News round-up Our monthly digest of news, updates and events
School- and college-based counselling in England In response to growing concerns about the mental health of children and young people in England, we have joined Citizens UK, the largest civil society federation across the UK, along with NASUWT – the Teachers’ Union, NAHT – the School Leaders’ Union, The National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society and the charity Parentkind, to campaign for a fair, workable and long-term solution. We’re asking the next Government to legislate for the statutory provision of counselling by specialist children and young people counsellors or psychotherapists, to address the mental health needs of pupils in primary and secondary schools, and further education colleges in England, or wherever a child is educated within the state system. Additional funding for early support hubs We’re pleased that the Government has announced an additional £3 million funding for early support mental health hubs. These hubs will provide much- needed support to young people in the heart of their community. In October 2023 the Government announced £4.92 million would be available for 10 early support hubs to fund services for one year. It’s now providing an additional £3 million to expand the number of hubs to 24 across the country. The announcement comes after years of campaigning by the Fund Working for you
Spring budget ‘lost opportunity’ At a time when we’re seeing the cost of living having a negative impact on people’s mental health, and mental health services themselves are struggling and over capacity, we’d hoped to see much more from the Chancellor in helping people access support. The spring budget announcement included an increase in the VAT threshold to £90,000. Although this will benefit some services, ultimately it would be more beneficial to exempt counselling and psychotherapy services from VAT entirely. While this increase will help many third sector services struggling with increasing demands, more complex referrals and spiralling running costs, we’d hoped that there would have been much more about serious investment into mental health services to offset the continued mental health crisis facing the nation. However, we were pleased to see the Chancellor’s pledge for funding (£75 million) to expand violence reduction units across England and Wales, some of which provide counselling services to support people who have been, or are vulnerable to, involvement in violence. You can read our response to the spring budget on our website. ! For more details and to keep up to date with the work of the BACP Policy team, see www.bacp.co.uk/news/ news-from-bacp
the Hubs coalition, of which we’re a member along with many other leading mental health charities and organisations. Mental health strategy review Labour’s mental health strategy review led by BACP Vice President Luciana Berger on behalf of the Labour Party is looking at how Government departments can help with one of its key objectives to prevent mental health issues. As many issues covered are devolved, much of the focus of the review is on policies for England. We’ve included several recommendations in our response to the review, including increasing people’s choice in what type of therapy they can access beyond CBT, and improving and increasing the current mental health provision by using the large number of trained counsellors and psychotherapists available. In February more than 1,400 members in England responded to our consultation on the review, adding their voice and experience to our own analysis of the challenges and opportunities. Thank you to everyone who took the time to share their thoughts with us. As well as informing our own response to the review, we shared these responses with Luciana and her team.
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THERAPY TODAY
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