Íø±¬ÃÅ

It’s time to say goodbye to the children, young people and families’ policy work I’ve led over the last five years and take up a secondment opportunity to drive Íø±¬ÃÅ’s  safeguarding work forward. I’m simultaneously excited and incredibly sad to be leaving the Policy team and a role I’ve absolutely loved working in.

I joined the Policy team in early 2019, pre-pandemic, and hit the ground running. So much was going on. I’d just left a full-time role as a school counsellor and had first-hand experience of school money simply running out. My focus since then has always been that we shouldn’t rely on depleting school budgets to pay for counselling in England and, to protect the wider profession, any funded provision should remain independent from school management budgets.

When I started in post, Scotland had just secured funding for its five-year school counselling programme. I represented Íø±¬ÃÅ at a scrutiny event in Holyrood and answered questions on the impact of counselling and workforce availability. I’ve remained close to the programme over the years and was honoured to meet so many Íø±¬ÃÅ members involved in delivering the programme this summer in Fife, as part of an evaluation impact report we are writing.

Statutory school and community counselling were already well established in Wales when I joined the team, but within a year of being in post, I was involved in updating the school and community counselling toolkit. Five years on and we’re helping to facilitate a further edition to capture best practice with some incredible Local Authority providers and Íø±¬ÃÅ members involved in the update, including our  CYPF divisional chair, Emma Davies and Local Authority Lead, Rhian Miller (MÍø±¬ÃÅ).

In Northern Ireland, I worked with the then Education Minister Michelle McIlveen, alongside Caryl Sibbet (MÍø±¬ÃÅ), to help establish the ethos for the Happy Healthy Minds pilot project for primary schools. We continue to lobby to re-establish this vital early help provision for children, but also continue to hear there is no money.

In England, the work has included ongoing campaigning to fund early help hubs in community settings, adopting the well-established Youth Access model which promotes access to advice, information and counselling services under one roof. A highlight of this work was 22 early help hubs receiving Shared Outcome funding over a two-year period to deliver a range of services, including free at the point of access counselling to 11-25 year olds.

Alongside our campaign coalition partners, we later produced a Blueprint document to help influence the Young Futures roll out, with early help interventions at the heart of delivery. There remains a pressing need to continue to campaign for early help hubs with free access to counselling as part of that offer.  It was a manifesto commitment and one which we continue to hold the Government to account on.

Another key policy ask has been the move towards a more enhanced roll-out of Mental Health Support Teams (MHST) in schools, adopting the Barnardo’s MHST+ plus approach. This involves campaigning to include counselling as part of a funded MHST pathway in order to work with the ‘missing middle’ - those children and young people who fall between lower-level CBT interventions and higher tiered CAMHS. We produced a flowchart, alongside our brilliant School-Based Counselling Expert Reference Group, to help explain where counselling fits in with the missing middle. We will continue to share this with politicians and decision makers.

Lastly, our joint campaign work with Citizens UK has been a highlight, initially helping to set up a school counselling service in North East Tyneside followed by more campaign work in Brighton, eventually establishing a two-year Local Authority-funded school counselling pilot programme. During this time, we jointly worked with Public First to produce a report on the economic benefits of school counselling with an £8 return on investment for every £1 spent on counselling in secondary schools and a staggering £10 return on investment for primary school counselling. I hope this report leaves its mark and is referenced regularly as the work continues.

My final word is a huge thank you to the Policy team at Íø±¬ÃÅ and all those who have helped me on my journey, inside and outside Íø±¬ÃÅ. It’s time for me to focus on my new role and build upon the safeguarding work that up until now, I have been involved in as an add on to my day job. I can’t wait to get started. It’s not quite goodbye, but au revoir for now.