Member Benefits &
Support
- We are absolutely passionate about supporting our profession and our practitioners. We answer your emails and return your phone calls the same day wherever possible. Those of us that answer your calls are either part of the Working Board of ARA or admin support, but we are all practicing acupuncturists and understand the kind of things that you need on a day to day basis. We have provided guidance to allow you to work safely, professionally and within current legal and ethical guidelines as well as guidance for treating minors and those who cannot necessarily give informed consent.
Organisational Support
- ARA provides all aspects of organisational support and can help with simple questions all the way through to governance and legal advice as well as a range of specific other areas -
- Social Media Support.
- Web Development and website support.
- Insurance and complaints support.
- General advisories for your organisation.
- Training support.
- Organisational growth and building your organisation.
Complaints Support
ARA rejects public shaming, prioritising private support, advocacy, and fair assessments within a legal framework to safeguard the public and practitioners' careers and address concerns confidentially.
Unlike many organisations both in and outside of acupuncture who have moved to a model of publicly posting and shaming practitioners who make mistakes, ARA do not believe this is useful to the public, practitioner nor the industry and refuse to follow this route. Whilst ARA must protect the public our practitioners must also receive support and assistance, especially in times of complaints which could escalate into a legal nature. It can be a very worrying and stressful time for a practitioner who has concerns or has had a complaint raised against them and we offer advocacy and mentoring to support you through this process.Â
ARA has specifically been setup to carry out this tight-rope act by having robust procedures based on a legal protective framework to allow us to independently and fairly assess complaints which aims to de-escalate and mediate any issues to the satisfaction of both parties. Furthermore, we must try and prevent complaints, if at all possible, advancing towards more litigious outcomes and without public shaming which can destroy the careers of perfectly good practitioners who simply made an error of judgment at the time which with supportive help can be corrected for the benefit of the public and industry alike.Â
Complaints must be sensibly qualified and sensibly assessed as to the risks caused and the loss by the complainant for the complaint. If we feel that we must sanction a member or require them to do further training, then this is considered a private matter to be overseen by us and not to be made public. If we feel that someone should no longer be in practice, we will be clear on our website.
Legal and Advisory Support
We are here to help with any issue you may have to do with your clinic, patients, and treatments regardless of whether legal or professional. We are all human beings and we recognise that we all experience difficult times in our professional lives and we are here to support you. No association has such a wide range of diverse yet specialised support for members should they require it and these areas are covered by our four support pillars
- Our working board are all practitioners and have a huge range of legal and advisory expertise in this area and we are here to support you no matter what you need.
- We have partnered with Balens Insurance which means we have full access to their legal department as well as David Balen himself who we liaise with weekly.
- We have a team of specialist regulatory lawyers headed by Paul Grant who has huge experience in fighting regulatory and code of conduct issues and complaints in both statutory and non-statutory areas.
- On top of all of this we have support from Suzanne Dibble (Richard Branson’s ex-lawyer) who can help advise us on our policies and in-clinic legal guidelines and support.
- Robert Loveday is our corporate, commercial and litigation lawyer.
- The last member of our support team is Jon Payne who is a specialist licensing lawyer and provides legal support on a range of local authority licensing areas.
You can also speak with our CEO or deputy CEO at any time – we are here for you and love helping our members.
Training Support
We also offer training in areas that our practitioners have worked in for years without recognition – mycology, supplementation, testing and we have worked with our insurer to be able to have this covered within the policy without any further costs. We also offer specialist training in other areas that is rarely seen in any other organisation.   Visit our shop for details.
Insurance Support
We have designed a specific and heavily discounted scheme (£57 upwards) for acupuncturists and which includes all the usual additional modalities included at this price. Unlike block schemes, our policy is totally flexible and you may add other qualifications and insurance usually at no additional charge. Many insurances do not cover specific skillsets of high risk such as blood-letting or the use of semi-permanent needles, however our scheme has been designed to be able to offer these as additional options as well as cover wider scopes of practice by including subjects such as phlebotomy and being able to offer private blood tests for our clients.
International Organisations
The ARA wishes to connect and work with other international groups and offer memberships to those as an affiliate organisation who wish to work and collaborate together or full international organisation membership for those wishing to abide by our standards and codes and come together to improve acupuncture and standards across the world.
Global Representatives
We are looking for International Representatives in each country to over see membership organisations in your country who have joined ARA as well as promote ARA to existing organisations. If your country does not have an organisation we will set one up for you with software, support and all documentation. You will need a good grasp of English which is our chosen International language.