Your letters
Everyone is di ff erent, but personally I think that I would not be able to provide the same quality of care and attention to my clients as I do now if I were to practise every day
We are writing in response to Catherine Jackson’s article ‘Adapt and survive’ ( Therapy Today , February 2024). It is distressing to know that many counselling charities are closing while the demand is going up, and also to read that the provision of long-term, low-cost therapy is being questioned. We set up CoCo Counselling CIC in Edinburgh to establish a genuinely a ff ordable service that was accessible to anyone within the community who was able to engage with counselling. We also wanted to ensure that all our counsellors were paid for their work. Having researched and experienced other models of counselling services we realised that, for most of them to survive, they relied heavily on students and quali fi ed counsellors to work as unpaid volunteers. We wanted to create a model of working that worked for the clients and counsellors. To sustain our a ff ordable work we have a fee-paying service where those able to pay the full fee understand that they are helping to support others. It is extremely important to us that counsellors are valued for their skills, experience and time. Historically, counselling has often been viewed as a soft option, something that provides a holding space until clients are o ff ered appointments with a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist. By not paying counsellors for the invaluable work they do we would continue to feed into that narrative and
counselling charity, in a paid role as part of the practice management team. As a BACP spokesperson I love the media work I get to do, but I recognise that there is more creatively I can add to the industry. To this end 2024 is a time where I am choosing to pause taking on new one-to-one clients, as well as sticking to a four-day working week. This will free me up to dedicate some time to create some niche, self-service course content. My husband and I are now self-employed, and we both have a small portfolio of work. Although there is some fi nancial risk in this model, there is also room for great reward creatively. I think this is really important for those of us who thrive on variety as it helps us give back. February 2024), I was heartened to hear that several community-based mental health initiatives are fl ourishing throughout the UK. What seems clear is that there is strength in diversity. One aspect that is mentioned but not discussed is the reliance of many organisations on trainees in order to deliver free or low-cost services. The Department for Business and Trade’s 2017 independent report Good work: the Taylor review of modern working practices names unpaid internships ‘an abuse of power by employers and extremely damaging to social mobility’, yet clinical training hours running into the hundreds go unpaid. The lack of appropriate funding and Susie Masterson MBACP , psychotherapist and coach Unpaid counsellors Reading Catherine Jackson’s article ‘Adapt and survive’ ( Therapy Today , enormous expense of training precludes many underrepresented people from entering and diversifying therapy. To further strengthen our communities, as Toby Sweet is quoted, ‘we have to be realistic and we have to be fair’. Savannah Lambis , trainee humanistic integrative counsellor
undermine the importance of our role within society. Kate Frazer and Shilpa Balaram , Directors of CoCo Counselling CIC The community-based mental health initiatives featured in ‘Adapt and survive’ ( Therapy Today, February 2024) are essential but, as the article explores, increasingly di ffi cult to sustain. As the co-founders of The Mind Tree Café CIC, a community-based project in Wiltshire supporting health and wellbeing, we also know how much hard work it takes to get such an initiative o ff the ground. We are due to open our doors with a low-cost counselling service this spring. Wellbeing is dependent on multiple factors, so we are aiming to take a holistic approach and open a community café and a community shop, and o ff er workshops and opportunities to access crafts, art, exercise, meditation and gardening, as we have a large orchard. We are situated within a supported living community and hope to provide services for those residents. We set our company up in this way to future-proof it by producing income from counselling and other activities – funding has been di ffi cult, particularly as a start-up. We hope that once we open our doors funders will have a better understanding of our concept and realise this type of space ful fi ls a need that isn’t being met elsewhere in our locality. All our sta ff including ourselves are currently unpaid, which is not what we envisaged but it is the only way we can open. We will be o ff ering training and support for our counsellors in a unique setting, access to our orchard and other spaces. Providing a quality placement for students to complete their counselling hours is important to us. Once we access funding we will be able to look at fi nancial rewards. We hope to be in a better position to do so next year. Lisa Newton MBACP and Lisa Gurr MBACP , Directors of The Mind Tree Café CIC
THERAPY TODAY 13 MAY 2024
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