Where UK supervised practice for HCPC applicants comes from — and why nobody, including HCPC, publishes a list of providers

We could not find a published list of UK providers of HCPC supervised practice, from HCPC or from anyone else with the authority to compile one. That is not a research failure. HCPC states, in writing, that no such list exists and that it will not produce one:

“we do not directly approve or endorse any specific placements or courses.”

This page is therefore not a directory. It is an account of what HCPC actually requires, why the supply side is empty, and what the applicant is left holding — because that answer, given honestly, is more use than a made-up list of hospitals.

First, the eligibility gate, because most readers stop here

A period of adaptation is not available to most international applicants. HCPC restricts it to applicants who:

“Are a national of a relevant European state or have acquired rights (for example, through marriage to such a national); and Are entitled to practise one of the professions that we regulate in another relevant European state.”

For everyone else on HCPC’s international route, the outcomes since 20 November 2025 are acceptance, a test of competence, or refusal. If that is you, there is no supervised practice to find, and the rest of this page is background rather than a plan.

What HCPC requires of a placement

Strip away the eligibility question and the requirements are surprisingly few — which is precisely why no market has formed around them.

One formal requirement for the supervisor. From HCPC’s guidance to employers and supervisors:

“The only formal requirement that we set is that a supervisor must be registered in the relevant part of the HCPC Register.”

It then adds expectations rather than rules: “as with any other aspect of professional practice, the person must have sufficient experience and training to take on the role. This might include experience of teaching, supervising or mentoring others… The supervising registrant will also need to be familiar with the standards of proficiency.”

Location. “A period of adaptation is usually undertaken in an appropriate setting within the United Kingdom. If a period of adaptation is undertaken outside of the UK, it must still be supervised by a current HCPC registrant from the relevant part of the Register.”

That second sentence is easy to miss and occasionally decisive. The placement does not have to be in Britain. The supervisor has to be on Britain’s register.

Content. It is defined by your own record of assessment, not by a syllabus: “The types of study and/or experience that you need to undertake will be clear from your record of assessment.”

Length. HCPC sets it — “We will also tell an applicant how long they will need to spend in each area in order to gain the experience necessary to meet the standards for registration” — but the supervisor can move it in either direction, recommending registration early or extending “at their discretion”. And: “There is no time limit for the completion of a period of adaptation.”

Academic training counts, and HCPC will comment on a specific proposal. “Sometimes a period of adaptation may also include further study, such as taking a course module at a UK university. If you need advice as to whether a course or module will meet the requirements of the period of adaptation, we will normally be able to give you some guidance.”

That is the one place HCPC offers to engage with a named course. It is an offer of guidance on a proposal you bring, not a recommendation it will make.

And a category of provision HCPC acknowledges without naming. “There are also a small number of basic skills courses that are supervised by registrants and combine academic study and clinical experience which can help you to meet our requirements.” A small number. No names, no link, no criteria. We looked and did not find an HCPC-published list of them, and we are not going to guess at which providers it means.

Why nobody can supply you with a list

Because HCPC has removed every mechanism by which one would exist.

• It does not approve them. “we do not directly approve or endorse any specific placements or courses.”
• It does not find them. “it is your responsibility to arrange a suitable placement. We are unable to assist you with finding or funding a placement.”
• It does not fund them. “We are unable to provide any funding for placements.” Stated separately to applicants and to employers.
• It cannot compel an employer to host one. “We cannot make an employer support your period of adaptation.” And to employers: “As an employer you are under no obligation to provide a period of adaptation. We recognise that workload and resource pressures may mean that you are not able to support an applicant seeking a period of adaptation.”

A placement type that is unapproved, unfunded, uncompelled and individually negotiated does not generate a public directory, because no organisation has a reason to maintain one and no organisation would be accountable for it. Any list you find is one company’s sales page.

The referral HCPC gives instead, and where it leads

HCPC’s live page ends the question this way:

“HCPC can not assist applicants in arranging for adaptation. You may however find it helpful to contact the relevant professional body in the UK. Some of them provide support and networking opportunities for overseas-qualified professionals. You can find their contact details by going to the professions section of our website and choosing your profession.”

We followed that instruction. HCPC’s professions section publishes, for each of the fifteen professions it regulates, a one-line description, the protected titles, and any annotations. It does not publish professional body contact details. The URL cited for that purpose in HCPC’s own periods-of-adaptation brochure — hcpc-uk.org/aboutregistration/professions — redirects to that same page.

So the single onward pointer HCPC offers points at a page that no longer carries what it promises. We are recording that as a fact about the guidance, not as an accusation: the referral is stale, and if you have been going round in circles following it, the circle is real.

The professional bodies themselves obviously exist, and each of the fifteen professions has at least one — HCPC’s brochure says so. We are not going to reproduce a list of them from memory or from a third party. Identify the body for your profession from its own website, and treat HCPC’s suggestion as a suggestion: it says some bodies “provide support and networking opportunities”, not that any of them arrange placements.

The form is the leverage, so use it as one

Everything about arranging a period of adaptation is informal except the approval, and the approval is where you get certainty. HCPC’s process:

1. You find a provider and a supervisor.
2. You submit the Adaptation Period: Request to Approve Provider form. It has four parts. Part A is your details, HCPC reference number and profession. Part B is the proposed provider, location and “Which elements of the adaptation period (as set out in the letter requiring the applicant to undertake compensation measures) it is proposed will be undertaken”, with activity and duration. Part C is completed by the proposed supervisor and asks for their name, job title, relationship to the provider, HCPC registration number, work address and telephone number. Part D is for HCPC’s Education and Training Committee.
3. HCPC checks “whether the proposed adaptation meets the requirements set out by us for adaptation periods and also addresses the shortfalls listed in your Record of Assessment.”
4. Only after written notification of approval “may you begin your adaptation.”

Two rules make step 2 non-negotiable in practice:

“Please note that we will only accept Certificate of Completion from the originally approved provider. If you wish to change your provider after starting your POA, you must contact us and prepare another Adaptation Period: Request to Approve Provider form. Providers not accepted by us prior to commencement of your POA will not be accepted.”

Work unapproved is work wasted. And because the form requires the supervisor’s HCPC registration number in their own hand, it is also your verification step: a supervisor who cannot supply one cannot supervise you, and HCPC’s public Register lets you check the number before you commit months to someone.

Ask HCPC to approve the plan before you ask an employer to commit to it. The form’s Part B is a description of a proposal, not a signed contract. Getting HCPC’s view on whether a proposed setting and activity list actually addresses your record of assessment costs you nothing and gives the prospective supervisor something concrete to say yes or no to.

What the supervisor has to do at the end

Worth knowing before you approach anyone, because the ask is smaller than most people assume. HCPC requires a letter containing:

“the full name of the applicant and application reference number; your name, registration number and signature; where the adaptation period took place; the start and end dates of the adaptation period; a statement saying that you have read the original recommendation of the HCPC assessors and are satisfied that the applicant does / does not meet the standards of proficiency for the profession; and a short statement explaining why you feel that the applicant should or should not be registered.”

HCPC also limits what is being judged: “we are not asking you to tell us whether the applicant is capable of working at any particular grade or in any particular setting, only whether or not they meet the threshold standards of proficiency.” And the final call is not the supervisor’s: “the decision whether to register an applicant is a decision for our Education and Training Committee.”

HCPC frames the role to employers as equivalent to hosting a student: “You can treat the applicant in the same way as you might treat a student on a placement or a professional returning to practice after a career break”, and suggests the supervision itself “might also be a very useful part of a registrant’s continuing professional development (CPD) activity.”

That framing is the most useful thing to put in front of a prospective host, because it is HCPC’s own description of the commitment, and it is smaller than the one they will imagine.

The alternative you are entitled to ask for

If you have been told to complete a period of adaptation and cannot arrange one, you are not without a move. HCPC:

“If you disagree with the decision to require you to complete a period of adaptation you may request an aptitude test.”

It “may be in the form of a structured interview, or possibly a practical examination”, the areas covered “will be included in your record of assessment”, and you request it in writing. “If you pass the aptitude test you will be eligible for registration.”

An aptitude test needs no employer, no supervisor, no funding and no approval form. For an applicant who has spent months failing to find a host, that is a materially different proposition, and it appears nowhere near the top of HCPC’s own guidance.

Separately, there is a 28-day appeal window from the decision letter.

The condition of the guidance itself

The document that contains almost everything quoted above is a 20-page brochure carrying the publication code 20110210REGPUB and the copyright line ”© Health and Care Professions Council 2012”, “reprinted with amends due to organisational name change in August 2012”.

It is still the linked guidance on a page HCPC updated on 20 November 2025. It explains eligibility by reference to “the Professional Qualifications Directive (Directive 2005/36/EC)”, lists the EEA member states including the United Kingdom, gives a 0845 telephone number, and points readers to europa.eu, ukncp.org.uk, rose.nhs.uk, jobs.nhs.uk and dh.gov.uk.

Read the operational requirements from it — the approval form, the supervisor letter, the location rule, the “no time limit” line — because those are reproduced on HCPC’s current pages and forms. Treat its account of the legal framework and its onward links as a period document.

What we could not verify

Any named UK provider of HCPC supervised practice. No official source names one. HCPC says it does not approve or endorse placements or courses, and the professional-body pointer it offers leads to a page without contact details. We publish no provider list rather than publish an unverifiable one.

The identity of the “small number of basic skills courses” HCPC refers to. HCPC acknowledges they exist and does not name them. We found no HCPC page or document that does.

Any figure for the cost of a period of adaptation. HCPC states it will not fund one and that employers are under no obligation to host one. It publishes no cost, and there is nothing to compare against.

Current NHS or university provision. HCPC’s own referrals on this point are to a set of links dating from 2012. We did not substitute our own survey of NHS trusts or universities for a regulator’s list, because a snapshot we compiled would carry no authority and would be out of date before it was useful.

What to do

1. Confirm you are eligible for a period of adaptation at all before spending a day looking for one. Two conditions, both required, and most international applicants meet neither.
2. Start from your record of assessment, not from a job board. It defines the areas, and HCPC’s approval turns on whether the proposal addresses those areas.
3. Recruit the supervisor first, the setting second. The only formal requirement is registration in the relevant part of the HCPC Register, and the approval form requires their registration number.
4. Get written approval before day one. HCPC will not accept a completion certificate from a provider it did not approve in advance.
5. Show a prospective host HCPC’s own description of the role — student-equivalent supervision, a short closing letter, and a possible CPD credit for the supervisor. It is a smaller ask than it sounds and HCPC has written it down for you.
6. If a placement cannot be arranged, request the aptitude test. It is an entitlement, it removes the employer from the equation entirely, and passing it makes you eligible for registration.
7. Ask HCPC about a specific named module or course. It has said it “will normally be able to give you some guidance” on whether one meets the requirements. That is a real, underused channel, and it is the only one that exists.

We are not a regulator, we do not arrange placements and we do not approve providers. HCPC’s Education and Training Committee approves them, one proposal at a time, and it has said clearly that it endorses none in advance. What this page does is tell you that the directory you were looking for does not exist — and hand you the four things that do.