The Spending Review is a key opportunity for the Government to set out its financial priorities and allocate resources for the years ahead, shaping how public services, like health care, education, and infrastructure, are funded and delivered. The NCPS have used this opportunity to make the case for the role that counselling and psychotherapy can play in addressing the mental health crisis while also improving the effectiveness and efficiency of public spending.
In our submission, we’ve focused on the benefits of enabling Direct Access to Counselling, instead of or as a complement to NHS Talking Therapies. We highlighted how this approach could reduce NHS waiting times for mental health support, which currently leaves over a million people waiting for care. By enabling direct referrals to accredited counsellors and psychotherapists, patients could receive support far more quickly – often within one to two weeks. Integrating accredited therapists into NHS pathways could also save the NHS millions annually by leveraging a workforce that’s already highly trained, widely distributed across the UK, and ready to help.
We also emphasised the importance of the therapeutic relationship in delivering effective mental health care. Evidence shows that the connection between client and therapist is a key factor in successful outcomes; something which is currently overlooked within our current system. By allowing clients to choose their therapist, Direct Access could improve recovery rates while empowering patients to take an active role in their care. Alongside these recommendations, we’ve called for public awareness campaigns to help people understand how to find safe, accredited therapists, and proposed funding models, like Personal Wellbeing Budgets, to make therapy more accessible.
Ultimately, we hope our submission will encourage the Government to recognise the vital role our members and counsellors across the UK can play in tackling the mental health crisis and clearing some of the backlog. For our members, it would mean more well-paid, stable opportunities to provide meaningful support – and fairer recognition of their essential work.
