Dear Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education: A Case for Mandatory School and College-Based Counselling Services

On 6th August 2024, CTUK sent the following letter to Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education, calling for mandatory counselling services in all UK schools and colleges. We will update you if and when we receive a response.


Dear Secretary of State,

Counsellors Together (CTUK) is the largest counsellor and psychotherapy campaign group in the UK with over 10,000 members.

As you are aware, England is experiencing a mental health epidemic. England is also the only nation in the Union not to have government-funded school counselling.

Children and young people are facing unprecedented challenges, while teachers and other social and health care services are unable to adequately support them. You’ll be aware of the deep anxiety within families, schools and all other services for children and young people about the current lack of consistent, professional mental health support available to pupils across England. The mental health of the nation’s children and young people is at a critical tipping point.

Currently, 1.2 million people are waiting for help with their mental health and more than a quarter of a million children are on mental health waiting lists, yet only half the schools in England and Wales provide counselling. Alarming statistics indicate that “a fifth (20%) of eight to 16-year-olds had a probable mental health condition in 2023. This rate is more than 50% higher than it was in 2017 (13%).” (1) These children are more likely to miss school, harm themselves, and have poorer health and living conditions as adults if left untreated.

Early intervention has a greater impact on children’s lives, leading to better health outcomes as adults and a positive impact on the economy. Recent research shows that “Universal access to counselling among young people in England would generate lifetime fiscal benefits to the government of £1.9 billion, against an annual cost of about £250 million.” (1) School-based counselling increases school attendance and ensures students receive the support they need.

CTUK asks you to:

  1. Make it a legal requirement that all schools and colleges in England provide a government funded counselling service.
  2. Ensure that all counsellors working within schools and colleges in England are paid a decent working wage, avoiding the reliance on volunteer services. Volunteerism, while well-meaning, cannot provide the consistent and professional support that our children need. Paid, professional counsellors bring expertise, continuity, and stability which is crucial for effective support. They build lasting relationships, provide consistent care, are trained to identify and manage a wide range of mental health issues, and adopt a whole-school approach.
  3. Consider collaborating with The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and The National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society (NCPS) to access a workforce of approximately 70,000 qualified and experienced counsellors. A BACP Workforce survey indicated that half of their members had capacity to take on more paid work, NCPS members will have similar availability. This suggests there is a highly trained workforce which could step into the specialist mental health professional role in schools outlined in your Party’s manifesto.

Counselling has a transformative impact on the lives and prospects of children and young people. By ensuring every school has a dedicated, professional counsellor we can better safeguard the mental health of our students, ultimately supporting the well-being and academic success of the future workforce.

All children deserve equal access to the best education available. Children whose families cannot afford private counselling and whose schools do not have a professional counselling service are being denied that opportunity.

Lastly, data released from the Welsh Government earlier this week, found that only 2.9 per cent of children and young people accessing counselling needed an on-going referral to CAMHs. If school counselling was funded in England this could take tremendous pressure away from higher tiered NHS services. (2)

Thank you for considering this important initiative. I am local to Sunderland and would be more than willing to meet to discuss further at a time convenient to yourself.

I look forward to your response and hope for positive action to be taken.

Best wishes,

Maria Albertsen
Founder, Counsellors Together UK (CTUK)
www.ukcounsellors.co.uk
Founder, National Counsellors’ Day
www.nationalcounsellorsday.co.uk

Further reading

Citizens UK campaign calling on the UK Government to make it a legal requirement to provide counselling in primary schools, secondary schools, and Further Education colleges in England, supported by The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), the largest professional membership body for counsellors and psychotherapists in the UK. More information can be found here.

Counsellors Together UK campaign, ‘Make it mandatory for every UK school to provide counselling for children and young people,’ gained over 21,500 signatures on change.org. See here.

The National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society (NCPS), the UK’s second-largest professional membership body, supports the ‘Access to Counselling for Every Child’ campaign. More details can be found here.

References

(1) The Case for Counselling in Schools and Colleges – A socioeconomic impact assessment which states a case for universal access to counselling for children and young people. See here.

(2) Research bulletin: the impact of statutory school and community-based counselling services for children and young people. See here.

One thought on “Dear Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education: A Case for Mandatory School and College-Based Counselling Services”

  1. PCU School Counsellor Campaign
    PCU continues to campaign for better pay and conditions for school counsellors. PCU draws your attention to the following submitted resolution to BACP and the subsequent outcome, together with our reply.

    The Resolution
    BACP to create a clear strategy to establish the role of school counsellors in the professional geography of practitioners working in education, embedded in the school system in such a way that they are delivering a counselling service that includes, but also extends, beyond counselling for pupils.
    There has been a persistent failure to establish the professional identity of the school counsellor within education. Although campaigns have focussed on attracting funding to this work, the numerous ways school counselling has been delivered has resulted in confusion about the role, a plethora of organisations offering counselling in schools and precarious funding. Over the years, the increasing use of counsellors on placement and outreach services has tended to erode the original vision for a school counselling professional in education. Indeed In 2019, following the Government’s Green Paper for Transforming children and young people’s mental health, when a new profession was created, that of Mental Health Practitioners in Education, BACP challenged the scope of this policy document claiming that “the Government are again choosing to ignore thousands of highly-trained and under-utilised counsellors and psychotherapists” in the creation of a new role that seemed to bypass school counsellors.
    This resolution suggests that it is time to create a strategy that will establish the professional role of the school counsellor embedded in education. It is time to make a clear distinction between this role and the values, aims, and responsibilities of school counsellors who work in education, from other counsellors who deliver services in schools and are funded in different ways:
    1. Counsellors who are positioned in school and deliver a counselling service which contributes to mental health in education within the school system make a considerable contribution to the ethos of the school as well as individual pupils. Their competences map to Column C of the SCoPEd Framework. There are many schools in England who have for many years devolved funds to directly employ school counsellors and a well-focussed survey might help to ascertain the contribution a school counsellor makes to education thereby establishing their professional identity.
    2. Counsellors who deliver counselling to pupils in school as part of an outreach service from other organisations that are distinct from the school often work from values outside of education and may focus on mental health problems of individual young people on a short-term basis. These counsellors may be ancillary to health services or to individual charities but are not necessarily embedded in education so the term school-based counsellor might be a misnomer. Their professional identity may be different, and similar, from the school counsellor in education and may need further exploration.
    3. Counsellors on placement who are not yet qualified but may be used to deliver counselling to pupils. It is important to clarify that their aims are to develop experience while supporting vulnerable pupils. However, the impact on the professional identity of the school counsellor must be carefully considered. Stopping the practice of allowing organisations to advertise for placement school counsellors to deliver services when there is no counselling service in place or there are no existing experienced outreach counsellors working in the schools may be crucial in developing the school counsellor as a professional in education.
    4. In addition, it will be necessary to enter into conversations with education and counselling unions, and other stakeholders, to ensure that counsellors delivering a school counselling service are remunerated on a professional basis, similar to counsellors in higher education. Also, ensuring that any campaigning for money for school counsellors makes clear that funds can also be given to schools directly as well as outreach services or agency tenders.

    The Response from BACP
    Thank you for submitting this resolution as part of our 2024 AGM process.

    The Motions and Resolutions process is an invaluable opportunity for members to have their voices heard by the BACP Board of Governors. We are extremely grateful to every member who has taken the time and effort to contribute to this crucial engagement process.

    After thorough consideration, the Board has agreed that this resolution will not progress to the support stage. However, we would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge your concerns on these important issues raised and to respond directly to the key points in your submission.

    BACP campaign and lobby all political parties in England to include full-time, permanent positions for school counsellors working 52 weeks per year as part of the ‘mental health professional in schools’ commitments. This commitment is outlined in our manifesto. We will continue to work with any future administration around including the CYP counselling and psychotherapy workforce within this ask.
    We argue that the pay band is at least a band 5 equivalent to NHS pay and have used NJC Local Authority bands to compare this salary.
    We are advising the Private Members Bill, raised by the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords on the specialist counselling workforce available to fit into the roles, with an emphasis of working with the ‘missing middle’.
    We launched our essential guide for schools last year inclusive of the standards of training and experience needed to work in schools which we use in our discussions linked to our campaign work as a key standard to follow. This enables us to promote the professional identity and role of the school counsellor.
    We believe school counselling services should be embedded within the wider school ethos and whole school approach and have built upon our learning across our four nations work. This is inclusive of a commitment to campaign for funding for access to independent school counselling services across schools and colleges in England. We argue that Government funded services are independent of school management systems for issues of governance, data collection, consistency of professional standards linked to training and qualifications as well as ensuring policies, procedures and processes are in place that support the provision.
    Whilst supporting the motion to create a clear strategy to establish and maintain the professional identity of school counsellors delivering a counselling service within education, so that they are recognised and valued as important professionals in the geography of education, we do this by campaigning for funding for independent school counselling services adhering to an agreed specification.
    I hope this additional information is reassuring and helps gives some further context to the important matters you have raised.

    Right of Reply
    This right of reply is published by PCU in response to BACP’s rejection of a resolution “to create a strategy that will establish the professional role of the school counsellor embedded in education.”

    The resolution sought clarity over positioning of school counsellors as

    1. Employed directly by the school and part of the school system
    2. Employed by other agencies and placed within a school but not necessarily part of the school system
    3. Volunteer counsellors on placement as part of training

    BACP, quite rightly, draws attention to the work consistently and currently being undertaken to campaign and lobby political parties. This work was acknowledged in the resolution request. However, the resolution requested a clear strategy which included more than lobbying political parties for funding. The resolution suggested that how this funding was devolved was an important and strategic part of establishing the professional role of a school counsellor.

    This resolution drew attention to the role of school counsellors in the context of education in England, an area which seems to often be neglected in BACPs support of school counselling. In their response, they reference bands of pay from NHS and NJC, not Education. This seems odd for a profession that calls itself school counselling. They talk of 52 weeks per year contracts. This ignores the term time way that schools are structured. Such comments compromise the proposal that school counsellors could ever be part of the education workforce and receive a pay scale within that profession.

    BACP reference their campaign for school counsellors as part of their ‘mental health professional in schools’ commitments. They note that they are advising the Private Members Bill, raised by the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords on the specialist counselling workforce. Baroness Tyler of Enfield does indeed advocate for “all schools—primary and secondary —to have a counsellor or” and this is where the devil is in the detail, “equivalent-level mental health professional”. Those of us who work in schools are all too familiar with what “an equivalent level mental health professional” might mean. This does not always bode well for what has become called the “missing middle” of school counselling. The “missing middle” is a recently coined phrase to highlight a space between the new profession of Mental Health Support Teams in Education and Child and Adolescent Mental Health. School counsellors are now being identified as best equipped to fill this space. This is perhaps another reason for a more targeted and thought out strategy. Exactly how are school counsellors expected to fill this space?

    BACPs response places an inordinate emphasis on their support and perhaps strategy to have “independent school counselling services which are independent of school management systems.” Yet, their own referenced document, Essential Guide for School Leaders, Mental Health Leads and Commissioners, talks of the advantages of a school counsellor employed directly by the school becoming embedded in school processes, even referring to line management of the counsellor. It is difficult to see how this can happen if they are independent of the school management systems. The document also itemises no less than five ways to provide school counselling but the most space is given to provision through “commissioning a counselling agency or commercial company”. While lauding the sentiment that independent services might lead to more consistency of practice, independent school counselling services find their funding through a tendering process. This might mean that cost efficiency may be more important than pay and conditions for school counsellors.

    To conclude, BACPs response suggests that a strategy is in place within the profession for school counselling. Here at PCU we would argue that this strategy does not offer fair consideration of all school counsellors if the school counsellor is not to be considered as part of education. The implications of this within a precarious profession are worrying. There are many school counsellors who are already employed by, and are indeed embedded in, their schools. Are their needs being represented in the current strategy?

    There are still many ways to deliver counselling in schools and to become a school counsellor. PCU maintains that a clear strategy is necessary to unite this fragmented workforce and ensuring a clear and professional identity for school counsellors in education is a crucial step in this process.

    Dr M McGowan, School Counsellor Lead, PCU

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