Choosing Your ADHD Coach and Using The 6-Point Checklist
Do a quick Google search and you can find hundreds, if not thousands, of ADHD Coaches across the world.
This is great news as only a decade ago, ADHD coaching was not common in the UK (although America has been pioneering ADHD Coaching since the 1990s). Sadly, when something becomes popular, or in demand, some less well-intentioned people will want to capitalise on this. Particularly when Government grants are available through Access to Work.
Coaching in the UK is an unregulated industry. Anyone can say they are an ADHD Coach and offer their services without any training, qualifications, or insurance. Scary huh?
So how do you know that your ADHD Coach is going to help you, or if they are someone who has done a three-week course and is now cashing in - potentially doing more harm than good?
Here’s HATCHED’s six-point checklist to choosing the right ADHD Coach:
Accreditation from a recognised body (becoming an accredited coach is VERY DIFFERENT to being a ‘certified coach’)
Supervision
ADHD specialist training
Code of ethics
Experience
Insurance
1. ACCREDITATION
What’s The Difference Between Accreditation and Certification?
The two terms ‘Accreditation’ and ‘Certification’ are often incorrectly used as interchangeable terms, but they are different.
Accreditation: Becoming accredited is the ultimate benchmark of quality in the coaching world and getting accreditation is a rigorous process.
Certification: An organisation can spend 20 minutes with someone and issue a certificate to say they are an ADHD Coach. If an organisation pays a company to review and assess their training course for quality, then they might get CPD accreditation for their training. Regardless of whether a course is CPD accredited or not, a coach will not be accredited just by completing a course. Being a certified coach is DIFFERENT to being an Accredited ADHD Coach.
ADHD Coaches can be accredited at a variety of levels, from Associate Member to Master Practitioner. To become accredited, you must pass a lengthy and rigorous assessment against the following criteria:
Experience - the number of hours you have spent coaching - varies according to the level of accreditation.
Audio recordings of your coaching, which are assessed against a global competency framework.
Reflexive essays about your coaching, indicating self-awareness and growth.
The hours you have spent in one-to-one and group ‘coach supervision’.
How many hours of ADHD Continuing Professional Development (CPD) you complete every year.
A written exam.
Your commitment to the global standard of ethics.
To be accredited at senior levels, you also need to demonstrate your commitment to the development of the global coaching profession.
Coaches go through this extensive process of re-accreditation every five years!
You should check that your coach has an accreditation from one of the following professional bodies :
2. SUPERVISION
All people in helping professions (coaches, social workers, therapists, clinicians etc) should be in regular supervision. This means that they meet with a more experienced and specifically trained ‘supervisor’ regularly, to discuss their case load.
Coaching supervision is a way for ADHD Coaches to reflect on their practice and wellbeing with a trained supervisor. It helps coaches develop their skills, support their clients, and ensure the quality of their work. It is a necessary part of quality assurance, as well as a helpful mechanism for you to feel safe that your ADHD Coach is not operating alone and in a vacuum. Coaching supervision is usually done in small groups but can also be one-to-one. A good coach should be able to tell you how often they attend supervision and who their supervisor is.
3. ADHD specialist training (as well as being accredited as a coach)
Increasingly in my role as co-lead of the EMCC Neurodiversity group, we are hearing from people who feel they have been hurt or damaged by a coach who did not understand their neurodivergence. While many people have good coaching experiences with non-specialists, there is a greater risk of being set up to fail, and of not being supported to better understand your unique brain wiring and how to work differently.
Check that your ADHD Coach is accredited, but also that they have training in how to work with ADHD or neurodiversity. They should understand the need for emotional stimulation, how trauma and shame manifest, working with strengths, RSD, emotional dysregulation, and different processing needs, as a minimum.
Recommended training providers are:
4. Contracts and Code of Ethics
ADHD Coaches should have a clear code of ethics, a contract, and terms and conditions around how you will work together. These should cover practical things like confidentiality, processing personal information, safeguarding, stakeholders, who is responsible for booking sessions, cancellations, and refunds etc.
They should also cover matters like the coach’s approach to diversity, equity and inclusion, conflicts of interest, and how a coach manages more complex questions of ethics, professional conduct, and values.
You can find Codes of Ethics at :
5. Experience
‘Coaching hours’ are the hours a coach has spent coaching a client, either in person or by phone / video. An Accredited ADHD Coach must have a minimum number of coaching hours to achieve their accreditation.
Although relatively new coaches (with, say, 200 hours under their belt) may be accredited and be excellent coaches, a coach with 2,000 coaching hours will probably have a wider range of experience to draw from. This may also impact on what coaches charge and less experienced coaches tend to be more affordable.
Chemistry / Introductory Calls
There are wide variety of qualified ADHD Coaches in the UK, with differing backgrounds and experience.
Once you have checked that your coach is accredited by a legitimate professional body, the most important thing is to find a coach with whom you can be honest and have good rapport. You might prefer to work with someone who is similar to you (gender, sexuality, professional background, parent etc), or with someone who is completely different.
A chemistry call, also known as a discovery call, exploratory call, or taster session, is a free phone / video conversation between a potential client and a coach to determine if they are a good fit to work together.
Having a chemistry, or discovery call with at least three coaches is good practice, even if you love the first ADHD Coach you speak to! Different things will come up in each call, and you will only be able to make a comparison after you have had more than one (check in on your impulsivity and the recency effect too).
Chemistry calls are a two-way process - good coaches are busy and want their potential clients to get the best results. They will completely understand if you find a better fit elsewhere and might even recommend another coach to you if they think you would be a better match with them.
No coach should be giving you a hard sell during a chemistry call.
6. Insurance
While you don’t need to be a limited company, have a podcast, a social media presence, or even a website to be a great coach, there are some minimum standards of running a safe and professional business.
Your ADHD Coach should be able to provide evidence of accreditation, talk to you about their supervision, and provide details of their insurance if asked. They should also have a GDPR policy and be able to tell you about their code of ethics. Hopefully, you will never need to reference any of these things, but they demonstrate that a coach takes their responsibility towards their clients seriously and operates a professional business.
RED FLAGS REVIEW
‘Certified’ but not accredited. Has done ‘a course’ (even a “CPD registered” course) but is not accredited with the ICF, EMCC, PAAC or ACA.
Is not in supervision or does not discuss their terms and ethics with you.
Gives you a hard sell.
Tells your that their system or programme works for everyone.
To learn more about coaching, read What Is Coaching? here. You can also visit ADHD Coaching and Executive Coaching to see if it’s right for you.
If you’d like to get in touch about ADHD Coaching, contact me here. I’d love to discuss what you need and help if I can.
HELENA
To receive notification when we publish a new article, sign-up below.
