Unconditional Positive Regard
The Big Idea

UPR stands for unconditional positive regard, a concept from the client-centered, humanistic school developed by Carl Rogers.  It refers to the general idea that people are valuable and capable the way they are, but that they sometimes encounter hurdles that get in the way of them realising their full potential.  Rogers believed that unconditional positive regard provides people with the best possible conditions for personal growth. This is what we think our products do and that is why we are called UPR.

Our company was established when everyone involved found themselves striving toward the same goal, and believing in the same ethos.  All of our respective profesional and life experience led us to form UPR one, and most importantly, to believe whole-heartedly in what we do.

We want our products to facilitate people to remove the hurdles they encounter in their life.

We think the best way to do that is to work with community and voluntary agencies that generally treat the people they are reaching in the same way that we do.  Good examples are charities, and support organisations.  These organisations are usually run by people who know and are passionate about the issues, and may have personal experience of them.  So we feel they are the experts.  Because support organisations do not require a diagnosis for membership, the focus is not on the person’s deficits, but rather, on the fact that they are actively trying to help themselves. We think this is very powerful.

Our philosophy is very simple; we want to empower people to get help. We want to create the best possible conditions for personal growth. We want to make it easier for people to access evidence-based help, when they need it. And we feel that the best vehicle to achieve all of this is through the internet.

We know that many people who need help will never access clinical services. But perhaps they would if they were easier to access.

We want to present people with an alternative to traditional clinical or support group models to help people move over the bridge from a contemplation stage of change, to the action stage. In other words, by giving people an easier alternative to attending traditional face-to-face services, we can provide people with a positive first experience, and make it easier for them to avail of traditional services if necessary.

We want to help support organisations provide low-cost, evidence-based support and interventions to people who would not otherwise avail of their services.

Either for geographical location or mobility reasons, or for those who are awaiting help on a waiting list.

We want to see charities and other supportive organisations exploiting the internet to cost-effectively and efficiently provide an alternative and an adjunct to their traditional services. In so doing, we want these organisations to deliver their message to much wider audiences, and tap into those who would never ordinarily use traditional services.

We also want to see positive helping strategies being democratised, as a way of counter-balancing the large amount of negative information that is available on the internet.

We will only build applications that are either evidence-based, or have a strong justification, grounded in evidence.  There are many reasons for this:

1.  Because we don’t believe there is any point in re-inventing the wheel.  Why develop a new form of therapy when   exisiting ones have proven track-records? 

2.  There is an ethical obligation to offer people the help that is most likely to benefit them.  

3.  By using tried-and-tested approaches, our products are not at odds with traditional services, but rather, compliment them.

CBT and Interapy

To demonstrate, lets take two examples of evidence-based approaches that have been delivered over the internet: CBT and Interapy.  They are also relatively brief, practical, and importantly they are empowering.  We believe that due to the usually high level of acceptability of these interventions, people who are in need for longer-term traditional face-to-face therapies may find it easier to access it after it is demystified.

CBT is probably the most widely-investigated and empirically supported psychological treatment available.  Originally developed to treat depression (i.e. Beck, 1978), it has also been successfully tried and tested in manual form (eg. Padesky & Greenberger’s “Mind Over Mood”), and successfully delivered over the internet for prevention or treatment and for a range of disorders including eating disorders (Celio et al., 2000; Winzelberg et al., 1988; 2000; Zabinski, Wilfley et al., 2001), depression (eg. Houston, Cooper & Ford, 2002); loneliness among people with physical disabilities (Hopps, Pepin & Boisvert, 2003); breast cancer (Lieberman, 2001) and many more.

Other forms of therapy have also been successfully developed for internet delivery such as Interapy - a form of writing therapy for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (Lange, van de Ven, Schrieken & Emmelkamp, 2001). 

Interestingly, the effect sizes for the internet form of the therapy were 3 times greater than for the face-to-face equivalent (Lange et al., 2001).

There is another implication of our emphasis on evidence-base.  We encourage our clients to allow us to build-in the capacity for evaluating the services we build.  We feel this is of primary importance, not only because it is in the interest of responsible service delivery, but also because internet-based service delivery is still a relatively new field.  We have experience in both internet-mediated research methods and intervention evaluation.

The big idea behind UPR is that we use an evidence-based approach to the development of our tools.  We think we have hit on the perfect combination of expertise - psychological and academic knowledge, years of community and voluntary sector experience, technical and design expertise - to create innovative online learning and therapeutic tools.

It’s this combination that allows us to provide the unique breath of services we offer.  We have developed a set of super-easy-to-use tools that organisations actually need, with functionality they can use, for services they have wanted to provide, but until now, couldn’t.

This set of tools includes:

• uMeet, an online support group system
• uGive, a highly effective fundraising tool that promises truly good-value for charities
• and uLearn, a specialised learning management system

We can not only provide the end tools, but for those who want to deliver more structured interactive interventions, we can help develop the content too. For all of this, we can consult on best practice, and advise on what the best options are for your organisation.