations. Peer-reviewed trainer status offers reassurance that the training is grounded in the model, connected to the wider ACT community, and designed to support competent, ethical and effective practice.

Jim has also held several leadership roles within professional organisations. He serves as Chair of the ACBS Training Committee from 2025 to 2028, is a member of the ACBS Competency and Dissemination Pillar, and previously served as Treasurer of the ACBS UK and Ireland Chapter. He was Programme Chair for the ACBS UK & Ireland Conference in 2022 and is also a former Chair of BABCP West Midlands.

These roles reflect a sustained contribution to the development, quality and dissemination of evidence-based psychological therapies. For clients and practitioners, this offers additional reassurance that Openforwards is connected to current professional standards, training conversations and developments in the field.

We also regularly contribute to professional conferences, workshops and training events. These presentations allow us to share ideas, test and refine our teaching, and contribute to the ongoing development of ACT practice. Rather than simply offering a fixed set of techniques, our aim is to help therapists develop flexible, responsive and clinically useful ways of working.

Media Appearances and Public Education

Technical jargon should not get in the way of good therapy. At Openforwards, we believe psychological ideas should be understandable, practical and useful in everyday life.

Jim Lucas has contributed to public conversations about mental health through podcasts, radio, television and community talks. These appearances have covered topics such as stress, relationships, therapist self-doubt, psychological flexibility, and how people can live with greater awareness, courage and emotional resilience.

For you, this matters because it reflects one of our core values: making evidence-informed psychological therapy accessible. Whether we are working with therapy clients, training practitioners, speaking to community groups or contributing to public discussions, our aim is the same: to help people better understand themselves and respond more effectively to life’s challenges.

Media appearances and public talks are not the same as clinical accreditation. However, they do offer another form of reassurance. They show that Jim’s knowledge and experience have been invited into wider professional and public spaces, and that Openforwards is committed to sharing helpful psychological ideas beyond private therapy sessions.

Recognition Highlights

Podcast: Psychologists Off the Clock

Jim appeared on Psychologists Off the Clock to discuss therapist self-doubt and the challenges therapists face when trying to work skilfully and compassionately.

Podcast: Life’s Dirty Little Secrets

Jim appeared on Life’s Dirty Little Secrets to explore psychological ideas in an accessible, conversational way.

Podcast: Don’t Get a Therapist, Yet

Jim appeared on Don’t Get a Therapist, Yet in an episode exploring what it means to live less from the head and more from direct experience.

Television: CBT Therapist on Twinstitute

Jim appeared as a CBT therapist on an episode of Twinstitute, contributing psychological expertise to a programme exploring human behaviour and wellbeing.

BBC Radio appearances

Jim has appeared on BBC Radio three times, speaking about stress, PTSD and relationships.

Public talks and community education

Jim has delivered public talks for groups and organisations including West Midlands OCD Support Group and Better Happy.

Commitment to Professional Standards

Trust matters in therapy. When you are talking about personal, emotional or painful experiences, you need to know that the service you choose takes your wellbeing, privacy and safety seriously.

At Openforwards, professional standards are not treated as a mere formality. They shape how we work before, during and after therapy. This includes how we assess whether we are the right service for you, how we protect your information, how we maintain professional boundaries, and how we keep developing our clinical skills.

Our therapists are expected to work within the ethical frameworks of their professional bodies, maintain appropriate supervision, complete ongoing professional development, and practise within the limits of their training and competence. This helps ensure that the support you receive is thoughtful, accountable and grounded in recognised standards of care.

For you, this means therapy should feel safe, respectful and professionally held. You should understand what to expect, know how your information is managed, and feel able to ask questions about the therapy process. If we are not the right service for your needs, we will aim to guide you responsibly rather than offer support outside our area of competence.

Awards and recognition can be reassuring, but they matter most when they sit alongside everyday professional practice. Our commitment is to provide therapy that is ethical, evidence-informed, compassionate and continually improving.

Ready to take the next step?

Awards, recognition and professional standards can help you feel more confident in your choice. But the most important question is whether we are the right fit for the support you need.

Whether you are looking for therapy for yourself, support for someone in your family, or professional training in ACT, we aim to offer a thoughtful, ethical and evidence-informed service.

Looking for therapy?
Book an initial consultation and we’ll help you think through what you’re struggling with, what kind of support may help, and whether Openforwards is the right service for you.

Looking for ACT training or supervision?
Explore our ACT training, supervision and consultation options for therapists who want to develop greater confidence, clarity and flexibility in their clinical work.