A Different Kind of Service - Community Based Counselling

I’ve partnered with The Tannahill Centre, in Paisley’s Ferguslie Park, to create a new community counselling service. I’m going to be based there three days a week and will be offering people therapy for as long as they need it at no/low cost. The service is going to give people space to talk about their experience in their own terms, while also being informed about experiences of poverty, class and the systemic injustices that many of us live with.

I’m doing something different because I don’t want to collude with the model that has been created by the lack of joined up thinking between politicians, practitioners, training providers and health care professionals. It has led to a counselling environment where counsellors have no option but to work two part time jobs and set up their own private company, charging upwards of £50 an hour to make a living. People are going to the bother and expense of getting themselves trained and finding a dysfunctional industry on the other end.

The current way of doing things, from service provision to counselling training, can and should be changed to create a functional system that we can depend on for mental health support.

Waiting lists for mental health support on the NHS are long. Really long. Government not meeting its own targets long. And when we get to the top of that waiting list, sometimes after waiting as much as four months, there’s no guarantee that we actually get to see a person. We might be referred to an online resource that has worksheets, wellbeing tips or artificial intelligence driven conversation tools. Then, having been sent the link, we’ll be moved off the waiting list and labelled as a successful referral. If we do get to see a person, we won’t have exercised any choice over what type of therapy that person can deliver or how long would be useful for us to keep seeing them.  

Genuinely solving a problem like this requires either the reduction of demand or the increase of supply.

Creating a more fair and equal society would reduce demand for mental health support services. A society where we are more connected to our communities; where we have enough money to build the life we want; where high quality social housing gives us the certainty and security of a roof over our heads; where politicians act in our interests instead of their own; where there are dignified jobs and training opportunities that give us the chance to explore our dreams – that kind of society is one where we would have the capacity and resilience to weather the storms that life can bring. It is hard to conclude, on any measure, that there are serious attempts at government level in the UK to create a more fair and equal society. So I don’t think we can count on demand decreasing in the short term.

Increasing supply means having more counsellors who can work with people for the period of time that would have the best therapeutic outcome.

Counsellor training in the UK is completely self-funded. My own training involved a £8,000 fee and then around £2,000 of additional costs – which included clinical supervision, travel costs to the place I got my voluntary hours and a teaching residential. My training institution didn’t even pay the £30 it cost to have my background check done. As well as the £10,000 cost, which was paid for with a mixture of a loan, savings and the generosity of a friend, I had to carve out a year of my life to complete the course and lean heavily on my relationship.

It's a way of doing things that makes training as a counsellor a viable option to mostly the middle classes. That is reflected in the application data for all of the universities in Scotland that offer a post graduate counselling qualification. As well as stifling diversity of thought and problem solving in the counselling profession, having predominantly middle-class counsellors has an impact on the support that people get. Class differences can impact our connection with our counsellor – especially when we have to explain ourselves and parts of our life that we have already been shamed for.

The primary objective of the service that I have created in the Tannahill Centre is to provide people in Paisley with affordable and non-judgemental counselling, on their doorstep. I want to do my bit to remove the barriers of cost, class and travel. I am so grateful to the team at the Tannahill Centre for taking this punt with me and for the community leadership they continue to show, so that people have somewhere they can connect and belong.

A lesson I learned in managing previous projects was not to wait until the thing is ready before sharing it. It’s early days and I’m open to all the different directions this could go in. I’ve got some thoughts about how we could expand the reach beyond and impact and I am open to talking to service designers and funders. If anything about what you have read has made you curious, get in touch.